Be A Righteous Church (Titus 2)
Two out of the last three Southern Baptist Presidents said that Christians should whisper about sexual sin. One of them apologized for saying it, but has made other comments like it in the past. Some places of worship here in Conway celebrate sinful rebellion against God, even waving flags of affirmation outside their church. Some places hardly ever preach about sin, righteousness, and judgment so as to be a more welcoming church.
In fact, the great majority of people that name the name of Christ today believe that Christianity is about their own personal happiness. I spoke about this some last week, but it is worth noting again today, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% of Americans hold to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism which is a non-Christian worldview.
They believe that God exists, but that he is distant, that people are supposed to be good, and good people get into Heaven. They also believe that the purpose of life is feeling good about oneself and that God’s demands upon people are not very high at all.
If you consider that somewhere around 30% of all Americans are described as “nones”, which is atheistic, agnostic, or no real religious belief then the numbers are quite staggering.
This would mean that a large number of the people that claim to be Christian, don’t believe in Jesus as He is revealed in Scripture. They don’t believe there is a Law they must abide by. And they don’t believe it is all that important to follow the Lord’s ways. They just believe God exists for their happiness.
Last week we looked at the Pastor’s burden. We looked at what his life is to look like and what he is to preach and teach. Today we will be looking at the character of the church.
We are not given some vague notion of righteousness. We are told what we are to aspire to be. We are given specifics as to what every household in this church is to look like. And I am given specifics as to the type of behavior I am to preach, teach, and demand from church members.
The truth of the matter is that God is not distant. He is very concerned with how you and I order His church and our lives. And this should not surprise us. A few examples of things happening today should suffice to reveal how bad problems are today.
We live in a day that is being dramatically effected by the destruction of the family. According to the CDC, 45.2% of the children born in Arkansas are born to unmarried mothers. And 38% of all children in Arkansas live in a single-parent household, according to the America First Policy Institute. And according to the AI summary given to summarize how fatherlessness effects crime,
“Fatherlessness is associated with higher rates of juvenile crime, acts of teen violence, youth suicides, homelessness, runaway children, and behavior disorders.”
Choosing to ignore personal behavior has consequences. And it has consequences that affect multiple generations. Rejection of God’s ways is destroying the civilization we live in.
As I opened with a few minutes ago, pastors are choosing not to talk about sin so that they can get a wider audience. The belief is that if I am less offensive more people will come to the church building. But the truth of the matter is that if I do not talk about sin, if I do not hold forth God’s righteous standard, then I am setting our church up for failure. I am not leading our church in righteousness.
As we saw last week, the pastor’s life and preaching are to move people to walk in righteousness. Then Paul defined what that would look like for the people of Crete.
The character of the people of Crete was not great. They were notorious sinners whose lives were characterized by one of their own people.
“One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth.” (Titus 1:12-14 ESV)
The people that surrounded them were liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. But it was not to be so for those that were Christians.
You are not to be like the rest of the world. You have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. You have been transformed. You are not to behave as everyone else does.
Christians, you are God’s people transformed by the saving power of Christ and the preaching of the gospel. Your neighbor is not. But you are, and that matters.
The Character of God’s People
The backdrop of each of these character traits is that “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12). But it is not to be so for the Christian. So Paul classifies the Christians in Crete into five categories. Older men, older women, younger women, younger men, and slaves. And he tells them how they are to behave.
Before we get there, I want everyone to notice something that Paul does that many people think is completely unacceptable in our day. He speaks of the sinful proclivities of each group.
You won’t understand what Paul is saying if you don’t understand that men and women fall tend to fall into different temptations. And people of different ages tend to fall into different temptations.
As I mentioned last week, the character of the pastor is to reveal to the rest of the church what mature Christian character is supposed to look like. And so, the pastor and “older men” seem to have very similar character qualities.
Older men are to be venerable, august, or honorable. That is what is meant by “dignified”. It is not just that he is to be honored. He is to be honorable. His character should be dignified.
Older men are also to be self-controlled. I think we understand what this means rather easily. To be self-controlled means to be in control of ones self. He has curbed his desires and impulses. He is not controlled by his emotions and his impulses. It is the older man that is to be in control.
