THE MESSAGE OF HOPE

Titus 3:3-5a
Bob Bonner
May 3, 2009

St. Augustine was a great theologian and philosopher who lived 1600 years ago. One of his famous works, a classic, is his book The City of God. This book tells of two cities, the City of Man and the City of God.

The City of Man is the product of human pride and rebellion against God; it reflects man’s dreams, earthly hopes, and values. This is a visible earthly city.  It is a city that is temporal, doomed to destruction. Unknown to its inhabitants, this city has fallen under the control of the “god of this world,” Satan, and all of his initiated philosophies and world systems, such as communism, capitalism, humanism, New Age isms, the worship of “Mother Earth,” and all other false religions. The City of Man is fundamentally opposed to God and ultimately ruinous to the human race. Having written such, Augustine did not mean that the city of man is destitute of all civil righteousness and justice. Yes, individuals who have ignored God or who have worshiped false gods have built great civilizations, thanks to the virtues they inherited as those created in the image of God. Indeed, as we saw last time in our first approach to Paul’s letter to Titus, chapter three, Christians should be actively involved in the city of man, building it, maintaining it, and working alongside those headed to destruction. For even though this world will be destroyed almost single-handedly by the human race itself, we are to work in and alongside our neighbors, doing good for them that we might win the right to be heard about how they can become citizens of the City of God.There is another city, however, “with firm foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10)  This city is the product of God and reflects His values and plan for salvation. It is invisible presently, and it endures forever. At the center of this city is the person, Jesus Christ, who died for the sin of the City of Man and who rules this world. 

The citizens of this City of God presently have new life and have their sights set on eternal values. They are a work in progress, as Jesus Christ performs His transforming work in them. Presently, these citizens of the City of God live in the City of Man, as ambassadors for Jesus Christ and the City of God. Their mission is to win the right to be heard so that they might offer those in the City of Man the opportunity to become citizens of the City of God.

Although the Apostle Paul lived 300 years before Augustine, he shows us in his letter to Titus that exhibit “A” of the City of Man was the island of Crete, a society built on the cult of self-absorption, hedonism, and a type of “freedom” that is based on nothing less than a spirit of lawlessness or “anything goes” or relativism.

Like the church today, the Christians on Crete faced the temptation of fighting a legitimate battle to preserve their culture and reach the doomed unbelievers on the island in a manner that was futile. Like today, they were tempted to reach their world and to fight the “god of this world” with the weapons of this world rather than seeking after God and how He would have them accomplish these things. 

Today we oftentimes put our greatest energies behind Christian political movements to get our candidates into office or our morals imposed upon our culture through governmental decrees, hoping that we can preserve and change people’s lives.  In doing so, we either forget or ignore what God’s Word has to say about such attempts. God clearly says that “the law [trying to legislate morality or spiritual acceptability to God through human effort] kills, but the Spirit gives life.”  You cannot reach your world or your friends for Christ through political decrees. You cannot change a person by changing their actions. True change begins in the heart and soul. Thus, the battle between these two cities, the battle for the souls of the City of Man, is a spiritual battle and can only be successfully fought when we follow God’s spiritual guidelines.

As American Christians, we have not yet learned this basic lesson. Instead, we picket adult porn stores, gay movie theaters, and abortion clinics, hoping that if we outlaw them, we will preserve our society; in reality we have preserved nothing because there has been no change in the souls involved.  We put our hopes in the political process of gathering signatures for legislation that we think will make a lasting difference in preserving a Christian nation, once again forgetting that our laws do not change the souls of people. We call the saints into formation for protest marches, all the while giving little credence to or putting our energies toward what God’s Word says will bring about true change in the souls of men and women. It’s not that these efforts are wrong or that we should not do them. But if we hope that they will make a lasting difference in the lives of people, we are sadly mistaken. 

During Old Testament times, when Zerubbabel faced the impossible task of rebuilding the temple after it had been destroyed by the Babylonians, God sent Zerubbabel a message through the prophet Zechariah. He said to Zerubbabel, “‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts.” (Zechariah 4:6)  Therein lies a basic spiritual principle for accomplishing anything spiritually worthwhile in our world. That verse tells us that spiritual success does not come as a result of our human efforts or of our worldly methods to bring about change in massive movements. But success comes when we obey God’s instructions and follow his methods, all the while trusting in His Spirit not only to empower us, but to bring about His results.

