Sermon Notes

3-8 It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, easy marks for 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. 8-11 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.

When we experience God’s grace at the cross, we are transformed. God raises us from being dead in our sin and regenerates us. We are given new understanding of the truth, and we are brought into new relationship with God—we become heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).
At the same time, there are powerful forces at work to cause us to revert to our old ways. The world bombards us daily with its false messages that promise satisfaction with its pleasures, apart from God. These powerful forces may make us forget what God has done in our hearts by His grace. Thus, we need to be reminded again and again of how God's grace has laid hold of our lives.

In the verses that immediately precede our text, Paul tells Titus to “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 (vv. 1, 2).” While Paul doesn’t go into specifics, this behavior would establish Christians as trustworthy and people of prudent judgment.
It is likely that the rulers to which Paul asked these Christians to submit were not Christians. It would be difficult for them to thread the needle between submission to legitimate authority and resistance to pagan culture. Christians today often struggle with the same tension, because governments and prevailing cultures are often oppositional to Christian values.
The printed lesson picks up with a continuation of the thoughts conveyed in the first two verses.

3-8 It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, easy marks for 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.
As Christians, we must understand the culture in which we live. But it is our duty to model behaviors that are consistent with our faith and will attract others to our way of life, rather than repelling them.
Paul reminds Titus of several positive behaviors, and several contrasting sins, which he is to insist on teaching correctly. False teachers are to be cut off, not given a public platform. Believers are not to waste time bickering but focus on good works and urgent needs. This passage also explains how salvation is entirely the result of God's grace, not our own good deeds.
First, we should remember what we were (verse 3). Paul’s description can be summarized this way: We were driven by our humanity —physical appetites, desires for revenge, disliked and disliking. Paul’s point is that we can and should use our previous life-experience as teachable moments in dealing with those who have not yet accepted Christ as Savior and Lord.
*Good evangelism involves empathy for where people are—as opposed to judgmentalism—so that we may have opportunity to point them to Christ.
Paul is setting up a contrast between our condition prior to salvation with our condition after God saved us. Verses 4-7 constitute one long sentence in the original Greek. Paul intended this thought to hang together—not to introduce a variety of topics only marginally related to each other. “He saved us” is the key phrase in this long sentence. Everything prior to that phrase builds toward that phrase, and everything that follows explains how God saved us.
• God is truly kind—compassionate—so He acts to save us.
• God is philanthropic—concerned about the welfare of others—so He acts to save us.
• God’s desire is to restore us to a place of wholeness—cleansing us—so He acts to save us.
• God is singularly responsible for the salvation that we experience—He alone acts to save us.
Paul wants Christians to understand that moral behavior is the outgrowth of salvation rather than the cause of it. This emphasis on God’s mercy strikes at the very heart of human pride and thus denies people the opportunity of exalting themselves.
We get the full force of this in Romans 3:23-27. Paul says that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and can be justified only by God’s grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God set forth to be an atoning sacrifice, through faith in his blood. Since this is so, Paul asks and responds to his own question: “Where then is the boasting? It is excluded” Boasting is excluded, because we have not earned our justification, but have received it as a gift from God.
“God’s gift,” to which Paul refers is grace. Grace is the gift of salvation by God to all who accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ. God is the benefactor. Just as we could never fully repay a person who left us an inheritance of unimaginable wealth, neither can we repay God for the gift of salvation. But we can be faithful to the God who gives us salvation by living in accord with God’s will.
8-11 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.
After giving Titus many positive instructions, Paul tells him what he should avoid:
• Mindless, pointless quarreling. Bickering over certain issues is poisonous to the Christian life. For example, the Jewish Rabbis had spent much time building up imaginary genealogies over characters of ancient Hebrew history that were wholly unrelated to Scripture. These arguments are unprofitable and worthless.
• People who insist on stirring up division. In fact, Titus is to warn them twice, then have nothing to do with them. False teachers, agitators, and such are not to be given a platform or undue attention in the Church. Their own conduct condemns them. Titus is told in no uncertain terms not to have any association with someone who tries to cause divisions within the church. *Even today, false teachers and troublemakers cause problems within Churches. Church leaders must carefully and courageously correct false teaching. And, at times, they must make a point of having nothing to do with false teachers, or dividers.

Paul speaks as a kind father in the faith, giving Titus and the believers in Crete some gracious reminders of how God has laid hold of their lives. His real concern is how our witness will fare in an unfriendly world.
We live in a culture that exalts evil and rejects God. There is an increasingly militant mood against those of us who hold to God’s love and service ethic. How should we respond?
How do we gain a hearing for the Gospel in a culture that mocks God and His people? Paul’s answer is that we must live godly lives in this evil world. We must excel in good works that display God’s grace through us. The changed lives of believers will provide the platform for verbal witness that points others to God’s grace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But we also need to be regularly reminded of how God’s grace changed us. So. Paul says to Titus, “Being reminded of God’s grace that changed us will motivate us to show His grace to others through our good deeds.”