He is also sound in faith. To be “sound” is to be “whole” or “complete”. There is a fullness to his faith that is often missing in less mature believers. His knowledge and trust in the Lord is complete.
He is also sound in love. Again, to be “sound” is to be “whole” or “complete”. There is a fullness to his love for the Lord and love for others. This should be evident in his life.
And he is also sound in his steadfastness. To be steadfast is to have patient endurance. He is constant.
If there is a problem in an older man’s life it is usually in one of these areas. He may not be “dignified”, as in he may not mind being looked at as unimpressive anymore. How many older men have you run into that just don’t care anymore? They walk around with food stains on their shirts and a pair of sweatpants with six holes in them and they behave as people that live that way. Don’t do that. Be impressive. Be venerable.
How may older men have you run into that are no self-controlled? They are completely controlled by their feelings and impulses. At any moment they could fly into a fit of anger because they didn’t get what they wanted. That is not how they are to live.
Be sound in the faith, sound in your trust in the Lord. Your faith is supposed to be whole at this point in your life. You should have spent time caring about what the Scriptures teach. By the time you are old, your faith and trust in the Lord should not be wavering.
Be sound in love. That is, be complete in love. How often have you run into old men that are completely willing to disown their relatives and burn down every relationship they have ever had just to get their way? On the other side of this is older men that are complete in love. They are venerated for their love for others. Be sound in love.
Be sound in steadfastness. That is to say, endure with great patience what life brings to you. You always think that things will be easier when you get older. When you’ve worked hard to love and provide for your family, there is something within you that thinks the old years is going to make life easy and you’re just going to be able to coast. But that is just not the case. And I think any old man or woman in your life would be able to say that this is the case. Troubles seem to multiply in old age. And you will need to be steadfast to endure it all.
And then Paul moves to discuss older women. He begins with the word “likewise”. This word is here to point out to us that her character traits will be similar to that of older men. They are “likewise” to aspire to the character traits listed for pastors in Titus 1:15-16. But there are areas that older women tend to struggle with that older men do not.
The first area that Paul notes is that older women are to be reverent in behavior. That word, reverent, is an interesting one. It denotes behavior that we are to have when around holy things or people that are to be honored.
Older women are not to be slanderers. No one is supposed to slander. No one is supposed to gossip. But the point here is that this is an area that women struggle with more than men. If the older men are more likely to lack self-control, I think we can safely say that older women are more likely to slander.
This gets to the heart of one of the differences between men and women. Women are more communal than men. And they sin in ways that reflect that difference.
We oftentimes think of the sins of men as being much more damaging than that of a woman. A man is more likely to get into a fist fight or burn down a building. But women are just as likely to tear a place down. They will just do it communally rather than all at once.
Older women are also not to be slaves to much wine. Alas, not much has changed. How many times have you seen Facebook reels joke about how much a woman drinks wine to get through her day. Is anyone supposed to be a slave to “much wine”? No. But this is a problem that Paul saw more among the older women than the older men or others in society. “Much wine” is another way of saying that a person should not be drinking to excess. Pastors, we have already been told are not to be “drunkards”.
The reason it is phrased this way is because alcohol content was less. But it was not so much less that a person couldn’t get drunk on it. Some people like to say that alcohol was so diluted with water that people couldn’t get drunk. That is simply not the case, otherwise there would have been no reason to write this. Water was often, but not always mixed with wine to get rid of bacteria. But that was likely such a small amount that it was barely noticeable. That is not what he was talking about here. This was about drinking wine and it had the ability to intoxicate. It did take more to get there. And a person that lingered long over wine, was a slave to much wine, or was a drunkard was a person that was overindulging.
I find the next portion of the text to be interesting. The older woman is to teach what is good. Rather than spending her time slandering and drinking, she is to train young women on how they are to behave toward their families.
Older women are to train younger women to love their husbands and children. They are to be trained to work at home. They are to be trained in kindness and submission to their husbands. And this training, which our society looks down upon, is of massive importance.
Paul tells us that if this training does not happen, if women do not behave in this manner toward their families, then God’s Word will be reviled.
There is a tendency in older women not to teach these things to younger women. And, this is a shame because we are pulling younger women out of the ways of the world. We need to equip them to live a life of faithfulness.
As a church, our hope is to bring the lost to faith in Jesus Christ and them walk faithfully before the Lord.
