So That, in the In-Between

This may be hard for some of you to believe, but I really didn’t get into a lot of trouble when I was a boy. Perhaps I should take a minute here to let you all catch your breath.

Seriously, though, I saved most of my trouble-making for after I’d left home, and I made up for lost time in a hurry!

But there were times, even as a boy, when I was disobedient or simply chose to act out because I was a child and chose to act like a child.

And I was thinking about one of those times this week. I don’t really recall what I had done that was wrong. It must not have been something terrible, because I don’t remember getting a spanking or one of those withering looks that Miss Lynn still gives me today when I’ve stepped over the line.

What I do remember is sitting at the dinner table with Mom and Dad that evening. We were discussing whatever I’d done that day that had crossed the line between my own private insubordination and the public humiliation of my longsuffering parents.

And I remember my father saying something very significant to me: “When you are out in public, you represent our name. You are a Spears, and people will judge the Spears name by how you behave.”

Perhaps you had the same conversation at some point with your own children. Or maybe you were on the receiving end of such an admonition from your own parents.

Now, folks in biblical times didn’t have last names like we do. But they still were referred to in ways that help us work out their hometowns, or their occupations, or their family relationships.

Mary Magdalene was Mary the Magdalene, or Mary from the town of Magdala. Since there were so many Marys during the time of Jesus — and so many who are named in Scripture — it’s useful for us to be able to recognize this one by her hometown.

Matthew referred to himself as Matthew, the tax collector, to distinguish himself from the other Matthews in Judea and also to show the grace of Jesus in choosing even a lowly and hated tax collector as a disciple.

Jesus had two Simons who were His disciples, and they didn’t have last names. So, we are given one as Simon the Zealot. That name describes his political affiliation, so it would have been like calling him Simon the Libertarian.

We also have Simon bar Jonah, whom Jesus later called Peter. "Bar” is the Hebrew word for “son of.” So, Peter was Simon, son of Jonah.

Now, something happened with these people’s identities when they came to faith in Jesus, and it bears directly on the passage we’ll be looking at today in Titus, chapter 2.

And what happened was the same thing that happens to every person today who turns to Jesus in faith. What happens is that our new identity takes precedence over any other way we have been known in the past.

We who have followed Jesus in faith are now children of God, adopted into His family as sons and daughters, given the promise of eternal life, and sealed by the Holy Spirit toward an inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

And just as an adopted child in our society today might receive a new last name, we who have been adopted into the family of God receive a new name, too. We are now called Christians — CHRIST-ians, people of the Christ.

What was most important to those first followers of Jesus is the same thing that is most important for each of us who has repented from our sins and trusted in Him alone for salvation: We now belong to God in Christ.

I am still a Spears, but when I turned to Jesus in faith I took HIS name as a CHRIST-ian. And so, my behavior now reflects not so much on my Dad, but on Him whose name I now bear and whose sacrifice on the cross enabled MY name to be written in the Book of Life.

And this is what’s behind the Apostle Paul’s message in the second chapter of his letter to Titus about church order and organization.

We who bear the name of Jesus, the Christ, are to live in such a way that we do not bring dishonor upon His name.

We are to conduct ourselves inside and outside of the church building in such a way as to bring glory to God in Christ. We are to live godly lives in the present age as we await our blessed hope.

You might recall that last week said that what we DO shows what we are. The good works that Paul calls the church to do are evidence to the world that we belong to God in Christ.

This week, though, we’re going to look at the fact that HOW we are — how we live — also shows what we are. And HOW we are should be a direct result of the sound doctrine that is another major theme of this letter.

Let’s start, then, with this matter of sound doctrine before we move to the matter of godly living.

We’ll see in a moment that Paul spends the first 11 verses of chapter 2 describing the right conduct of various groups within the church. Remember? Older men, and older women, and young women, and younger men. Right?

We’ll go back through that part of this passage in a bit, but first I want you to see how Paul connects godly behavior to good doctrine.

He opens this part of his letter in verse 1 with a charge to Titus, the protégé he had left in Crete to put things into order within the church they had planted there.

Titus 2:1 ESV

1 But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.

The phrase “accords with” here might be translated as “are fitting with” or “become” or “are appropriate to” in your translations. The Greek word here has the sense of one thing being consistent with another — or perhaps one thing fitting into another.

So, the idea is that what follows in verses 2-10 are things Titus should teach because they FIT into sound doctrine. They are CONSISTENT with sound doctrine.

The things in 2-10 are NOT the sound doctrine themselves. The sound doctrine is the framework into which these things fit.

So what IS the sound doctrine? Well, skip down to verse 11.

Titus 2:11–13 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, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,

Now, what I want you to notice about these three verses is that they are bookended by two instances of the word “appear.”

First, the grace of God has appeared. Please understand that God’s grace has always been present in the world. It was by His grace that after Adam and Eve had rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden, they were allowed to continue in their physical lives and have children from whom we would descend.

