Most of us have experienced getting caught in the rain, and you know there's a big difference between getting a little damp from a light shower and getting drenched in a downpour. The Apostle Paul instructed Titus to ensure that those who were under his care were drenched by the Gospel, saturated. Alistair Begg explores Paul's reasoning today on Truth for Life. Titus chapter 3, no surprise. I invite you to turn there, please. And what I'm going to do is read Titus 3 in Peterson's paraphrase, which you should never use to study the Bible, but it is interesting and quite helpful as a fairly free attempt at paraphrasing the more accurate text.
So, you needn't follow along here. It'll be hard to follow along in your own text, but let me just read it as it is paraphrased for us by Peterson. Remind the people to respect the government and be law-abiding, always ready to lend a helping hand. No insults, no fights. God's people should be big-hearted and courteous. It wasn't so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing.
We had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God's gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there's more life to come, an eternity of life.
You can count on this. I want you to put your foot down. Take a firm stand on these matters so that those who have put their trust in God will concentrate on the essentials that are good for everyone. Stay away from mindless, pointless quarreling over genealogies and fine print in the law code. That gets you nowhere. Warn a quarrelsome person once or twice, but then be done with him. It's obvious that such a person is out of line, rebellious against God.
By persisting in divisiveness, he cuts himself off. As soon as I send either Artemis or Tychicus to you, come immediately and meet me in Nicopolis. I've decided to spend the winter there, give Zenas the lawyer and Apollos a hearty send-off.
Take good care of them. Our people have to learn to be diligent in their work so that all necessities are met, especially among the needy, and they don't end up with nothing to show for their lives. All here want to be remembered to you. Say hello to our friends in the faith. Grace to all of you. Amen. Father, we pray now that as this evening hour has come and as the shadows fall on the day, and as we enjoy the stillness of these moments, we pray that as our hearts have been turned to Christ in all of his fullness, in the reality of his resurrection, in the wonder of his atoning death, as we've listened to these songs, so we pray for your help as we turn again to the Bible, that once again the Spirit of God may teach us and equip us with everything good for the doing of your will. And we pray humbly and expectantly in Jesus' name.
Amen. And I have little doubt that the apostle Paul himself would be quite happy with the name Truth for Life. I hope you don't think that's presumptuous of me to say so, but I think it's fairly accurate. I think he might even say, that actually would be a terrific heading for my letter to Titus, or even particularly for the third chapter itself. Because, as we have already seen in our two prior studies, the truth of the gospel believed is to find expression in the behavior of those who have come to trust in God. And that is what he is saying in verse 8. Those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. And having come to believe in Jesus, now they're going to behave as Jesus desires. Paul is pretty straightforward, I think you would agree. He doesn't have any qualms at all about telling Titus what to teach, nor does he really have any concern about telling him how to teach.
And he's done this at the end of chapter 2. These, then, are the things you should teach, encourage and rebuke with all authority, and don't let anyone despise you. And this, of course, is very helpful to a young pastor, wondering what he should teach. And I could identify with a young curate in the Anglican church who, on the first occasion that he had been invited to speak when his vicar was on holiday, the young man was so anxious that he sent a postcard to his bishop, the bishop who had ordained him, and he said to him, Dear Bishop, next Sunday is my first chance, and what should I preach about?
And the bishop sent him a postcard in reply, and it said, Preach about God and preach about twenty minutes. And that kind of clarity, I think, is very helpful. I wish many of us would pay as much attention to the second part of it as we claim to do the first part of it. But here, Titus has given his marching orders.
These, then, are the things you should teach. It reflects on what has already been stated in the previous two chapters. And he comes back, you will notice, and he does the same thing again here in verse 8. This is a trustworthy saying, and I want you to stress these things.
I want you to speak about these things with absolute certainty. And I think there is no question but that the opening phrase of verse 8—this is a trustworthy saying—is referencing what he has just said in verses 4–7. Some of the commentators actually ponder the possibility that these verses, 4–7, were actually a pre-existent text of some sort—perhaps even a musical rendition, because there were hymns in the early church, and it may have been that verses 4–7 were memorable in this particular way.
Whatever we may think about that, you are sensible people, and you can figure this out for yourselves. But I think when he says, This is solid truth, it is referential back the way and not forward. Not that what he's going on to say isn't also solid truth, but it seems to be fitting in light of what he has just done. And actually, I think it ties in with verse 15 of chapter 2, where, in what is essentially a parallel passage between verse 11 and verse 14, which focuses on the gospel itself again, he then says, And these are the things that you should teach. In chapter 3, he comes back, and he outlines the nature of the gospel, and he says, This is the solid truth that I want you to make sure you emphasize. So, it's fairly straightforward.
