Debates and Divisions

Titus chapter 3, no surprise. I invite you to turn there, please. And what I’m going to do is read Titus 3 in Peterson’s paraphrase, which you should never use to study the Bible, but it is interesting and quite helpful as a fairly free attempt at paraphrasing the more accurate text. So, you needn’t follow along here—it would be hard to follow along in your own text—but let me just read it as it is paraphrased for us by Peterson:

“Remind the people to respect the government and be law-abiding, always ready to lend a helping hand. No insults, no fights. God’s people should be bighearted and courteous.

“It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.

“I want you to put your foot down. Take a firm stand on these matters so that those who have put their trust in God will concentrate on the essentials that are good for everyone. Stay away from mindless, pointless quarreling over genealogies and fine print in the law code. That gets you nowhere. Warn a quarrelsome person once or twice, but then be done with him. It’s obvious that such a person is out of line, rebellious against God. By persisting in divisiveness he cuts himself off.

“As soon as I send either Artemas or Tychicus to you, come immediately and meet me in Nicopolis. I’ve decided to spend the winter there. Give Zenas the lawyer and Apollos a hearty send-off. Take good care of them.

“Our people have to learn to be diligent in their work so that all necessities are met (especially among the needy) and they don’t end up with nothing to show for their lives.

All here want to be remembered to you. Say hello to our friends in the faith. Grace to all of you.”[1]

Amen.

Father, we pray now that as this evening hour has come and as the shadows fall on the day and as we enjoy the stillness of these moments, we pray that as our hearts have been turned to Christ in all of his fullness, in the reality of his resurrection, in the wonder of his atoning death, as we’ve listened to these songs, so we pray for your help as we turn again to the Bible, that once again the Spirit of God may teach us and equip us with everything good for the doing of your will. And we pray humbly and expectantly. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

I have little doubt that the apostle Paul himself would be quite happy with the name Truth For Life. I hope you don’t think that’s presumptuous of me to say so, but I think it’s fairly accurate. I think he might even say, “That actually would be a terrific heading for my letter to Titus or even, particularly, for the third chapter itself.” Because, as we have already seen in our two prior studies, the truth of the gospel believed is to find expression in the behavior of those who have come to trust in God. And that is what he is saying in verse 8: “Those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.” And having come to believe in Jesus, now they’re going to behave as Jesus desires.

Paul is pretty straightforward, I think you would agree. He doesn’t have any qualms at all about telling Titus what to teach, nor does he really have any concern about telling him how to teach. And he’s done this at the end of chapter 2: “These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority[, and] do[n’t] let anyone despise you.”[2] And this, of course, is very helpful to a young pastor wondering what he should teach. I always remember, from my early days, what a paralyzing thing it was to be invited to speak when I was the assistant minister in Edinburgh and how much pressure I felt and the burden that I felt in relationship to it. And I could identify with the young curate in the Anglican church who, on the first occasion that he had been invited to speak when his vicar was on holiday—now the young man was so anxious that he sent a postcard to his bishop, the bishop who had ordained him, and he said to him, “Dear Bishop: Next Sunday is my first chance, and what should I preach about?” And the bishop sent him a postcard in reply, and it said, “Preach about God, and preach about twenty minutes.” And that kind of clarity, I think, is very helpful. I wish many of us would pay as much attention to the second part of it as we claim to do the first part of it.

But here Titus is given his marching orders: “These, then, are the things you should teach.” It reflects on what has already been stated in the previous two chapters. And he comes back, you will notice, and he does the same thing again here in verse 8: “This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things.” “I want you to speak about these things with absolute certainty.” And I think there is no question but that the opening phrase of verse 8, “This is a trustworthy saying,” is referencing what he has just said in verses 4–7. Some of the commentators actually ponder the possibility that these verses, 4–7, were actually a preexistent text of some sort—perhaps even a musical rendition, because there were hymns in the early church, and it may have been that verses 4–7 were memorable in this particular way. Whatever we may think about that, you are sensible people, and you can figure this out for yourselves.