It is by His grace that any of us has breath in our lungs. It is by His grace that we have sunshine and rain; that babies are born; that we experience the love of mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, children and friends.

It is by His grace that the Earth maintains its orbit around the sun. And it is by His grace that the world has not devolved into the utter, murderous chaos we would experience if sin went unchecked.

But these are all acts of God’s common grace, the grace that He bestows upon all of His creation, whether believers or not.

What Paul is talking about here is the appearance of God’s SAVING grace in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God.

He is the one about whom the Apostle John wrote:

John 1:14 NASB95

14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

So, the Word of God came to man in the flesh, and He personified God’s grace. And He came to bring salvation for all men.

Your translation may have a different word there, where I read FOR all men. This is one of those weird prepositions in Greek that can have a wide range of meanings.

Many translations use the word “to” there. The NASB is a good example. The verse there reads like this: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men.”

I think the better translation here is to use the preposition “for.” I think that preposition is a better interpretation of Paul’s theology.

Jesus came to bring salvation FOR all people. His substitutionary and representative sacrifice at the cross was sufficient to save all of mankind from the just penalty for its sins.

At the cross, Jesus represented all of mankind. Because He was fully man (and yet, also fully God), He could represent us and therefore stand for us to take the just punishment that each of us deserves for our sins, for our rebellion against God, our creator and king.

And because He was sinless — because He had lived His entire life in complete obedience to God — He could give His life as a substitute for our own.

Each of us deserves to experience God’s just wrath for our rebellion against Him in ways great and small.

And from the beginning, before the first sin had been committed, God had declared that His wrath would include the deaths of sinners — both physical death and the spiritual death of eternal separation from fellowship with Him.

The problem for us began when our first parents sinned in the Garden of Eden. But we perpetuate it every day in our own personal sins, whether great or small.

Every time we fail to represent the perfect and righteous and holy character of the God in whose image we were created, we demonstrate that we are sinners. And we sin, BECAUSE we are sinners. We were made in the image of God, but we were born with the character of that first sinner, Adam.

But Jesus is God’s unique and eternal Son, and He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, so He was born without the fallen character of Adam.

And in His life of perfect obedience, not only did He demonstrate for us how such a life should look, He also positioned Himself to be the spotless Lamb of God, whose sacrifice could cover the sins of all mankind.

And so, Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection are SUFFICIENT to save every man, woman, and child who has ever lived.

But nowhere in the Bible does God teach universalism — that all mankind WILL be saved. God offers us a choice. He offers YOU a choice.

You can choose to accept this gift of salvation by placing your faith in Jesus as your ONLY means of salvation, your only means of making things right with God. Or you can choose to reject His gift and therefore accept the consequences of your sin, eternal separation from God in the fires of Hell.

Jesus came offering salvation FOR all people, but salvation only comes TO those who truly put their faith in Him. Even the fact that God offers this choice to us is a display of His grace.

So, the grace of God has appeared in the person of Jesus. Now, look back at verse 13.

Here, Paul says that we who have followed Jesus in faith are “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

This refers to the second coming of Christ, when He will return to Earth in the clouds and take home with Him all the living and the dead who have placed their faith in Him.

He came the first time as a helpless baby, born to a virgin mother and her betrothed husband. He lived during that time here on earth as a servant, even to the point of giving His life on a cross.

But when He returns, He will come in all His glory, with a shout and the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God.

He will return as a conquering King to rescue His subjects from their time under subjection to the ruler of this world, Satan, and He will take us to heaven — resurrected bodies and eternal souls united at last — and we will begin to experience the Kingdom of God in its fullness.

Do you see why Paul calls this “our blessed hope”?

But there’s some stuff in between “the grace of God appeared” and “the appearing of the glory.” And that’s where the Cretans, to whom Titus was ministering, were living. That’s where we are living today.

And during this in-between time, the grace of God — this time in the Person of His Holy Spirit — “trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.” That’s individual believers Paul is talking about there.

And as verse 14 puts it, the Spirit “purifies for [Jesus] a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works.” THIS is the church.

The Spirit is purifying the Church. He is sanctifying it, making it to be more and more like Jesus by making the believers who comprise the church more and more like Jesus, by teaching us to turn away from things that don’t represent God’s perfect and holy character.

And so, with this sound doctrine in mind, Paul urges Titus, in verse 1, to teach what fits into or is consistent with that sound doctrine.

You see, the point is that if we truly understand what it means that God’s grace has appeared in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus — and if we truly understand what it means to live in the blessed hope of His appearing in glory — then our lives ought to be different than they were before we met Jesus.

During the in-between time, we ought to live differently in light of both what HAS appeared and what we WAIT in expectation TO appear.

And so, we get the list of instructions in verses 2-10 for the different groups in the church. Let’s read them now, starting in verse 2.