The Word of God reveals to us that God’s methods for reaching and changing people’s lives are based upon Christians building relationships with people and pointing them to Christ, one at a time, allowing Him to transform them from the inside out, rather than saddling them with outward legislation.

Erwin Lutzer has been the Pastor of the famous Moody Church in Chicago, Illinois, for almost thirty years. In addition, he is a teacher and writer and has a weekly radio Bible teaching program that can be heard worldwide.  In his book, Why the Cross Can Do What Politics Can’t, he states that it is his,

“Deep conviction that our so-called culture war is really a spiritual war. In

other words, our problems are not fundamentally abortion, trash television,

and homosexual values. The root of our cultural decay is first and foremost

spiritual; we must attack the root of this corrupt tree. As always our greatest

challenge is theological, not political or cultural. . . . Incredibly, the church

has, for the most part, abandoned the very message that is most desperately

needed at this critical hour of history.” 

And the message that Dr. Lutzer refers to is that of the Gospel. It is the only genuine “Message of Hope” that the human race possesses, and the Apostle Paul would agree with him.

In chapter 3 of Titus, the apostle Paul shows us how the church is to live in the midst of this city of man. As were nearly all the New Testament letters to the church, Titus was written to help God’s people live in a world and age that is adrift in a sea of godless and humanistic values. But significantly, Paul neither calls on us to use the world’s methods nor to seek to Christianize the morals of the society. Instead, he reminds us in Titus 3 that making a difference in our society begins with our being active citizens who work in concert with our governing authorities to bless those around us. And as do so, we build personal relationships with others through doing good, which in turn will give us opportunities to present the message of the Gospel to people, one person at a time.

Titus 3:3 introduces the second portion of a major section in Titus 3. In verses 1-2, Paul gives basic instructions concerning our submission to secular authorities, most of whom are unbelievers. In verses 3-8, Paul explains why we should submit to these authorities and behave responsibly in public life. These verses can be divided into three parts: verse 3 will remind us of our former way of life, that we ourselves were once anti-social and anti-God. But God, nonetheless, forgave us, saved us, and changed us, which is exactly what our friends and neighbors need as well. Then in verses 4-7, Paul describes how it is that we came to be forgiven, saved, accepted, and loved by God, and how it is that our lives began to be transformed from the inside out. In these verses he gives us a condensed but comprehensive account of how God saved us, as well as presenting those theological doctrines that make up the keys to the Gospel. Verses 4-7 make up one long sentence, the main verb of which is “saved”, mentioned in verse 5. These verses are perhaps the fullest statement of the subject of salvation that you will find in any one spot in the New Testament. 

Then, verse 8 concludes this section with a reminder of our earthly purpose for being saved. Both we and the Cretan believers are reminded here of God’s method to change the world. Basically, it is to engage in good deeds so that we will be able to give a reason for what we believe, or, to put it in other terms, to share the only true message of hope, the Gospel. A great way to approach the study of this passage, verses 3-8, is to do so by isolating Paul’s six ingredients to this message of hope, the Gospel, the good news of how to be saved. 

Verse 3, its need--why salvation is necessary 

Verse 4, its source--where it originates

Verse 5a, its ground--what it rests on 

Verse 5b-7a, its means--how it comes to us

Verse 7b, its goal--what it leads to 

Verse 8, its evidence--how it proves itself.

It will take us more time than just this morning to cover this passage.

Let’s begin by looking at verse 3, where we find the first ingredient of salvation, an explanation of our need for it.  Here we have an unsavory picture of what we ourselves used to be like before we were saved. Paul writes, “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.” 

Don’t miss the significance of that little preposition “for” at the beginning of this verse. The word “for” shows the logical connection between verses 2 and 3.  Remember, verses 1-2 dealt with our submitting to those secular authorities who were not believers and are often times hard to get along with.  However, if we want to reach them for Christ, we must remember that before we met Christ, we acted in the same way that they do. We were just as foolish, disobedient, and deceived. Like them, we used to live for no one but ourselves. Interestingly, those two verbs in verse 3, “deceived” and “enslaved,” are written in verb forms that indicate that we were victims of evil forces we could not control. But at least now we have Jesus changing our hearts. Yet, if we were truthful, we would acknowledge that at times we still wrestle with being deceived and enslaved.

Allow me to make one general observation concerning the characteristics the Apostle Paul mentions in this verse. Each one contrasts a lifestyle Paul earlier in this epistle had urged his readers and us to forsake with one we need to adopt. Both we and those who don’t know Christ had been foolish, not sensible; disobedient, not submissive; deceived, not enlightened; and enslaved, not free and self-disciplined. Moreover, we were malicious, not peaceable; envious, not considerate; and hateful of others, not loving.

