Godliness and Self-Control

When I was in high school, I had a classmate that I’ll call George, since it’s possible you long-time Suffolkians might know him.

Now, George was a bit of a piece of work. He and I had a few run-ins early in my time at NSA, until one day, when I made it quite clear to him that I wouldn’t be pushed around. After that, we had a decent relationship — friendly if not exactly friends.

But George didn’t confine his trouble-making to me. Let’s just say that he and the assistant headmaster at NSA were well acquainted with one another.

It’s possible some of y’all might have known Ray Carson, who was the assistant headmaster at NSA when I was there. Sometime after I had graduated from that school, he and his wife went on to start Ray’s Dog House, which I always thought had the best hot dogs in Tidewater.

But when I was at NSA, Ray Carson was in charge of discipline, and in those days, discipline could extend to corporal punishment.

I remember delivering something to his office one day and seeing a big wooden paddle hanging on his wall and thinking that all the rumors I had heard about him must be true.

I don’t know if they were true or not. Thankfully, I never had to find out. But I suspect my classmate, George, knew quite well just what kind of discipline Mr. Carson could dispense. Not that it really seemed to cause him to change his ways.

Now, we had a shared class, World Studies, in the ninth grade, and Mrs. Williams was our teacher. This was a pretty intensive class in a pretty intensive school, and so it was pretty important that we all paid close attention and didn’t get ourselves up to trouble there.

That was a tall order for George.

He would do something silly, and then one of the girls near him would start giggling, and then everybody would be turned around, looking at them.

And then George would say something like, “Hey, what’s everybody looking at?” And then the whole class would be laughing.

Everybody but Mrs. Williams.

To this day, I can remember what she would say to him and the tone she used, just as surely as if she were standing here and saying it right now.

“George, get yaself under control.”

Now, as I’ve thought about that through the years, I’ve been struck by something that I didn’t get back then. Mrs. Williams loved George — at least in the sense that she wanted what was best for him and wanted to compassionately help him achieve it.

When I heard those words as a 13-year-old, I heard the command. But as a 57-year-old, I now hear the compassion.

And as we begin this week to look at the Apostle Paul’s instruction manual for the church in the Book of Titus, I want you to notice the same things.

You might recall from last week’s message that the Cretans, to whom Paul’s protégé, Titus, was ministering, had something of a reputation for being the “Florida Man” of the Mediterranean.

Just as “Florida Man” has become a kind of shorthand for people caught in headline-grabbing debauchery today, Crete had a reputation for it in Paul’s time. The Cretans were my classmate George, except all grown up and with no restraints.

It was into this environment that God had sent Paul and Titus to plant a church. And I think that’s just wonderful.

What better way to show the world then and now the life-changing and people-changing power of the Holy Spirit than to have the Spirit at work sanctifying people who had been known far and wide for their debauchery?

That’s one of the things I love about overcomers ministries, where people whose lives have been shattered because of various addictions come to Christ and find healing.

When their friends and families see the change brought about by the Holy Spirit, they cannot help but wonder about the Savior who rescues us not just from addiction but also from our slavery to sin.

So, Paul had left Titus in this place, as he says in verse 5 of chapter 1, “to put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town.”

Now we’ll talk about elders and church organization in the coming weeks.

But today, I want us to look at what Paul has to say about church order — what’s expected of a church that is operating in an orderly fashion, in a way that makes it possible for people to hear the good news of the gospel, in a way that enables people to come to a knowledge of the truth.

We’re going to skip through this letter to Titus a bit today as we follow the thread that deals with church order, but let’s start in verse 1 of chapter 1. And I’ll be preaching from the English Standard Version throughout this study, since that’s the version I memorized and recited for you last week.

Titus 1:1 (ESV)

1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness,

As God’s servant, Paul had brought the Cretans the message of a Savior who had died for their sins, and many of them had turned to Jesus in faith because of this message.

And as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, his job was to bring these new Christians the message of truth. In other words, he had already shared with them the gospel, and now he was sharing with them the further truth of God’s word.

And one of the results that should come when Christians hear and understand God’s word is that they become more godly — more like Jesus and, hence, more like God.

We’ve talked about this many times before, but it bears repeating. The purpose of salvation is to make believers more and more like Jesus. This glorifies God, and glorifying God is the chief purpose for which we were all created.

That’s what makes sin so bad. When we sin, we put ourselves above God. We declare that we want to decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. And in doing so, we conceal God’s glory, instead of revealing it in ourselves.

So, godliness is the aim of the knowledge of the truth. And we see in verse 5 that godliness is characterized by order.

This shouldn’t surprise us, since in His very act of creation, God brought order out of chaos.

We see this in Genesis, chapter 1.