Titus 2:2–10 (ESV)

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.

Now, we talked about some of this last week, and I don’t want to belabor the points I made then. This week, I want you to notice the four times the Greek word hina appears. It means “in order that” or “so that.”

Godly living honors God’s grace. We saw that in verse 12. But here, Paul tells us that it serves at least four other important purposes.

We are called to godly living, SO THAT — look at verse 4: “and so [hina] train the young women to love their husbands and children.”

YOUR godly life in the church is an instructional tool that God can use to train people who aren’t as mature in the faith as you are.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Every Christian should have both a mentor and a mentee — someone they are being discipled BY and someone they are discipling.

This is part of the way we bear one another’s burdens — by teaching one another through example how to live godly lives even in the face of troubles.

We are also called to live godly lives as believers — look at verse 5 — “that [hina] the word of God may not be reviled.”

This connects back to that story I told at the beginning of the message about the talking-to I received at the dinner table, when my father told me I represented the Spears name whenever I was out in public.

We who bear the name of Christ, the Word of God who was in the beginning WITH God, should ever remember that we are His representatives in the lost world.

We should live godly lives, because doing so represents HIS character, and NOT doing so dishonors His character.

A while back, we had some church stickers printed, and some of you have them on your cars, and I think that’s marvelous. But do you remember that sticker is on your car when someone has cut you off in traffic?

Nothing is worse in traffic than seeing a Christian fish on the back of the car of someone lost in a fit of road rage.

So, we are called to live godly lives SO THAT we can train one another in godliness and SO THAT we don’t dishonor Jesus in our actions.

And now, look at verse 8. We are called as believers to live godly lives “so that [hina] an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.”

This doesn’t mean that nobody will say anything evil about you. That certainly wasn’t the case with Jesus, and it won’t be the case for someone LIVING for Jesus, either.

What it means is that if you’re living in a godly way, anything anybody says about you that is evil will have been made up, and they will be put to shame for it eventually — if not in this life, most certainly as they stand before God.

Live in such a way as to give no one an opportunity to speak truths about you that would dishonor Jesus. If they’re going to try to dishonor Jesus — and they will — let it be by saying things they’ve had to invent about you, because they can’t find ungodliness in you to declare to the world.

Sadly, we all fail in this regard from time to time. None of us is without sin, even as believers. But this should be our goal. This should be the thing we are working toward every day.

This should be what we PRAY each day — that God would have the Holy Spirit reveal to us the ways in which we are living in ungodliness and give us the strength to turn from those sins.

So, we are to live godly lives as believers, SO THAT we can teach one another godliness, SO THAT we might not bring dishonor to the name of Jesus, and SO THAT we would give no one an opportunity to say in truth that we have done things that don’t reflect the character of God.

And finally, we are to live godly lives as believers SO THAT — look at verse 10 — in everything we may adorn the doctrine of God.

Now, this portion of the passage was written about bondservants, slaves. In the Ancient Near East of the first century A.D., slavery was a fact of life. And Paul’s purpose here wasn’t to address the inherent evil of that institution. Read objectively, the Bible is full of condemnation for slavery.

What Paul addressed here was the attitude and behavior of slaves, and if they — who were the lowest level of society — were called to the things in verse 10, then these things also would have been expected of the rest of the church.

But I think it’s neat that he reserved this last “so that” for this group of people. What he says is that they should live godly lives “SO THAT {hina] in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.”

To adorn something means to make it more beautiful or attractive, to decorate it.

Now, we talked about what the sound doctrine was that Paul wanted the church to know and understand.

I will tell you that from MY perspective, the doctrine of salvation is a beautiful thing in its own right, perhaps the most beautiful thing in Scripture, except for Jesus Himself.

But what Paul says here is that when we live godly lives as believers, we make this doctrine even MORE beautiful.

It’s hard for me to imagine making God’s plan of salvation for mankind more beautiful. We are talking about God Himself stepping into history in the person of His beloved Son, who gave Himself as a sacrifice to save we who have rebelled against God from the just punishment of separation from Him.

Jesus loves us so much that He took the punishment we deserve for the very sins that sent Him to the cross. Think on that and wonder at how we can make such a thing more beautiful.

But that’s just what Paul says we do when we live godly lives.

And so, as we near the end of this long series on the church, we have now come to the core of why the Spirit’s work in the church is so important.

We are God’s representatives here on Earth. We make known the name of Jesus each time we refer to ourselves as Christians. Indeed, THIS church declares His name on its sign out front, on its letterhead, and in everything we do.

Let us resolve today to live in such a way that we bring only HONOR to that name.

Let us resolve to one another today to be people who strive to live ever more godly in this present age, in the in-between between the appearing of God’s grace and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Commit yourselves to godliness this week. Let the world see Jesus in you. Let the world see WHAT you are by HOW you are.