This verse is a graphic depiction of the downward spiral of our pre-salvation condition. The literal Greek text says, “In evil and envy, spending our lives.” That word in the NASB for “malice” is actually the Greek word for “evil, wickedness, or depravity.” It’s the word that stands opposed to moral goodness and excellence. It is the word from which we derive the theological concept of the total depravity of man. In other words, despite the fact that we were created in the image of God and at times we reflect some of His positive attributes, we were basically depraved fools, enslaved by our own lusts and foolish ideas. No matter how hard any of us may have tried, we could not find freedom from these things to live a consistently selfless life. Instead, greed and selfish interests ruled our hearts.

That word “envy” describes that which flows out of the heart of every human separated from God. It is that continual dissatisfaction with what one has. It is that sense among people that the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, your neighbor’s side, and makes you want his or her car, spouse, boat, house, plasma TV, the latest cell phone, and so on. 

It is this very “envy” that leads to the next terms that describe the heart of the citizen of the City of Man, that of being “hateful” or probably more accurately, “hated” and “hating one another.” These two expressions, “hated” and “hating one another,” mark the mutual antagonisms between two people that hasten the dissolution of the bonds of friendship, marriage, family relationships, and ultimately society in general. Very few of us would admit that we are haters, because we like to flatter ourselves with the thought that we are loving people.  But hatred is essentially self-centeredness and disregard for others’ feelings and needs. If someone hurts me or offends me and I say, “I don’t ever want to talk to that person again,” that is hatred.

Notice too, how in this verse and the ones to come, that Paul repeatedly refers to “we”: No one of us is better than another. We all belong to the sinful humanity described elsewhere in scripture as the “once despised of God.” 

But that’s not all. Paul goes on to remind us that previous to our salvation, matters were much worse for each of us than many Christians truly understand. The facts, as we will see, reveal that we were not just helpless to remedy our situation, but on our own we were absolutely hopeless to do so. This leads us to our next ingredient concerning salvation found in verse 4. There we read,  ^“But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us.”

You might remember the expression, the “Savior appeared,” from our study of 2:11. This expression looks back to the historic first coming of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Note that Paul writes, “God our Savior” in verse 4, and then in verse 6 he writes, “Jesus Christ our Savior,” making Jesus equal with God.  Furthermore, as this verse suggests, Jesus did not have to come to die for our sins. He did not have to be humiliated before His creation, but did so out of His kindness and love and desire to save those who would put their very eternal lives in His hands. Hence, the very source of our salvation, the One from Whom our salvation originated, is God. In other words, your getting saved did not begin with you, but with God. 

In verse 5 Paul goes even further to say that not only did your salvation not begin with an action from you, but the very basis of your salvation, the very grounds for your ever being saved, does not rest on anything you did or could do. Let’s read verse 5 a little more closely. It says, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness [righteousness meaning that pharisaical type of moral conduct and religiosity], but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.”  The Apostle Paul’s use of the negative “not” at the beginning of the clause serves to heighten the contrast indicated by the adversative “but.” No one is saved on the basis of anything they do. In a very real sense, your salvation has nothing to do with your efforts. Rather, your salvation rests solely on the “mercy” of God.

Now, before we look at the “mercy of God” and what that means, let’s go back to the subject of this sentence, “He saved us.” The words, “He saved us” clearly point to our salvation as an accomplished fact. “He saved us” is in a Greek verb tense which points to a fact of history.  It points to the very finished work of God on our behalf through the death and resurrection of Christ. Because of Christ’s death on our behalf, He made it possible for us to be saved, if we should desire to be so. He made it possible for us to be reconciled to God, once and for all, never to be unreconciled again, so that we could have an eternal intimate relationship with God that begins right here on earth.

All of this begs the question: On what moral basis can a holy and perfect God forgive sinners through the death of someone else? Answer: On the basis of His mercy. Remember what Biblical mercy is. It is the ability to do for someone else what is impossible for them to do for themselves. To act mercifully toward someone describes that person as being absolutely helpless in a situation. We were helpless in our sin and imperfection and evil, which made it impossible for any of us to earn or maintain God’s forgiveness, acceptance, or approval. It is impossible for anyone to do anything to earn God’s favor or salvation. It is impossible for that which is unholy, imperfect, and depraved to mix with or relate to one who is absolutely holy, perfect, and good. For us who were evil to mix with God who is perfectly good, we would have had to remove once and for all every bit of evil in our lives in order to even hope to relate to or have a relationship with a perfect and holy God. This is impossible, and we all deep down know it. 