But I think when he says, “This is solid truth,” it is referential back the way and not forward. Not that what he’s going on to say isn’t also solid truth, but it seems to be fitting in light of what he has just done. And actually, I think it ties in with 2:15, where, in what is essentially a parallel passage between verse 11 and verse 14, which focuses on the gospel itself, again, he then says, “And these are the things that you should teach.” In chapter 3, he comes back, and he outlines the nature of the gospel, and he says, “This is the solid truth that I want you to make sure you emphasize.”

So, it’s fairly straightforward. It’s not hard to understand. Titus is to ensure that those who are under his care should be, essentially, saturated with the gospel—that they should be those who have a solid, working, living understanding of the nature of the gospel. And I think that many of us coming to an event like this, listening as we do to the radio in this way, would probably immediately nod our heads, and we would be affirming certain things at least in our own minds. Whether we are actually making the right kind of affirmations or not perhaps is worthy of consideration.

Certainly, we, as a group of leaders at Parkside—our elders—have taken a significant step forward in relationship to the gospel as a result of making one of our monthly books a book by Jerry Bridges, The Gospel for Real Life. And in our elders’ meetings, part of what we do is read a book together. And sometimes it works out very profitably; other times, not as good as we’d anticipated. But the time that we read through The Gospel for Real Life was a very, very important time for us. Because in reading what was a very profitable book together, we were tremendously helped by having reinforced for us the nature of the gospel itself. And we spent some months considering what Bridges refers to in his introduction to the book as the absolute necessity of preaching the gospel to ourselves every day.[3] Preaching the gospel to ourselves every day. I’m not sure that many of us, or even any of us, had actually thought about that before we came across that phrase in that book.

Every day, all day, our acceptance with God is in Christ alone.

And so, as we worked our way though, we were tremendously helped by being reminded of the fact that the gospel is not simply a door through which we walk in order to become a Christian, but the gospel is the sole basis of our day-by-day acceptance by God—as I alluded to it this morning, when I said that the gospel is not simply the ABC of the Christian life that gets us started, but the gospel is the A to Z of the Christian life. And this came across very clearly for us.

And it helped us to understand it in our own lives and in relationship to our leadership of the church, and it also has helped us to make sure that all of the aspects of life at Parkside are increasingly grounded in and oriented by the gospel itself. And what has become apparent to us is this: that when men and women do not have a solid grasp of the gospel—of what God has done for us in Christ—when men and women do not have a clear awareness of what the New Testament teaches concerning our union with Christ, then those men and women will seek to find their assurance of salvation somewhere other than the gospel.

So, for example—and you can try yourselves on this—when you think about the fact that you are in Christ, on what basis do you say that God loves you, looks on you in the perfection and absolute holiness of Christ, right now, tonight, October 10, 2009? If we do not have a gospel answer to that question, then we will seek to find our acceptance with God either on the strength of our past experience of conversion—so we ask somebody, “How do you know that God is at peace with you?” and they say, “Well, years ago, when I was seventeen, I went to a thing, and I put up my hand.” That’s a very interesting answer. That’s the basis of your feeling accepted with God? Something that you did a long time ago in your life? Or that we seek to find the basis of our acceptance with God in our sincerity, or in our performance, or in the relative infrequency of our conscious and willful disobedience. In other words, we say to ourselves, “Well, I’m sure God must be really happy with me, because I haven’t been as willfully disobedient for the last seven days as I was in the previous seven days.” To the extent that a man or a woman thinks that way, that man or woman needs to have their pastor do what Paul is urging Titus to do here, and that is to “stress these things” concerning the nature of the gospel, so that those who are under his care may be reminded that every day, all day, our acceptance with God is in Christ alone—is in Christ alone, and is in Christ alone because of who Jesus is and because of what Jesus has done.

You see, when we preach—and this is something that has come home forcibly to me in the course of these readings and thinking—when we preach, it is possible for us to think that we have told people the gospel because we have warned them about the dangers of rejecting it or encouraged them to think about the benefits of accepting it. But you may warn somebody about the dangers of rejecting the gospel or the benefits of accepting the gospel, and you may never have told them the gospel. And that’s exactly what’s happening in many of our churches! So the people are sitting there and saying, “I don’t understand why this fellow is so steamed up about this. It doesn’t seem to bear any relationship to the text that he was apparently trying to expound, and now, all of a sudden, he’s launched off into something entirely different.”