It's not hard to understand. Titus is to ensure that those who are under his care should be essentially saturated with the gospel—that they should be those who have a solid, working, living understanding of the nature of the gospel. And I think that many of us coming to an event like this would probably immediately nod our heads, and we would be affirming certain things, at least in our own minds.
Whether we are actually making the right kind of affirmations or not perhaps is worthy of consideration. Certainly, we as a group of leaders at Parkside, our elders, have taken a significant step forward in relationship to the gospel as a result of making one of our monthly books, a book by Jerry Bridges, The Gospel for Real Life. And in our elders' meetings, part of what we do is read a book together. But the time that we read through The Gospel for Real Life was a very, very important time for us. Because in reading what was a very profitable book together, we were tremendously helped by having reinforced for us the nature of the gospel itself. And we spent some months considering what Bridges refers to in his introduction to the book as the absolute necessity of preaching the gospel to ourselves every day. Preaching the gospel to ourselves every day.
I'm not sure that many of us, or even any of us, had actually thought about that before we came across that phrase in that book. And so, as we worked our way through, we were tremendously helped by being reminded of the fact that the gospel is not simply a door through which we walk in order to become a Christian, but the gospel is the sole basis of our day-by-day acceptance by God. As I alluded to it this morning when I said that the gospel is not simply the ABC of the Christian life that gets us started, but the gospel is the A to Z of the Christian life.
And this came across very clearly for us. And it helped us to understand it in our own lives and in relationship to our leadership of the church, and it also has helped us to make sure that all of the aspects of life at Parkside are increasingly grounded in and oriented by the gospel itself. And what has become apparent to us is this—that when men and women do not have a solid grasp of the gospel, of what God has done for us in Christ, when men and women do not have a clear awareness of what the New Testament teaches concerning our union with Christ, then those men and women will seek to find their assurance of salvation somewhere other than the gospel. So, for example—and you can try yourselves on this—when you think about the fact that you are in Christ, on what basis do you say that God loves you, looks on you in the perfection and absolute holiness of Christ, right now, tonight—if we do not have a gospel answer to that question, then we will seek to find our acceptance with God either on the strength of our past experience of conversion… So we ask somebody, how do you know that God is at peace with you?
And they say, Well, years ago, when I was seventeen, I went to a thing, and I put up my hand. Well, that's a very interesting answer. That's the basis of your feeling accepted with God, something that you did a long time ago in your life, or that we seek to find the basis of our acceptance with God in our sincerity, or in our performance, or in the relative infrequency of our conscious and willful disobedience. In other words, we say to ourselves, Well, I'm sure God must be really happy with me, because I haven't been as willfully disobedient for the last seven days as I was in the previous seven days. To the extent that a man or a woman thinks that way, that man or woman needs to have their pastor do what Paul is urging Titus to do here, and that is to stress these things concerning the nature of the gospel, so that those who are under his care may be reminded that every day, all day, our acceptance with God is in Christ alone. Is in Christ alone.
And is in Christ alone because of who Jesus is and because of what Jesus has done. You see, when we preach—and this is something that has come home forcibly to me in the course of these readings and thinking—when we preach, it is possible for us to think that we have told people the gospel because we have warned them about the dangers of rejecting it or encouraged them to think about the benefits of accepting it. But you may warn somebody about the dangers of rejecting the gospel or the benefits of accepting the gospel, and you may never have told them the gospel. And that's exactly what's happening in many of our churches.
So the people are sitting there saying, I don't understand why this fellow is so steamed up about this. It doesn't seem to bear any relationship to the text that he was apparently trying to expound, and now all of a sudden he's launched off into something entirely different. Well, you see, what needs to happen is that we need to explain the nature of the gospel. And that is who Jesus is and what he has done. That Jesus has perfectly obeyed the law of God and his act of righteousness stands in the place of our act of rebellion. That Jesus has unequivocally and absolutely satisfied the justice of God. That he has exhausted the wrath of God. That he has removed our sins from the presence of God. That he has redeemed us from the curse of God. And that he has, in short, reconciled us to God.
And it is because of all of that which is the essentials of the gospel—articulated differently, but nevertheless, the same emphasis in verses 4–7—it is because of all of that that a man may rest safe and secure in Christ. Now, let me give to you a quote from an American theologian of the past, B. B. Warfield, on this very issue.
And I know you're going to come afterwards and ask for it, and I'm not going to give it to you. But I'll tell you where you can find it if you want to take notes. It's in the Works of B. B. Warfield, volume 2, page 113. The Works of B.
