Christ's Authority over the Church #1

If we want to be a church, we must honor and submit to the authority of Jesus Christ, which he has revealed through his apostles in the New Testament. What does a real Christ-centered church look like? What are the principles that guide it? The answers are laid out for us perfectly in scripture, and that's our focus on this edition of The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. We're continuing our series, Titus, God's Glorious Plan of Grace, today launching into a message titled, Christ's Authority Over the Church. And Don, that authority is what forms the basis of your church and any true church.

The authority of Christ is what defines the church, and he gets to determine what his church looks like. That means that we speak with authority, we seek to live in unity in the body of Christ, we set our minds on his power, we fulfill our stewardship, and we suffer with patience, if that's what he brings us as we minister in his name. We're going to study all these things over the next few days on The Truth Pulpit.

I'm glad you're with us. Friend, have your Bible open to the first chapter of Titus, as we join Don Green now in The Truth Pulpit. We're going to see two fundamental principles of a biblical church, and this one, this first one, we are laying a cornerstone of profound importance for whatever happens in the next 50 years with this church. This is a cornerstone that everything is built on. I can't overemphasize the importance of what we're about to see. Point number one here is that we're going to see, from Paul's opening in this letter, Christ's authority over the church.

That's our first point if you're taking handwritten notes today. We're seeing Christ's authority over the church. Now, let's ask ourselves a question.

Let's be a modest skeptic here for just a moment. We look at this and we say, okay, you say that Paul is writing to Titus and telling him how the church should be structured 2,000 years ago. Fair enough. Who does Paul think that he is to be able to make such authoritative instructions and to lay out that kind of defining impact on the spiritual lives of an entire huge island in the Mediterranean Sea? Paul, who do you think you are to tell us what to do? Fair question.

I can't just take anybody's word for it. Well, Paul, notice the brilliance of this. Notice the brilliance of this. Paul lays it out from the very beginning. The first words out of his mouth after his name establishes his authority to speak to the church, not only in the first century, but with authority that carries on through today as well. Look at verse 1 with me. Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Those are no superficial words there. Paul, in that opening phrase, in those two positives that he's making, I'm Paul, that means I'm a bondservant of God. I'm Paul. I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. He is defining who he is and establishing the authority by which he writes and gives instruction for how the church of Jesus Christ is to be established. He calls himself a bondservant of God.

It's the Greek word doulos. He's a slave. He's a slave of God, he says. And this is a phrase, this idea of being a servant of God is a phrase that was applied to Old Testament leaders like Moses, and Joshua, and the prophets. We won't bother looking at the various passages like that, but Paul is equating himself as a man of God, as an authoritative leader in the kingdom of God, saying I'm a slave of God, using the exact same phrase that is used to describe the greatest leaders of the Old Testament, and those who were the authorized, recognized, authoritative revealers of the word of God to the people of Israel. He's taking that title upon himself. He's speaking with great authority when he says, I am a slave of God, I am a bondservant of God. Now, why would he call himself that? This is really the only place where he uses this particular phrase, a slave of God, a bondservant of God. A bondservant of Christ Jesus, yes, but here he calls himself a bondservant of God with an Old Testament ring to it. Why would he do that here in the book of Titus?

Well, quite interesting actually. As you read through the book of Titus, you find that there are Jewish influences, bad Jewish influences that are going on amongst these people. And so Paul is writing in part to counteract those Jewish influences that are there in the church, and by equating himself with the Old Testament leaders that any Jew would recognize as being an authorized one to speak on behalf of God, Paul says, I am equivalent with them. You must listen to me because I belong to God. God has called me. I serve him. I am an instrument of the fulfillment of the will of God.

I have no will of my own. I am a bondservant of God, he says, and he equates his authority with the Old Testament figures so that those Jewish elements in the church could not disregard him. Bondservant of God, a slave of God, he says, and then he goes on and he calls himself an apostle of Jesus Christ. And an apostle is one who is commissioned, one who is sent, one who speaks on behalf of another with a commission from that one that authorizes him to speak with the same authority as the one who sent him. And so for Paul to say, I'm a slave of God and I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ, he's saying, Jesus Christ has sent me to speak with authority on his behalf. He's saying that I am a chosen agent of the church of Christ.

I write with his authority. When you read the accounts of Paul's conversion in Acts 9, 22 and 26, you can see Christ speaking to him and you see quite clearly that Christ laid hold of Paul for his own purposes. Paul did not volunteer to come to Christ on his own. You remember as he was on the road to Damascus, he was actually threatening and persecuting the church of Christ when Jesus Christ appeared to him and stopped him in his tracks. It was a sovereign exercise of authority by Christ to stop Paul where he was at and Paul's response was, Lord, what shall I do? He realized the surpassing authority of Christ as Christ made himself known to him and Christ said, I am going to send you to the Gentiles. I'm going to send you to preach.

