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Pastoral Epistles - Lesson 14

Titus

Most of the content of Titus has been covered in the lectures over 1 Timothy. However, the letter does have something to add to the discussion of leadership, and its two salvific hymns raise the issue of the reationship between justification and sanctification.

Bill Mounce
Pastoral Epistles
Lesson 14
Watching Now
Titus

Titus 1:1-4

Historical context

Salutation

Titus 1:5-9

Historical context (1:5)

Children (1:6)

Above reproach (1:7)

Teaching Competencies (1:9)

1. Commitment

2. Teach truth

3. Refute error

Titus 1:10–16

Titus 2:1–10

Introduction to household codes (2:1)

Older men (2:2)

Older women (2:3-5)

Younger men (2:6)

Personal (2:7-8)

Slaves (2:9-10)

Titus 2:11–15

Introduction

“For” (2:11a)

God’s grace has appeared (vv 11b)

1. Brings salvation

2. “Training us to … “ (v 12)

3. Eschatological expectation (v 13a)

Strongest statement of Christ’s divinity in the Bible (v 13b)

“Appearance” contrasts with the emperor (cf. 1 Tim 6:14)

Doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not rest on any one verse or affirmation

But this is the clearest

1. Granville Sharp rule

2. Salvation is connected to God the Father (v 11) and Jesus (v 13)

3.”God and Savior” is a set phrase in Greek culture

4. ἐπιφανεία is always Jesus’ second coming.

Christ’s work on the cross (14)

1. Negatively: to redeem

2. Positively: to purify

Summary charge (3:15 )

Titus 3:1-11

Call to ethical behavior (3:1-2)

Second great hymn (3:3-8)

Trinitarian

How?

1. God’s goodness and kindness does what we cannot do for ourselves

2. Motivated by his own mercy

3. Accomplished through the work of the Holy Spirit

4. Repeated: not what we do — “justified by his grace”

Titus 3:12–15

Final comments


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Transcript
  • Dr. Mounce introduces himself and covers the traditional issues in introductions, including his historical reconstruction of the writing and history behind the Pastorals, basic misconceptions people have of the Pastorals, and the survey of the critical issues often raised.

  • Paul begins by reminding Timothy of an earlier visit, and encourages Timothy to stay on at Ephesus, dealing with the issues in the church. Paul's goal is love, which stands in stark contrast to the work of the false teachers. Throughout 1 Timothy 1, Dr. Mounce is enumerating the ways in which Timothy (and we) should deal with false teaching.

  • Paul gives the theological argument up front as to why the false teachers were wrong and Timothy needs to silence them. They are legalists, applying the Mosaic Law to all Chrsitians. Rather, salvation is by God's mercy and grace as seen in Paul's conversion. But things have gotten bad in Ephesus, and Paul had to take a firm stance on dealing with two of the leaders of the opposition.

  • Having looked at the core teaching on why the false teachers were wrong, the class now looks at the other main pasages in the Pastorals that deal theologically with the false teaching.

  • Paul begins a two chapter discussion on issues of leadership in the Ephesian church. He begins by critiquing their habit of praying only for some people, which shows their legalistic way of looking at salvation. Then he deals with issues of public worship, first men then women. These are issues that the leaderhip should have been dealing with but most likely were being caused by poor leadership.

  • While this paragraph is not a matter of orthodoxy, it is nevertheless important since there are so many women in the church. Paul lays out the basic principle that women should learn with a submissive attitude, and then restates that principle with an eye to application; they cannot teach certain people in certain situations. Paul looks to the pre-Fall creation and the relationship that Adam and Eve were created to fulfill, and then spells out a consequence of what happens when that relationship is not honored. Because Paul references Genesis 2 and not Genesis 3, this is not a cultural teaching but transcultural.

  • After dealing with some questions, the class resumes by finishing the last two verses in chapter 2.

  • Paul gives four basic requirements for the leaders of a church. He beghins by emphasizing that leadership is a good thing and insists that leaders must be a certain kind of person, a person's who character is above repreoach. To appoint unqualified people to leadership is a sin, and those appointing them share in the responsibiiltiy when they fail and damage the church. But elders must also have a proven managerial ability of people, be spiritually mature, and have a good reputation in the eyes of people outside the church.