In our time, with so much nonsense everywhere we turn, how do you think we will do that? Are we just going to snap our fingers and see it happen? Do we just say, “well golly I sure hope the city we live in is transformed by the gospel and then never show others how they are to live before Christ?
In the upper echelons of our society, up in those ivory towers that educate our educated class, people have been pushing for the eradication of the family. Books have been written stating that the best thing for women would be the eradication of the family. And those thought processes, in part, have been accepted by our society. And what do you think will happen to young women that are brought out of that way of thinking?
Do you think that they are just going to know how to care for their family?
Do you think they are just going to instantly know how to walk in faithfulness?
They don’t just have a switch to flip on their back that automatically enables them to know how to do the things outlined here. They must be taught. They must be trained.
So rather than spending time on idleness, take up the call here to train young women in righteousness.
If you don’t, there are repercussions that you should hate. The Word of God will be reviled. In a society that lives in rebellion against God, those who are believers should live like it. And if they don’t, then God’s Word will be reviled. People will look at what we teach and believe and say that it is worthless.
So, don’t sit around drinking and slandering, for the reputation of God and His Word among the unbeliever, train the young women to walk in righteousness.
This means that young women are to love their husbands, love their children, work at home, be kind, and be submissive to their husbands. This is to be primary in their lives. It does not mean that they are to work at home exclusively. The Proverbs 31 woman obviously worked outside of the home. And other women, such as Lydia in Acts, obviously had a job outside of the home. But young women are to be taught to love their husbands and children, and to care for them with her work in the home.
What older women are to train younger women to be is what younger women are to aspire to be.
And this is not something that you can just sluff off. If you do not do this then the Word of God will be reviled. If you don’t love and care for your husband and children, the name of God will be reviled among the lost.
It’s not a matter of what you want to do. It’s a matter of obedience to the Lord and His Word.
And finally, young men are to be self-controlled. Every man in this room can understand why Paul would emphasize this for young men. If there’s anything that they are known for it is a lack of impulse control.
Young men are to be called upon to take up responsibility and stop living to fulfill their every desire. This stands alone in Paul’s mind because it is such a big problem for young men.
Young men die at a higher rate due to alcohol overdose.
Young men die at a higher rate from drug overdose.
Fornication is a major problem instigated mostly by young men.
And pornography is killing young men. I know that women are becoming addicted to it at a higher and higher rate. But it is young men that have been devoured by this stuff since the internet first began.
And if young men are going to live godly lives, they are going to have to learn self-control.
The last group of people that Paul discussed are “bondservants”. The word used here means “slave”. It is “δοῦλος”.
The gospel made a way for slaves to eventually be freed. This becomes a bit clearer when you read the Book of Philemon. But slaves were not to participate in uprisings that would free their selves.
As Americans, we always think of American slavery. The slavery of America was much harsher than had been practiced in previous eras. None of it was a walk in the park, but the later version of it was created in places like Barbados. The cruelty of manstealing and fierce punishment for slaves allowed a system where a very small group could control the very large group. The very idea of manstealing people of a different color so that it was easier to identify who was slave and who was free was wicked to its core.
Later it was Christians that understood the wrongness of slavery and overturned it in the Western world. People like William Wilberforce changed the consciences of people in the West. It still exists in places that Christianity has not yet gone to.
But we can learn from these instructions. It tells us a lot about how we should work. If we are not our own boss then we should have these characteristics. We should be submissive to our bosses. We shouldn’t be rebellious at work. We should be well-pleasing and not argumentative. We shouldn’t be stealing things from work. And we should walk in faithfulness before the Lord at work.
All this, Paul says, adorns the doctrine of God our Savior, Jesus Christ. Your good work “adorns the doctrine”. In other words, the work ethic you have reveals to everyone the truth of what you preach.
If you are a liar, evil beast, and lazy glutton at work then you behave like everyone else. But if, because of your faith in Christ, you are different then your life adorns the doctrine of God.
How are you at work? How are you with your time management at work?
You ought to be the model employee. Your employer should be thankful that they hired you and thankful you are there.
If you are a liar, evil beast, and lazy glutton then you are not doing it right.
Your behavior matters. As I mentioned repeatedly last week, the work of the pastor is to filter into the homes. The Word of God rightly preached, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is to form godly households. And how does it do that?
