Reference

Titus 2

Sermon Discussion Questions:

1. The message describes our desire to be deeply known alongside our fear of accountability. Where do you recognize that tension in yourself? What makes correction easier or harder to receive? What makes it easier or harder to give?

2. Is God's grace more like a friend who teaches you how to budget, or more like a friend who pays your debt for you? See Titus 2:11-12

3. Read Titus 2:1–8. Which qualities Paul describes do you most need to grow in? How has another Christian’s example helped shape your desires and habits?

4. Read 1 Corinthians 4:14–17 and 1 Timothy 5:1–2. How should treating fellow Christians as family shape the way we offer and receive correction? What would help us move from privately criticizing one another to lovingly helping one another grow?

One of the strange consequences of our age: we are deeply desirous for meaningful community—community that is honest, real, and willing to tell us hard things. We want guidance, and mentorship, especially from those older than us, yet we are also deeply fearful of accountability and correction, and suspicious that anyone else has the right to tell us what to do.

Conversely, we have ten thousand opinions about how people (those younger than us in particular) should be living their lives, what diet they should have, how they should parent, what they should be doing to move up in their careers, etc., yet are terrified of ever telling someone what to do.

This leaves us with a kind of impotent frustration, where the younger look at the older and think why aren’t you doing more to help me? yet don’t make it easy for them to do so, and the older look at the younger and think why are you being so foolish? yet don’t do anything to help them grow.

So the young tend to find guidance in their friends who are in the same stage of life they are or they find it in podcasts and books, where there is the comfortable wall of anonymity between themselves and the teacher. And the older can feel like investing in the younger is wasted effort.

The cautionary tale of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon (1 Kings 12).

The folly of refusing the council of your elders for the advice of your peers.

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But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. 2 Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. 3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. 6 Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. 7 Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, 8 and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. 9 Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, 10 not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
15 Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

The Grace of God trains us so that we can train each other.

God’s grace trains us

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age - Titus 2:11-12

Is God’s grace more like a friend who bails you out of debt or like a friend who teaches you how to budget?

Praise God, it is more like the first than the last. The friend who gives you tips about what you can do to get yourself out of debt is giving you advice. The friend who pays your debt is giving you salvation.

Our sins had created a debt we could not pay back on our own, and it would not matter how much good moral education we received, we would never save ourselves. Our sins are against an infinitely holy God and so warrant an infinitely corresponding price. If your child overhears a conversation you are having with a friend about real estate and hears that the house down the street is selling for 500, they may think That is a lot of money, but if I get five dollars a week in allowance, in two years, I could buy a house! The child does not realize the enormity of the price. So it is with anyone who thinks that their obedience and good works contribute to their salvation whatsoever.

But in reality, God’s grace is not only salvation, but the salvation itself trains us to renounce ungodliness, worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. In fact, Paul tells Titus that Jesus “redeems us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works,” (Tit 2:14).

To be “zealous for good works” means not only that our actions are to be conformed to godliness, but our very affections. Zeal, my Greek dictionary tells me, “a powerful human emotion which leads to action.” It is can be translated as jealousy.

Paul tells us that we are saved by grace not works, lest anyone should boast, but also that we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph 2:10)

James tells us that “Faith without works is dead” But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. (James 2:18)

Just before our chapter in Titus, Paul warned of false teachers in Crete (where Titus was pastoring) who “profess to know God, but they deny him by their works,” (Tit 1:16).

God’s grace is not opposed to striving to keep the Law—it is opposed to striving to keep the Law so that we may be saved.

Our nature has been damaged by sin. But God’s grace restores our nature. Next week, Lord willing, Eddy will preach about the nature of the New Covenant promise that entails the promise of the new birth: through the work of Jesus Christ, God gives a new heart to His people, so that we have new desires and new impulses. Our sin nature is not wholly eradicated, but it is wholly changed. What takes place in our conversion experience is that we are changed to a new kind of people, a people zealous for good works. Perhaps not always achieving all the good works we desire, perhaps still struggling with besetting sins, but earnestly and sincerely striving to obey God.

This is why the life of a half-hearted, lukewarm Christian is the most miserable of all states to be in! You have been given a new heart that has a created in you an appetite for godliness and a revulsion at disobedience.

Our statement of faith “The Harmony of the Law and Gospel”

We believe that the Law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of His moral government. That it is holy, just, and good and that the inability which the Scriptures ascribe to fallen men to fulfill its precepts, arises entirely from their love of sin. To deliver them from this love of sin and to restore them through a Mediator to sincere obedience to the holy Law, is one great end of the Gospel, and of the Means of Grace connected with the establishment of the visible church.

But how does that happen?

We train each other

The “means of grace” connected with the church refers to the ministry of the local church: the preaching and reading of God’s Word, prayer, the sacraments, and the discipleship of one another. Here in Titus, we could summarize these into two categories the example and exhortation of fellow Christians.

Titus is the pastor of the church in Crete. Paul left him there on one of his missionary journeys so that Titus “might put what remained into order” (Tit 1:5), but appointing elders and correcting false doctrine. Elders in a church are to serve through their example and their exhortations…For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, 8 but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. - Titus 1:7-9

Example:

7 Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, 8 and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. - Titus 2:3b-8

You cannot give what you do not have.

Consider: why does Paul breakout these commands into male/female categories? Men and women are both made in God’s image and so are more similar than different. But they are different. And virtue will look slightly different for each one. And so they are tempted in slightly different ways.

Exhortation:

They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. - Titus 2:4-5

6 Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled.

I don’t intend to move through each of these in detail, my main point is to show that this model is assumed: older women teaching younger women, older men teaching younger men.

Spiritual gifts are for the mutual edification of the church.
Spartans use their shield to cover the man next to them.

We Are Family

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16 I urge you, then, be imitators of me. 17 That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. - 1 Cor 4:14-17

Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. - 1 Tim 5:1-2

For our church, we are to be training one another, particularly as we relate across generations. This doesn’t have to be terribly complicated.

Be intentional—what can I do to help this person take a step closer to Christ?
Be relational—how can I form a relationship with this person to do that most effectively?
Be sincere—not everything has to be leveraged for some other end. Sometimes, you can just hang out.

For parents, what makes your children most likely to persevere in the faith beyond graduation? Meaningful relationships with other adults in the church who aren’t mom and dad. Our ideal for youth ministry in this church is for every teenager to have another member of this church mentoring them.