  • We conclude our discussion of elders by looking at two other passages on the role, Titus 1:5–9 and 1 Timothy 5:17–25.

  • We now move into the discussion of deacons in 1 Tim 3:8–13. There is much overlap between elders and deacons, and yet deacons are more involved in the day-to-day service of the church and are not required to be able to teach. The major interpretive decision is in v 11 as to whether it refers to women (i.e., deaconnesses) or wives (of the deacons).

  • This paragraph is the heart of the letter, putting everything that Paul has been discussing into perspective and giving it context. The church is precious, and we should protect the gospel because of the truths it teaches.

  • Paul goes back to addressing the needs of the Ephesian church. He deals in summary fashion with people of different ages, with a special note of concern for Timothy in how he deals with young women, which leads him into a discussion of young widows. His concern is that the church care for those who are "truly widows," i.e., who are old, truly alone, and have lived godly lives. Younger widows, however, should remarry and not burden the church. The church has limited resources, and it should initially care for those who are the most vulnerable.

  • Paul concludes his letter with a series of different and not always related topics. He deals with slaves, and begins to lay the groundwork for abolition, gives Timothy two tests for correct theology and spells out the download spiral and eventual destruction of the false teacher especially related to their love of money, and then encourages Timothy three ways. And in proper biblical fashion, he concludes with a doxology. The final paragraph (skipped by Dr. Mounce, is a final word to the rich in the church and a final plea to Timothy to be careful.

  • Most of the content of Titus has been covered in the lectures over 1 Timothy. However, the letter does have something to add to the discussion of leadership, and its two salvific hymns raise the issue of the reationship between justification and sanctification.

  • Paul begins his letter to his best friend by encouraging him to continue in ministry. If ever there were a model for how you encourage someone, especially someone who looks up to you, this is the chapter. The best thing you can do is find how many ways Paul encourages Timothy, and then see how to apply those points in your own life and ministry.

  • Paul concludes his encouragement to Timothy, and points out examples of faithless friends, and of one faithful friend.

  • Paul continues to encourage the discouraged Timothy, reminding him of the glorious gospel that he proclaims. Even if Paul himself is bound, the gospel is not.

  • The false teachers come back into view with a strong emphasis on Timothy's need to remain faithful. But the encouragement is that God's foundation in Timothy's life, and others, is sealed with a promise, and yet Timothy must also pursue righteousness and flee evil. Paul uses his own life as an example of faithfulness, and concludes with a strong admonition to preach the gospel because it comes from the very mouth of God.

  • Paul concludes his discussion of the role of Scripture in Timothy's life, reminding Timothy of Paul's own life of faithfulness. Paul makes some personal remarks about a few people, and references his final trial. He knows he will die, but death is merely a loosening.

The Pastoral Epistles contain some of the most practical advice in the New Testament. Learn how to handle heresy, appoint qualified leaders, take care of those who may not be able to care for themselves, and especially how to encourage one another in ministry. Titus alone contains two of the most powerful salvific statements in all of Scripture. These 13 chapters are worth studying.

Pastoral Epistles

Dr. Bill Mounce

nt630-14

Titus

Lesson Transcript

 

Well, we have finished first Timothy, and it's Thursday afternoon, and I'm sure you are wondering how what are we going to do with the rest of the pastoral. And one of the reasons I do it this way is that so much of Titus is straightforward. It's just there's not a lot that I need to talk about. And some of we've already looked at. So we can I can generally get through Titus pretty quickly. We've already looked in the first part of Titus one, the whole discussion of elders and it's how close it is to in first Timothy three and then he moves in and he talks about the false teaching in Crete. And we especially learned the Jewish nature, the false teaching there. And then you come to Titus chapter two, and these are these are very straightforward admonitions. He talks about what older men are to be like sober minded, dignified, self-controlled sound. The women, older women are to be reverent, not slanders, not slaves. The drink. But here's something that is worth talking about. Titus, do us it's a pretty famous verse that these older women and this translation is they are to teach what is good. It's actually a single word. Paul took the word good and teacher and crammed them together. Good teacher. They are to teach what is good and the purpose of their teaching. And it is to disclose. The purpose of their teaching is to train, which is an important word to train the younger women. And how are they to train the younger women there? To train them, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be self-controlled, to be pure, to work at home, to be kind and to treat, to train the younger women, to be submissive to their own husbands.

