Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

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.

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:

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.