Well, you see, what needs to happen is that we need to explain the nature of the gospel. And that is who Jesus is and what he has done: that Jesus has perfectly obeyed the law of God, and his active righteousness stands in the place of our active rebellion; that Jesus has unequivocally and absolutely satisfied the justice of God; that he has exhausted the wrath of God; that he has removed our sins from the presence of God; that he has redeemed us from the curse of God; and that he has, in short, reconciled us to God. And it is because of all of that, which is the essentials of the gospel—articulated differently, but nevertheless, the same emphasis in verses 4–7—it is because of all of that that a man may rest safe and secure in Christ.

Now, let me give to you a quote from an American theologian of the past, B. B. Warfield, on this very issue. And I know you’re going to come afterwards and ask for it, and I’m not going to give it to you. But I’ll tell you where you can find it, if you want to take notes. It’s in The Works of B. B. Warfield, volume [7], page 113. The Works of B. B. Warfield, volume [7], page 113. And this is this majestic and wonderful quote. Writes Warfield,

There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot be accepted at all. This is not true of us only “when we believe.” It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation[ship] to Him or to God [the Father] through Him ever alter…

Now, listen carefully:

no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest.[4]

This, loved ones, is the gospel. And this is what is increasingly missing from the heart of more and more gatherings of people who believe that the gospel is actually utilitarian, that the gospel exists so that we can get something—so that we can get, if you like, our best life now, and that’s why we have a gospel: so that we can be all of these things. And this is not only in extreme circumstances; this is fairly routine.

So, for example… And here is a quote from a church. This is from the flyer that came from this church, and it reads as follows: “At Valley Church, meet new friends and neighbors. Hear positive, practical messages that uplift you each week on,” one, “how to feel good about yourself, how to overcome depression, how to have a full and successful life, learning to handle your money, the secrets of successful family living, and how to overcome stress.” It’s hard to imagine that going out as a bulletin or a flyer from the church in Crete, isn’t it? It is all too common going out as a flyer from the church in Cleveland or Colorado or Cincinnati.

Now, you see why it is that Paul in his generation is so forceful concerning these things. This is not a matter of marginal importance. This is at the very heart of the nature of the church. This is at the very core of what it’s going to mean for the gospel of God to find its root and to be transforming the community in which Titus is ministering. And so it is that he says to him, having shared the nature of it, “The kindness and love of God our Savior has appeared. He hasn’t done this because of righteous things—not triggered by anything in us—but because of his mercy. He has washed us clean. He has renewed us by the power of the Holy Spirit. He has justified us. He has made us heirs of God. We now look forward to our home in heaven,”[5] and so on. And then he says, “And this is of such vital importance that I want you, Titus, to take a firm stand on it—to see to these matters so that those who trust in God will then be able to display the transforming power of God in the goodness of their lives.” In other words, the heart of Christian living and the heart of Christian living in community must be the gospel.

I had the privilege earlier this year of being at Second Pres. in Memphis. I was there with one of my best friends, someone that I actually call my big brother, and that is Sinclair Ferguson. And I missed the address that he gave to pastors at the lunch hour because I didn’t arrive until the afternoon. And in the course of speaking extemporaneously to these individuals, he pointed out a number of things to them.

And he pointed out that in a number of places throughout the country, it would appear that those who are in positions of prominence all have some distinguishing feature about themselves and what they’re on about; essentially, that their ministry is all marked by a thing, whatever that thing might be—like, his thing is Reformed theology, or his thing is something this, or he distinguishes himself and places himself in the marketplace by identifying himself with these certain things. I don’t say that in an unkind way. I think it’s a fairly accurate assessment.