Genesis 1:1–3 (NASB95)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

The Hebrew word that’s translated as “formless” here can mean confusion or “a place of chaos.” And the word that’s translated as “void” suggests a wasteland.

And the idea here is that when God began His six days of creating everything we can see or know, all that existed was chaos, wasteland, and darkness.

And then, He spoke, and there was light. And through the rest of that week of creation, God brought order to the chaos.

Crete must have been a chaotic place during Paul’s time. Already, there was a well-known saying by a Greek philosopher about that island, and Paul quotes it in this letter: “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.”

And so, it would have been necessary for the church he had planted in this chaotic place to be an ordered institution.

As such, it would reflect the character of God. It would stand out from the lost and chaotic society in which it existed. And it would be a place where the truth of God could actually be HEARD.

These are STILL the reasons for there to be order in the church. And they are among the reasons that how the church is organized is important.

What sort of church polity promotes order and what sort promotes chaos? Those questions are important to consider if we want to be a church that reflects the character of God, one that stands out from the lost world in which we minister, and one that proclaims the truth of the gospel for all to hear.

Now, beginning in verse 6 of chapter 1, Paul describes the qualifications and ministry of elders. We’ll talk about elders in a couple of weeks, and when we do, we’ll look at these qualifications in more detail.

But today, I want to focus on the one that I think would have made Mrs. Williams glad to hear. Look at verse 7.

Titus 1:7–8 (ESV)

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, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

Do you see it? An overseer (that’s another word for elder) must be self-controlled. I can almost hear Paul’s voice here, and he sounds a lot like Mrs. Williams in my mind: “Get yaself under control, Cretans.”

Now, your translation may very well have a different word here. The NASB reads “sensible.” The New Living Translation says, “He must live wisely and be just.” The King James Version uses the word “sober.”

All of these alternate translations are correct to a point. The Greek word translates literally to “one of sound mind,” and each of the translations would suggest someone who is of sound mind.

But there is a passage that helps us get to the meat of this word’s meaning in one of the works of Josephus, who was a Jewish historian writing in Greek around the time of Jesus.

In Josephus’ history of the Jews, he wrote about the life of Joseph, Jacob’s son, who was sold into slavery and wound up in Egypt. There, he eventually became a trusted servant in the home of Potiphar, who was a captain of the Pharaoh’s guard.

Now, you might recall the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. She wanted to sleep with him, but he refused over and over again.

Genesis 39:8–9 (NASB95)

8 But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, and he has put all that he owns in my charge.

9 “There is no one greater in this house than I, and he has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great evil and sin against God?”

Finally, one day, Joseph found himself alone in the house with her, and she grabbed his cloak and demanded that he sleep with her. He ran out of the house, leaving her with the cloak. And then she screamed out to the guards that he had tried to rape her, and Joseph was arrested and thrown into prison.

The connection here is that when he wrote of this event, Josephus used the same word from the Book of Titus that we’ve translated in all these different ways, and he used it to describe Joseph’s self-control in the midst of hard temptation.

We might think of it as “careful consideration for responsible action” or as Aristotle put it, the person who is self-controlled is “intent on the what , the how, and the when of doing what should be done.”

And that’s exactly what we might expect for an elder in the church, who is charged with having spiritual authority and leadership in the church.

But turn now to chapter 2, verse 2.

Here, Paul describes the way that people who are not elders in the church should behave. The first group he addresses is older men.

Titus 2:2 (ESV)

2 Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.

There it is again. Self-controlled. Actually, this is a different word in the Greek, but it is a synonym for the other. And both can mean self-controlled.

What we see here is that self-control leads to sober-mindedness and dignified behavior. And those things all help older men to be sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.

Here, again, it seems only appropriate that Paul would call on this group to be self-controlled. The sad fact is that much of what is wrong in the world today is wrong because of older men who are not self-controlled.

A young man’s lack of self-control might wreck his own life and the lives of a few others, but he doesn’t have the influence or resources to do widespread damage.

But an older man — one whose influence, resources, and opportunities have expanded across a lifetime — can cause widespread and catastrophic damage.

Pick your favorite political body, and I’ll bet I can show you an older man who has used his position of power to line his own pockets at the expense of others, and I won’t even have to drag out my history books.

One thing the world needs is more older men who are sober-minded, dignified, and self-controlled. We’d have a lot less problems if there were more of these men.

Significantly, this is exactly what the knowledge of the truth — in other words, time and study of the Bible by believers — is supposed to create. Godly men who are self-controlled by virtue of their like-God-ness.

So elders must be self-controlled. And older men must be self-controlled. That about settles it, right? Well, look at verse 3.

Titus 2:3–5 (ESV)

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.

Now there’s a lot to unpack here, and we’re not going to spend a lot of time this morning looking at each of these individual commands. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory, anyway.