I'm going to use you as an instrument to establish my church. Now, on the other side of Paul's life, we look back and we hold in our Bibles and we look at it and we see that's exactly what happened. Thirteen letters from the apostle Paul to different places which lay out the revealed word of God to the church of Jesus Christ. Paul speaks with authority because that authority was conferred upon him by God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So that has really significant implications for us. Paul was not a man riding with independent authority. This wasn't Paul's idea about what the church should be.

Understand this, beloved, this is so crucial. Paul is carrying out orders from the master. Paul is delivering the word of God to the people of God. Paul is setting forth from Christ himself what I want my church to be. Jesus said in Matthew 16 verse 18, I will build my church. Well, one of the ways that he does it is through apostolic teaching. And here's the point.

Here's the point. This is an intangible point, but it is so profoundly important for us right now. As we look at this and we say Paul's riding with authority as a slave of God, an instrument of the revelation of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Beloved, we all have to gather around this first fundamental principle if we're going to be a church together. This is what we all have to be agreed on, united upon, and to realize that this is the cornerstone of everything else that comes in the future for us. If we want to be a church, we must honor and submit to the authority of Jesus Christ, which he has revealed through his apostles in the New Testament. You see, it's the authority of Christ that matters in the church. It's not about what you and I think.

It's really not even about what you and I want. What our desire is, what our goal is, what we're aiming at with the best of our sin-limited capabilities is to say, Christ, what have you said through your servants, the apostles? How is it that you want the church to look like? What do you want the church to look like?

What do you want it to be? What are we supposed to do? We look to you, Lord Jesus, rather than bringing our own sets of desires as if what we wanted were the preeminent thing that matters. Look at Titus 2, verse 14.

I want you to see this. Who is it that has prerogative in the church? Whose authority is it that matters?

Whose voice do we listen to? Let's start in verse 11. Chapter 2, verse 11.

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus. Watch this in verse 14. Watch this in verse 14. Here's why Christ has authority in the church. This is why we submit to Christ and don't simply assort our own prerogatives without seeing what Scripture has to say about every issue that affects the church.

Verse 14. Speaking of Christ Jesus, he gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession. You see, the church is a people that belongs to Christ. Why do the people of the church belong to Christ? Because he bought them.

He bought them with his own blood. And so by right of purchase, Christ has the prerogative and the authority to direct what happens among his people. You see, our first question, our first question when we come together as we form together as a church is not what do I want. The first question is what does Christ want?

Because it belongs to him. Christ bought a people throughout ages, throughout cultures to be his own. And those of us that have a part in that, we who are a subset of that, as we come together to form a church, we recognize with great humility and with great gratitude the fact that Christ is sovereign over the church, that Christ purchased us with his own blood. And therefore, our question, watch this, watch this, our question is the exact same question that the apostle Paul asked when Christ stopped him on the road to Damascus. Look at Acts chapter 22. Acts chapter 22, Acts chapter 22, we're talking about the authority of Christ and how we respond to it. We recognize his authority and the question is, is not, oh, what do I want this to be? We ask a different question and when you frame the right question, you get the right answer.

If you ask wrong questions, what do I want here, then you're going to get a wrong answer that's driven by your own selfish motivations. We can't do that as a body of believers together. I'm speaking to all of us corporately. Look at what happened to Paul in Acts chapter 22, verse 6. Paul is speaking here describing to others his testimony and he says, it happened that as I was on my way approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And I answered, who are you, Lord? And he said to me, I am Jesus the Nazarene whom you are persecuting. I saw this great manifestation of glory and authority and I said, who are you? This was something new.

I didn't recognize this from prior experience. Verse 9, and those who were with me saw the light to be sure but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me. There were other people around but I was the only one who understood what the Lord was saying. And notice in response to this display of authority and glory what Saul said, verse 10, I said, what shall I do, Lord? You see, that is always the response of believing people to the person of Jesus Christ. What shall I do?

What do you want from me? Jesus said in Luke chapter 6, verse 46, why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I say? You see, there's this principle of authority. Who has the right to speak and direct in the church of God? And the scriptures say that that authority belongs to Christ alone. And so we have to honor his authority.

Now, the Bible addresses this elsewhere, lest you think that I'm making too much of a couple of words in Paul's introduction to Titus. Go to the Great Commission in Matthew 28. I want you to see this because this shapes everything. This shapes everything. Matthew 28, in verse 18, Jesus came up and spoke to them, spoke to the 11 disciples from verse 16, saying, here it is, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

All authority. You see, we've been conditioned by so much contemporary Christian music to think about Jesus as our boyfriend or our girlfriend, oh, Jesus, I love you and you love me, blah, blah, blah. That the role of the authority of Christ is getting lost, as if he were simply an emotional companion in a codependent relationship, to carry on and to give us a little bump day by day through life. Oh, no.

No, no, no, no, no. Christ is the one with all authority. He was standing before the disciples in Matthew 28 as the resurrected Lord, the one who had conquered death, and saying, all authority belongs to me in heaven and on earth. Here's what I say you should do. Well, the only proper mental way for us to frame our response is to fall on our knees and say, yes, Lord, what would you have me do?