Sinclair, reflecting on this, says that “this is absolutely bizarre to me.” And he says, “You know, if I were to ask your wives”—and he’s speaking to ministers—“if I were to ask your wives what is the hallmark of your ministry, there really ought to be only one answer to that.” And then—I quote him—he says, “It ought to be possible to say of every gospel minister, and especially those gospel ministers we most admire: the thing that is manifestly, absolutely at the core and center of this ministry that makes it apostolic, is that you can never,” sitting under that ministry, “you can never escape from the centrality of Jesus Christ. And I say that with a concern to me, because I am not convinced that that would universally be said. And I think it’s worth us asking ourselves whether we suspect that it would be said of our ministry: ‘The thing about him in his ministry…’”

Now, I recognize he has a special burden. He’s got unusual gifts in this area. But over the piece, you sit under that ministry, and the thing that you will be persuaded to say is “This ministry is Christ-centered, Christ-dominated, and Christ-filled.” And if anything else—and this might well be the secret: “This minister is Christ intoxicated.” Intoxicated with Christ! Saturated with the gospel! So that those under the care of Titus may not be buffeted by all of these things, may not be seeking to find their security and their assurance by taking their spiritual pulse every morning when they get up, but they have been so grounded in the truth of the gospel, in the finished work of Christ, in the absolute sufficiency of his atonement, in all that he has rendered on behalf of the sinner, that they’re able to look away from themselves and from their own sorry predicament and from their own wanderings and so on, and our ineffectiveness in prayer, and our lack of love for others, and our disgruntlement in so many areas, and to say, “It is all because of Christ that God may look upon me.”

And that is what Paul is saying to Titus: “Here is what you are to stress. This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things”—“these things,” which he comes back to in the final sentence of verse 8, “which,” he says, “are excellent and profitable for everyone.” These are the things—these gospel things. And these things are in direct contrast to the false teachers, who are actually unprofitable and useless.

And for your homework, again, you can go back and read from about verse 10 on in chapter 1, and you will discover that he is making that point very clearly concerning these folks. It’s not unique to Titus. He does the same thing when he writes to Timothy. And, for example, in 1 Timothy 1:7, he says, “Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they[’re] talking about or what they so confidently affirm.”[6] That’s pretty straight talk, isn’t it? They think they’re big teachers. They’ve got a big following. There’s lots of people taking notes when they speak. But they’re talking out of the top of their heads. They do not know what it is they’re saying and what they so confidently affirm.

“Now, Titus, I don’t want you to be like that. I want your ministry to be marked by something different.” And his language—that is, Paul’s language—conveys the necessity of clarity and of certainty and of authority. I’ll leave those words with you; I needn’t work them out. Clarity, in laying out the nature of the gospel itself, à la verses 4–7; certainty, in the way in which Titus, if you like, stands before his group or moves among his group so that the trumpet is not giving an uncertain sound; and authority, which is not an authority that derives from Titus’s personality but an authority which derives from that which Titus conveys to his people—namely, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. “So, here,” he says, “is what I want you to stress.” Then he says, “And here is why I want you to stress it.” “So that…” It’s a purpose clause, in Greek and in English. “I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.”

Now, I don’t think he would have been upset to think that many of the people who were taking notes or wrote down some of these great quotes that he had. Titus was able to quote somebody far better than B. B. Warfield. He was able to quote the apostle Paul himself! He was able to say, “We’ve got a letter from the mighty apostle Paul, and I want to read it out to you.” Quite wonderful! But he doesn’t say, “And the reason I’m stressing this for you, congregation, this morning, here in Crete, is so that you might all become theological eggheads—so that you might all be able to walk around and impress everybody with the grasp that you have of all of these things. Your grasp will be revealed in your life. And indeed, the impact in the community will be seen in goodness. And the goodness will be the evidence of the fact that you have been grasped by God in his kindness.” And so, again, the recurring emphasis: Who are these people, and what are they like? “Well, I want you to make sure that they get ahold of this, Titus, so that they might be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.”

Now, we cannot evade this challenge, loved ones. It just hits me like a hammer to say it to you. Careful every morning: “Here’s an opportunity, Lord. I’m going out into my day. I’m going into my normal place of employment. I just studied Titus, and apparently, as I go out today, the twelfth of October, one of the things that I have to be very careful to ensure happens is I want to be careful to do good. I want to be kind. I want to be engaged. I want to be courteous. I want to be loyal. I want to be humble. And Lord, as you know—because I haven’t even got out of my bed yet, and I’ve sinned my soul four times—as you know, there is no possibility of me looking into myself and saying, ‘Well, I’m ready to be good today. After all, I’m such a courteous, humble, community-engaging kind of person.’ No. I am a wretched sinner, Lord, about to go out onto the twelfth of October. And apart from the dynamic of the gospel which assures me of my acceptance with you, the living God, and by the renewing power of the Holy Spirit in my life, I don’t have a hope in the world of being anything other than a miserable sinner out there.”