Be reverent in behavior. In other words be respectful and gracious, especially in regards to one another in the church. That’s why Paul follows this command by saying older women shouldn’t be slanderers. Almost nothing hurts a church more than gossiping — and, no, women are NOT the only ones who do it.

Don’t be slaves to much wine. In other words, don’t let alcohol control you. Be sober, remember?

Teach what is good, and here is where the sentence construction gets complicated. Let me help you out.

By teaching what is good, older women train the younger women to love their husbands and children. They also train the younger women to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands.

Now, I really don’t want us getting hung up on the things that conflict with our modern sensibilities here, but I’ll have to address the two things that stand out before moving on.

First, working at home. Understand that during this period of history, a woman working outside of the home was nearly unheard of. The ones we do know of — like Lydia, the seller of purple fabric in the New Testament — were exceptions to the rule.

Paul’s point here is that the women who were at home should be WORKING in the home and not sitting around drinking wine and slandering others all day long.

And we’ve talked about the submissive part of this before. Paul is clear that wives are to be subject to their husbands, in other words, submissive.

His point isn’t that they’re supposed to be doormats or subject to ungodly demands by their husbands, but rather that the husband is to be the spiritual leader of the household.

And he says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the church — sacrificially, putting their wives’ interests and needs above their own, as Jesus did when He gave Himself as a sacrifice for the Church.

In 1st-century Crete, this actually would have been an elevated position for a woman, since wives basically were considered as property in that society.

The idea was that women should not conduct themselves in a manner that would bring contempt upon the word of God.

And older women should teach the young women these things. Do you see the first thing in that list in verse 5? They were to teach them to be self-controlled. Which meant that the older women had to be self-controlled in order to teach self-control.

When we consider the damage that a woman who lacks self-control can do to her marriage, to her children, and to the church, this command should not surprise us, either.

So, self-control for elders, for older men, and for older and younger women. Who’s left? Look at verse 6.

Titus 2:6 (ESV)

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

Well, it looks as if nobody is spared from the command to be self-controlled. The word that’s translated as “urge” here can mean to admonish or exhort, to instruct, to encourage, or even to beg.

So, the idea is that the church should do pretty much whatever it takes to get the younger men in its midst to take control of themselves.

And that shouldn’t surprise us, either. We all know young men who have wrecked their futures because they couldn’t or wouldn’t control their urges. And often when they’ve wrecked their own futures, they’ve wrecked someone else’s future along the way.

Every person in this church — every person in the universal church is called to this same thing, self-control. And yet, our SELVES are sometimes the hardest things to control.

Thankfully, we have been given help in this process. Look at verse 11.

Titus 2:11–12 (ESV)

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,

By the grace of God, we who have followed Christ are being trained to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. This is the work of the Holy Spirit within each follower of Jesus. This is His work of sanctification within us — His work of making each of us more and more like Jesus.

This is the part of your salvation that depends, at least in part, on you. You can choose to cooperate with the Spirit in this work, and become more like Jesus; or you can choose to ignore the Spirit’s guiding and corrections, and be just like the lost world — UN-self-controlled.

But if you choose the latter, Paul has something to say about that, too. Look at the contrast he makes when he writes about those who stir up division within the church in verses 10 and 11 of chapter 3.

Titus 3:10–11 (ESV)

10 As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him,

11 knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.

Now, Paul was writing specifically here about false teachers within the church, those who were stirring up division by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

But he also talked about the defiled and unbelieving back in chapter 1. He said, “they profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works.” In other words, they, too, are self-condemned. What they do shows what they are.

If we belong in Christ to the God who created order out of chaos, then we should be people of order, people who respond when our God compassionately calls to us through His word and says, “OK, Christian, Get yaself under control.”

Our churches cannot be under-control, orderly places unless we who ARE the Church are ordered and self-controlled.

And we can’t show the world the orderly character of the God who spoke order out of chaos if we do not control ourselves by bringing ourselves under HIS control in the Holy Spirit.

What we DO shows what we are.

And so, Paul spends much of this letter not just describing how we are to behave as followers of Christ, but what we should DO.

And the contrast between what he calls us to do and what the defiled and unbelieving do is a bright, clear line. Look at the second-to-last verse in this letter.

Titus 3:14 (ESV)

14 And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.

Devote yourselves to good works. Do not be unfruitful.

An orderly church full of people under the control of the Holy Spirit will bear the fruit of good works. And the world around them will be changed because of that devotion.

This is how we show the world Jesus. And He is the one this chaotic, hate-filled world so desperately needs to see.

Let we who have devoted ourselves to Him learn to devote ourselves to the good works He has prepared for us to do.

Let THIS be what the world sees when it looks at Liberty Spring Christian Church. Let THIS be what the world sees when it looks at you.