B. Warfield, volume 2, page 113. And this is this majestic and wonderful quote. It writes Warfield, There is nothing in us or done by us at any stage of our earthly development because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake, or we cannot be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing, nor does the nature of our relationship to him or to God the Father through him ever alter.
Now, listen carefully. No matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be, it is always on his blood and righteousness alone that we can rest. This, loved ones, is the gospel. And this is what is increasingly missing from the heart of more and more gatherings of people who believe in that the gospel is actually utilitarian—that the gospel exists so that we can get something, so that we can get, if you like, our best life now. And that's why we have a gospel, so that we can be all of these things. And this is not only in extreme circumstances.
This is fairly routine. So, for example—and here is a quote from a church, this is from the flyer that came from this church, and it reads as follows, at Valley Church, meet new friends and neighbors, hear positive practical messages that uplift you each week on, one, how to feel good about yourself, how to overcome depression, how to have a full and successful life, learning to handle your money, the secrets of successful family living, and how to overcome stress. It's hard to imagine that, going out as a bulletin or a flyer from the church in Crete, isn't it? It is all too common, going out as a flyer from the church in Cleveland or Colorado or Cincinnati. Now, you see why it is that Paul in his generation is so forceful concerning these things.
This is not a matter of marginal importance. This is at the very heart of the nature of the church. This is at the very core of what it's going to mean for the gospel of God to find its root and to be transformed in the community in which Titus is ministering. And so it is that he says to him, having shared the nature of it, the kindness and love of God our Savior has appeared. He hasn't done this because of righteous things, not triggered by anything on us, but because of his mercy he has washed us clean, he has renewed us by the power of the Holy Spirit, he has justified us, he has made us heirs of God. We now look forward to our home in heaven and so on. And then he says, And this is of such vital importance that I want you, Titus, to take a firm stand on it, to see to these matters, so that those who trust in God will then be able to display the transforming power of God in the goodness of their lives.
In other words, the heart of Christian living and the heart of Christian living in community must be the gospel. I had the privilege earlier this year of being at Second Pres in Memphis. I was there with one of my best friends, someone that I actually call my big brother, and that is Sinclair Ferguson. And I missed the address that he gave to pastors at the lunch hour, because I didn't arrive until the afternoon. And in the course of speaking extemporaneously to these individuals, he pointed out a number of things to them. And he pointed out that in a number of places throughout the country, it would appear that those who are in positions of prominence all have some distinguishing feature about themselves and what they're on about— essentially, that their ministry is all marked by a thing.
Sinclair, reflecting on this, says that this is absolutely bizarre to me. And he says, you know, if I were to ask your wives—and he's speaking to ministers—if I were to ask your wives, what is the hallmark of your ministry, there really ought to be only one answer to that. You sit under that ministry, and the thing that you will be persuaded to say is, this ministry is Christ-centered, Christ-dominated, and Christ-filled. And if anything else—and this might well be the secret—this minister is Christ-intoxicated, saturated with the gospel, so that those under the care of Titus may not be buffeted by all of these things, that they're able to look away from themselves, and from their own sorry predicament, and from their own wanderings and so on, and our ineffectiveness in prayer, and our lack of love for others, and our disgruntlement in so many areas, and to say, It is all because of Christ that God may look upon me. You're listening to Truth for Life. That is Alistair Begg highlighting the importance of keeping the gospel central in our lives and in the church.
We'll hear more tomorrow. For us to live lives that are Christ-centered, it's vital that we spend time in God's Word. And one way you can do that easily is by subscribing to the Truth for Life daily devotional. Every day you'll get an email sent to your inbox that includes a passage of Scripture, followed by a commentary from Alistair that explains what God's Word is teaching. Again, the daily devotional is sent to your email each morning when you sign up at truthforlife.org slash lists. It's also available on our website and our mobile app, and we've got some good news. Beginning January 1st, you'll not only be able to read these daily reflections, but you can listen to them as well. An audio version will be found in the Today tab on both our website and our mobile app, and you'll be able to find it as a podcast when you search Truth for Life daily devotions in Apple Podcast or Spotify or YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcasts. In the meantime, as you anticipate the new year, I want to recommend a book to you that we think will enrich your prayer life in 2025. It's called Cloud of Witnesses, a Treasury of Prayers and Petitions Through the Ages. You can ask for your copy today when you donate to support the ministry of Truth for Life. Go to truthforlife.org slash donate. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for joining us today. The Apostle Paul warned Titus about the danger and divisiveness of false teachers, and tomorrow we'll learn how we should respond to quarreling and division in our churches. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