Because there are a lot of miserable Christian sinners, aren’t there? It’s very distressing when our friends tell us, you know, “Mr. So-and-So, who is a complete outright pagan, who tells all the dirty jokes, is a much nicer person than Mr. So-and-So, who claims to be a born-again Christian, and he has that big sticker on the back of his car.” What are you going to say in response to that? You’re going to have to say, “Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I think he is… Yeah, he is a miserable sinner.” And the person said, “Well, I thought, then, that if he was a Christian, that he wouldn’t be a miserable sinner.” And you have to say, “No, he is a miserable sinner who is a Christian. And this is the story of grace: that God saves miserable sinners. And apparently, this guy’s a little slow off the mark on some of the things. And you ought to be encouraged by this, because you, too, are a miserable sinner, and God saves miserable sinners.” As opposed to “Oh no, he’s a really nice guy. You just met him… You know, he’s not good on Tuesdays, but if you ever go on a business trip with him on a Wednesday, he’s a fine fellow. Oh, no, no, he reads his Bible, he’s nice, never kicks the cat, nice to his wife.” So what we’re trying to do is now come up with a basis of acceptability that is not the gospel! The only acceptability of that miserable sinner is in the gospel. He knows that when he looks at the mirror and sees himself. What is he? He’s a miserable sinner, saved by grace. Now, he has no justification for going out and being a miserable sinner with his friends and colleagues, and it is a royal disgrace when his pagan friends are actually a lot kinder and a lot nicer than he is. But that is actually a testimony to the fact of the nature of the gospel.

So, humility. There’s one for a start, huh? “No, I am not conceited,” said the man, “although I have every right to be so. Why don’t you read my new book, Humility and How I Attained It.”

I got two quotes for you on humility. And since I have them, I’m giving them to you, because I couldn’t find my one quote last night. And since I did find this quote, I’m going to tell you it. This is from an article in the Wall Street, September 18, this year, by Eric Felten, entitled “Apology Not Accepted.” “Apology Not Accepted.” And the article was about people who make public apologies. Classically, you’ve got it in Letterman in the last week. Okay? There’s no admission of sin, nothing at all, just a bunch of clowning around and joking. So hey, guess what? Apology not accepted. Kanye West goes on The Jay Leno Show, does the same thing. And the governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, in admitting adultery with his Argentinian girlfriend—says Felten, concerning the attempt at an apology by this governor, “Even in his moment of self-reproach the governor was impressed with his own importance.” And then here’s the sentence: “Humbling oneself isn’t exactly the same thing as humility.”[7] “Humbling oneself isn’t exactly the same thing as humility.”

Here’s David Wells’s definition of humility from Losing Our Virtue, page 204:

Humility has nothing to do with depreciating ourselves and our gifts in ways we know to be untrue. … Even “humble” attitudes can be masks [for] pride. … Humility is that freedom from our self which enables us to be in positions in which we have neither recognition nor importance, neither power nor validity, and even experience deprivation, and yet have joy and delight. … It is the freedom of knowing that we are not [at] the center of the universe, not even in the center of our own private universe.[8]

It’s an amazing point of application, isn’t it? “Titus, I want you to make absolutely sure that you stress these things. These are profitable. These are excellent things. It is vital that these people are grounded in the gospel, both in terms of their own security, but also in terms of their impact in community, so that they will be careful to be devoted to doing whatever is good.”

Well, our time hastens to a conclusion.

You will notice that he then goes to tell him in verse 9 of what he’s also to avoid. If he is to affirm certain things, he’s also to avoid other things. And what he wants him to avoid is “foolish controversies … genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because” in contrast to the gospel—those things are, you will notice, at the end of verse 8, “excellent and profitable,” and these things are “unprofitable and useless.” Mindless, pointless quarreling over stuff that has a peculiar interest for warped individuals.