And that is where the mercy of God comes in. Keep in mind, God is not obligated to save anyone. God could be perfectly loving and just and forever condemn every human being to hell, because that is our just deserts. But, He chooses to be merciful toward us. And keep this in mind as well: only God in His mercy can rescue us. Only the God/man is capable of standing in our place to pay for our sin, because only He was perfect and had no sin, and thus could never die as a result of His own sin. Hence, only His perfect and Holy sacrifice can meet the debt or pay the ransom for the sin of others. That’s why the perfect, sinless God/Man, Jesus Christ, is the only way to salvation. There is no other name under heaven by which a person can be saved. Christians didn’t decide that. God did!

Once again, I remind us all that this verse clearly states that our salvation does not depend upon our religiosity or our righteousness or our good deeds. Those things play absolutely no part in satisfying a perfect and holy God’s justice against evil. God’s mercy is the only answer, the only solution to God’s demand for justice against sin.

The only grounds for our salvation rest on the mercy of God, Who chose to die in our place, to pay the penalty of our sin, to cleanse us of our evil nature, and to satisfy the wrath of a holy God against us. This same God, once His wrath is satisfied, can then wrap His loving arms of forgiveness, acceptance, and approval around us.  This merciful act of God whereby He satisfied His own demand for justice is what the Bible calls the propitiating work of Jesus Christ. Because of Jesus’ death, He satisfied the wrath of God against all those who put their trust in Christ. That work of Christ is the ultimate act of mercy.

Do we understand the full picture here? Everything about your and my salvation begins and ends with God. Ultimately, other than putting our confidence in Christ’s work on the cross on our behalf, we can do nothing to earn God’s forgiveness or acceptance. God’s gift of salvation at the expense of His son Christ is the greatest evidence of the kindness and love of God for you.

There is one other observation from verses 4-7 that underscores the fact that our salvation originated with God’s doing something for us that we could not do. If you look closely at verses 4-7, you will notice that something rather peculiar is missing, something is noticeably absent that you would expect to see in these verses. Do you see what I’m referring to? Paul does not mention the word “faith” once in these verses. Why? Because Paul’s emphasis is on what God graciously did for us when we were absolutely helpless, depraved sinners with no ability to do anything for ourselves. 

Our salvation was not due to anything good in us. Salvation is not a joint effort, where God does His part and we add our part. It is all from God and not at all from us. God did not love us because we were worth loving, but rather because He is love. He did not save us because He foresaw that we would believe in Him. That would make us, not God, the cause of our salvation, which these verses deny. Apart from His sovereign intervention, none of us would have believed, because we were dead in our sins. Dead people, corpses, are totally incapable of doing anything, absolutely anything except stinking up the place! God had to take the initiative. Salvation, from beginning to end, is totally of the Lord.

Without the merciful work of God, we would have no hope to live for today, let alone the future. He has given us the opportunity for life with Him today and forever, something we never deserved. Do you know that hope? Do you have the assurance of knowing where you will spend your eternity? Have you put your confidence in yourself, that somehow through your own efforts you can make yourself acceptable to God? If you have, you have no hope, because on your own you cannot measure up to God’s standard of perfect holiness. 

If you want His forgiveness, acceptance, and approval so that you might have an eternal relationship with Him beginning today, you must admit your helpless condition and ask Jesus Christ to become your Savior and Lord. In doing that, He promises to grant you salvation.

If you have already done that, are you still living for yourself, demanding your rights, wanting your agenda followed, and pressing for your expectations to be met? Are you carrying around anger, bitterness, and resentment toward others or God because you have not been able to have your way? If so, you have taken your eyes off God and His calling upon your life. As a result, you will not experience His peace and joy. If you are missing His peace and joy, regardless of your circumstances, and you wish to discover it in the midst of your circumstances, then hand over your expectations, demands, and agenda to God. Allow Him to be the master of your life. He who has allowed disappointment in your life is good and has profitable things that He will bring to you and others if you will only trust Him, rather than rebel or resent Him.

The choice is yours: Live as a citizen of the City of Man, or live as a citizen of the City of God.

Why do you think it is important for Christians to be reminded of what they used to be like? The apostle Paul writes of Christians that they had a past life. Is the change from your past life significantly different today than from a year ago? How so?

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