It does it by making obedient people.
The measure of the faithfulness of a church is going to be the holiness of the households within the church.
As the men and women of this church are formed by God’s Word, the households within this church will be transformed.
And as you do so, the Word of God will be held in high esteem among the lost in our country.
In the early 2000’s it was very common to hear people speak about how Christianity devastated our country. It had almost become a common belief among much of our country that Christianity was a plague that needed to be gotten rid of.
But that seems to be changing. There are still a lot of people that don’t believe the gospel. But we seem to be getting a more favorable hearing from people today. And even very famous people that don’t believe in Christ are now having to say that there is something to the beliefs of Christians because of how they live their lives in comparison to the chaos around them.
And that’ s really what Paul is driving at here.
As we walk in righteousness as God’s people, others take notice. They notice that there really is something to God’s Word in comparison to the sinful rebellion that seems to be all around them.
The Character Of God’s People Is Formed By The Gospel (Titus 2:11-14)
Now, the reason we can behave this way is not because we are perfect, holy, and righteous in and of ourselves. It is because God has appeared in Jesus Christ (Titus 2:11). And He has brought us salvation.
God the Son took on human flesh and dwelt among us. He has appeared. He brought redemption to us through His perfect life, death, and resurrection. He accomplished salvation for us. He has brought us from death to life. He has given us eternal life.
And this eternal life doesn’t stop with giving us forgiveness of sins. This salvation also trains us to live godly in this present age. It trains us to renounces worldliness. To renounce something is to abandon it. And it is the same with our worldly passions. The gospel trains us to abandon our sinful and worldly passions. It trains us to say no to the things that God hates.
It also trains us to say “yes” to the things that God loves. The gospel trains us to live self-controlled, upright (righteous), and godly lives.
Our salvation does not just give us forgiveness of sins. That is the thing we think of first and foremost, obviously. But it also trains us to say “no” to the things that God hates and “yes” to the things that God loves.
And part of the reason for this is that the gospel gives us hope. Jesus who died for us will one day come again. And that is a tremendous reason for hope.
It’s not that we do this on our own. We don’t just pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and renounce worldliness. We are enabled to do so because the grace of God has appeared.
This salvation does not leave us the way we are. We are changed.
We are justified, that is God declares us righteous based on the finished work of Christ.
We are born again, or regenerated. We are made new by the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
And we are being changed into the image and likeness of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
All of this is happening in the life of a believer. We are being trained to renounce the worldliness that we see all around us. And we are being trained to walk in the godliness we see in the pages of Scripture.
We come to Christ just as we are, but we are not left just as we are. We are molded to walk in righteousness.
You Were Redeemed To Live For The Lord (Titus 2:14-15)
As a pastor, I am required to exhort you to live a life of godliness because Christ purchased you with His own blood. That is what is meant by “redeemed”. You have been purchased by the blood of Christ and given freedom.
Frederick Douglass is famous today because he ran away from his slave owner and was redeemed by friends. They purchased him from the slave owner and handed him a certificate of freedom. At that point, Douglass was allowed to walk as a free man because of the purchase of his friends.
We have been redeemed. We were enslaved to the powers and principalities of this world. We were in bondange to sin and Satan. And that is us no longer. We have been redeemed from the sin of this world and are now Christ’s own possession.
You are no longer your own. You are His. And you are to live a life that is committed to Him for the rest of your days.
And I am required to exhort you in this with all authority.
Being a pastor is a dangerous job. It is dangerous because I will give an account before God for what I have declared and taught you. But if I am preaching the truth to you, then you are the one in danger. You will be called to account for every exhortation that I gave you and you ignored.
I am to preach with that kind of authority. And you are to desire to be pleasing to the Lord.
This salvation redeemed us from lawlessness. And it purifies us for the Lord,
“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” (Titus 2:14 ESV)
We are redeemed from enslavement to sin and the ways of this world. And now we are the Lord’s possession “zealous for good works”. Zealousness is an intense jealousy. And now that we are His, we are intensely jealous to honor Him with our lives.
You were not redeemed so that you could go forth and live for yourself. This salvation is not just some add on to your life. You are His. You have been redeemed by Jesus Christ.
Now, you are to walk in Him.
R. Dwain Minor