These false teachers that he’s already referenced in chapter 1 were apparently very good at embroidering and supplementing the law of God. They were more apt at mythology than they were at theology. They were better at producing human concoctions than obeying God’s commands. They were capable of developing genealogies. They took names out of the Old Testament books, and then they created a whole genealogy around those names, and then they had them added into some of the religious books, and then they had these huge discussions about the nature of these bogus genealogies. It was kind of like a sort of Old Testament version of the Loch Ness Monster, just with a touch of spice added to it. And as a result of this, they sought to distract and to divert by lengthy debates, and the debates were all about dates and all about definitions.

Now, tell me you haven’t met any of these people. Thank you. By your silence you tell me you have. Is this intriguing? Perhaps. Is it edifying? Not for a moment. Not for a moment. If you have a peculiar bent in your mind, you may be interested at some of the stuff. Hopefully none of you have sent me the stuff that comes routinely to me via Truth For Life. Someone sent me something just the other day explaining that they had cracked the code of a particular book and that this is now being done by this individual using a very interesting logarithmic proposal, and he wanted me to make sure that I paid careful attention to it so that I could let you and other people like you know that someone has now finally understood the book. Well, I filed that—and not in the same place that I’ve been filing these B. B. Warfield quotes.

No, you see, these people cannot be tolerated. The word that he uses for them is that they are to be muzzled. Muzzled. “Put a muzzle on them,” he says. “Don’t let them come around and flap their mouths.” It’s not very politically correct! We’re so messed up now that anybody that says anything like this is immediately regarded as some horribly offensive person. No! I mean, have you been bitten by a dog lately? I was bitten by a dog just a summer ago: big boxer dog jumped up, tore my shirt, bit me, scared me half to death. And I said, “You know, why don’t you put a muzzle on that dog?” There was nothing unkind about it. I don’t want to beat the dog with a stick. But I sure don’t want it just to jump up and bite me like that. That’s scary! And he doesn’t want these people jumping around the congregations in Crete, biting people, devouring people, getting them all off track. And so he said, “Just muzzle them up. Make sure that you silence them, because they are insubordinate, they’re empty-headed, and they’re deceitful. And so they must be silenced.” The word that he uses, paraitou, to avoid these controversies and the people who bring them is the word that simply means to turn the other way, to turn your back on them: “Avoid them at all costs. Don’t get sucked into these things.”

Now, it’s interesting: somebody asked me this morning, “Do you think you’re getting crankier in your old age?” I don’t know that I can get much crankier, to tell you the honest truth. But it’s possible. But I hope not. And one of the areas that I’m trying to learn is in this very area. Because there’s hardly an occasion passes where I go anywhere, and not least of all preaching in the congregation here, without somebody comes up afterwards, after you have endeavored to discharge the duties of your ministry, to lay out the truth of the Bible and everything, and someone comes up, and they’ve got some harebrained scheme or idea that they have developed from somewhere or whatever else it might be. And instinctively, I want to say something that I probably shouldn’t say, and so I’m working hard at not doing that. But it’s hard.

One of my great mentors, a retired clergyman in the Anglican Church now, is masterful at it, and he can actually take two or three opinions and say yes to all of them and never let anybody get him ruffled. He’s got that wonderful English phlegmatic approach to life. The trouble is when you’re a Celt, you’re not blessed with that. You don’t have that. You want to say, “Let me tell you what I think of that idea,” you know, and so on.

But he’s wonderful, you know, and he’s made a career out of it. He walks around with a coffee cup. (I love telling my colleagues this.) He’ll have his coffee cup at the end of the service. He’s just walking around, and someone will come up to him and say, “You know, Mr. Lucas, I noticed that you were not as expositional as I thought you ought to have been. You seem to be far more involved in systematic theology, and I think you really ought to just watch out for that.” And he said, “Oh, thank you. Thank you. I will pay attention to that. Thank you. Thank you very much.” Then he’d just walk off and just leave them. He bumps into a fellow over here. The fellow over here says, “Mr. Lucas, this is the second time I’ve come here, and you know, I noticed that you seem to be far more expositional, and you don’t really pay much attention to systematic theology at all in the way you’re teaching the Bible.” He said, “Oh, thank you so much. That’s a wonderful observation. Thank you. I must remember that as well.” And then he just refused to be drawn into the nonsense. It’s great skill in that. Maybe when I’m eighty-three, I can do that as well.