What should I do? Speak because your servant listens. How do we respond to the authority and preeminence of Christ? That brings us to our second point. This is going to be five little sub points, and I'll tell you in advance that I was out shopping and there was a sale.

There was a sale on the letter S, and so I bought a few S's, and I'm going to just line all these things up under all the S's that I bought here. Here's our second point, the spiritual impact of Christ's authority in the church. Now that we've said this, now that we've said that the authority of Christ is what matters, how do we start to unpack the implications of this? This is very far-reaching because the authority of Christ, when it is honored in a church, it permeates the life of that church from beginning to end, not only on a Sunday morning in a pulpit but throughout the life of those who become a part of that body. I'm going to give you five ways that display the spiritual impact of the authority of Christ in the church. Going back to the book of Titus with me, what's the first impact of the authority of Christ in the church, recognizing that he is the risen Lord of over all and especially over the people that he redeemed?

First of all, what's the spiritual impact of that? Point number one is that we speak with authority. We speak with authority, and this is directly called for by the plain words of Scripture. Look at chapter 2, verse 15 of Titus. Titus chapter 2, verse 15. After Paul had gone on about the grace of God appearing, instructing us to deny ungodliness, look for the blessed hope, Christ gave himself to purify a people for his own possession.

After all of that great, profound theology that I can't wait to get to and unpack together with you. Look at what he says in chapter 2, verse 15. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority, let no one disregard you. It is proper, it is obedient to Christ that in the teaching of the church there would be a sound of authority that comes. Not because of who the pastor is, not because the pastor wants it his way, not because the pastor is personally a dictator trying to involve himself in the private details of everyone's life.

That's not it at all. I'll never be that kind of pastor because I don't want that. Rather, what Paul is describing here to Titus is as a servant of God, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, what I'm telling you is that these things of which I am writing to you that come by revelation of the Holy Spirit through me, these things are to be taught with authority and therefore that tone of authority that is derivative of the authority of Christ, that tone of authority marks the teaching of the church. We're not engaging in speculation here. We are speaking certainties that God has revealed in his word.

And I like to remind people of this. I like to say this. When God has declared something to be true, when God has made himself known in creation and in the scriptures, and he has made that known in an authoritative way, you know what that means for you and me as a church? What that means is we don't have the prerogative to diminish that and speak in terms of speculation or probabilities. Well, maybe this is true, but maybe it's not. We don't have the prerogative to say you consider all of the evidence and there's probably a God in the universe.

You know, when you're saying that, what you're saying is it's possible that there's not. We're not weighing probabilities as we speak the authoritative word of God. We are speaking what he has revealed with authority through his apostles.

And so there should be a note of authority in the teaching that takes place in the church. Look, I understand that is contrary to the postmodern spirit of our age. You have your truth, I have mine.

I'll tolerate yours, you tolerate mine. I get all of that. What we have to realize, what we're talking about here, when we see Paul speaking like this, speak and exhort and reprove with all authority, we're talking about the authority of Christ clashing with the spirit of our age. What we have to do, what you and I have to do is say, okay, that's not going to be very popular.

But you know what? I'm okay with that because what matters to me is the authority of Christ. The spirit of the age has no authority over the church of Christ.

We speak and confront the spirit of the age, we don't conform ourselves to it. Because Christ has spoken with authority. Look at chapter 3 verse 8. You can see that Paul was concerned about this because Titus, as we're going to see, Titus was speaking into a culture different from ours but with the same rebellious, flawless attitude that rejected authority, particularly revealed authority from God. Titus, Paul says to him, he says, Titus, you've got to speak these things with all authority and he repeats himself in chapter 3 verse 8. When he says, this is a trustworthy statement and concerning these things, I want you to speak confidently so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds.

These things are good and profitable for men. Titus, speak with confidence. Speak with authority. This is the appropriate way for the people of Christ to represent him on earth is to, with humility but without diminishment of the note of authority that comes through the word of God. Christ did not save us. Christ did not redeem the church so the pastors would get up in a pulpit and just serve oatmeal day after day after day.

Squishy little stuff. It doesn't matter that you forget a week later. That's not what the church is about. If your church recognizes the authority of Christ over it, then you can speak with the authority granted to you by the Lord as stated in scripture. Pastor Don Green will present four more ways that display the spiritual impact of Christ's authority over the church and that will be on our next broadcast. So be sure to be with us here on the Truth Pulpit. Right now Don's here with a special invitation. Well friend, if you are anywhere near the Cincinnati area and you don't have a good church home, I invite you to visit us at Truth Community Church. I'm in the pulpit almost every Sunday and we have a loving congregation that would simply be thrilled to meet you and welcome you to our body.

We are striving to manifest the principles that you heard taught today. Why not come and see us? Bill will help you find us on our website. Just visit thetruthpulpit.com for directions and service times. There you'll also find out how to get free CDs of Don's messages. Once more that's thetruthpulpit.com and thanks for your support of this ministry. I'm Bill Wright, inviting you back next time when Don Green presents more from the Truth Pulpit.