Now, we have to stop, but this is in keeping with what Paul says elsewhere. We would expect there to be a synergy between what Paul is writing to other places and this. So, for example, in Romans 16, he says,

I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people.[9]

“These are the kind,” he says, when he writes to Timothy, “these are the kind of people who worm their way into the homes of women who are weak-willed and pressed.”[10] Now, that is not a generic statement regarding all women, but it is a designation of a certain kind of woman within the context of Ephesus who were weak in their will and who were easy prey for these charlatans. And he says, “There is no way in the world that this must be allowed to continue. And therefore, I want you to watch out, and I want you to warn a divisive person once, and then a second time, and after that have nothing to do with him.” The word that is used there for “warn” is the Greek word which gives us our English word nouthetic, from which we get nouthetic counseling. It is the exact same verb that is used in Ephesians 6 for what fathers are to do: they are not to exasperate their children, but they are to “bring them up in the training,” or the admonition, “of the Lord.”[11] The same word is used there: nouthesian.

So in other words, the warning that is referenced here is a warning; it’s not a threat. He says, “I want you to point out to this individual the implication of wrong actions with the purpose of seeing them embrace right actions.” Says Donald Guthrie, “If this action, however, should seem rather harsh, Titus must recognize that the stubbornness of the man is evidence of a perverted mind.”[12] And so, in other words, this individual—“such a man”—“is warped and sinful,” and by his actions, he will be seen to be so. And Titus, by his actions, will be seen to be concerned for the welfare of the church.

I’m tempted to suggest that what we have here is another sterling reminder of what has become for some of us almost a mantra—namely, that the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. And to be diverted and distracted and deceived by chasing down these avenues, says Paul, is something that must not happen. And the leadership of the church—in this instance, in the case of Titus—must be prepared to be totally clear concerning the gospel, absolutely certain in the things that he stresses, and aware of the fact that any authority that is his is an authority that is grounded in the truth of God’s Word, which he’s been given to proclaim, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, who enables him to do so.

So, let us heed this instruction, for the good of the church and for the glory of God.

Our God and our Father, I suppose we could have chosen something that would have been a lot easier to handle than this—a lot cozier. But here we are, under the searching gaze of your truth. And so we pray that the clarity with which Paul communicates to Titus may arrest our thinking, that the certainty with which Titus engages in his pastoral ministry may become something of a hallmark for all who are involved in the leadership and teaching and training of others, and that the sense of authority may always and only be seen to be an authority which is a derived authority and isn’t found in personality or in human giftedness but is, as with our very acceptance before you, found in Christ alone.

Hear our prayers, O God, as we think of our own congregations from which we’ve come, as we think of the needs of the church throughout the nation, as we think about all that tomorrow will bring in places that are represented here in this room right now. And we pray for the success and for the well-being and for the very clarity and certainty to be the identifying features of those who open up the truth of your Word so that men and women might know Christ and may love Christ and that together we might be ready and careful to devote ourselves to doing what is good. For we pray, seeking the forgiveness of all of our sins, in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] Titus 3:1–15 (MSG).

[2] Titus 2:15 (NIV 1984).

[3] Jerry Bridges, The Gospel for Real Life: Turn to the Liberating Power of the Cross… Every Day (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), 9.

[4] “‘Miserable-Sinner Christianity’ in the Hands of the Rationalists,” in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 7, Perfectionism: Volume One (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), 113.

[5] Titus 3:4–7 (paraphrased).

[6] 1 Timothy 1:6–7 (NIV 1984).

[7] Eric Felton, “Apology Not Accepted,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 18, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204518504574417372936423590.

[8] David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 204.

[9] Romans 16:17–18 (NIV 1984).

[10] 2 Timothy 3:6 (paraphrased).

[11] Ephesians 6:4 (NIV 1984).

[12] Donald Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed. (1990; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 221.