 

And the purpose that Paul gives is that the Word of God may not be reviled. All right. So on the one hand, this passage means that it's wrong for women to work outside the home, Right? So I was right there working at home. Now this is. Is it all? It's just cultural. Oh, really? So being submissive to your own husbands is cultural. The vision. Women had to be submissive to their own husbands, but now they don't. Yeah. I mean, hermeneutics is hard, isn't it? It is. It's the art and science. Ramsey says hermeneutics is the art and science of interpretation. And. And some of it there's rules and other people. You just you've got to develop an ability to handle these things. I think the thing that's most important in this passage is the motivation. This is not a first Timothy 213 thing. Paul is not grounding this in creation. He's saying these are these are things that the reason that they should be doing this and it doesn't mean there's not other reasons. But the reason that Paul gives initially up front is the spread of the gospel. He doesn't want to create and Christians, but believing and behaving in such a way that the Word of God, the spread of the gospel is damaged. So he says, You older ladies, you need to be training the younger women in the church and this is what their lives are to look like. Again. So at one level, these things are cultural. And at another level, though, and the whole submissiveness, you know, whatever you want to do with it, at least we know that's taught elsewhere. So it if you believe that it's eternal elsewhere, then what you've got is a mix of cultural things and eternal things.

 

But let's see what's cultural? Should young women love their husbands? Is that a cultural? No love. The children. No love. Be self-controlled. Pure. No. But it's the working at home. It's the that's a challenging one. And I think that the standard answer to it is a Paul is describing the way in which a good Christian, a good young woman who's a Christian, would live out her life and create and society. And these are the characteristics of it. And what you have is, in fact, a mixture of some things that are cultural and some things that are eternal. And it's up to hermeneutics for you to decide which is which. The verb is to train. This is not a first Timothy two thing. This is not older women acting within the official organizational structure of the church. This is not older women having that that a position of authority like an elder. This is older women taking younger women under their arms and helping them to learn how to be young wives and young moms. One of the things that was so frustrating me in the pastorate and my imagine is frustrating to you as well, is so often I would I would see a family grow older and the kids would go off to school. And so often the wife would go get a job. And, you know, I'm not saying that's wrong, but I'm just saying he right when you know the most and you're still healthy and you're in prime in the prime position of life to come alongside the other 20 year olds in this church and to mentor them and to help raise them, you go off and get a job. And I mean, I never blamed anyone for doing that, but I thought how valuable it is for older women to make themselves available as mentors to women.

 

Right. My wife is an absolute natural mentor. I would just this is what Robin does and people just gravitate to her. And she said the other day, I said, I'm just going to get a booth at Starbucks. I'm tired of driving all over the place and I'm just going to go out appointments and people can come and I'm just going to sit at Starbucks and listen because what my wife does well is listen, you know what weight means. Why am I talking? That's the secret of listening. Wait. Stop talking. Listen to the other person. And Robin has. She loves people so much. And she has this uncanny ability to sort of focus in and listen. And then when the time comes, she will help them or answer questions or whatever. And she's actually signed up for a life coaching curriculum. She said, if this is what I'm called to do, this is what I love to do the most. I'm going to get all the tools that I can to do it well. So she actually signed up some place with a place in North Carolina to develop the tools for life coaching. You know, that's what's going on here. This is life coaching. And while my wife is I got to say this, she'll get after me if I don't. She's eight years younger than I am. She doesn't want anyone to think that she's as old as I am. Okay. So she's a young 52. Okay, I said it. But she said I almost got her a AARP card the other day. Just a bugger, because I'm old enough for a RPI. But she's not. But I was going to get her a card and she. She didn't think that would have been funny.

 

But anyway, she is. She is. She's slowly she doesn't like it, but she understands she is the older women in women's lives now. And she she wants to get trained in it. And she wants to be this kind of person to help mentor younger women, because all women need to learn how to love their husbands, don't they? As young men need to learn how to love their wives. It's not an automatic thing. You need to learn how to love your children and all these different things. And in this day and age, you certainly need to learn what it means to be submissive because you're not going to pick it up from culture. Um, so anyway, so Rob, my wife, is doing exactly what this is and remembers when I was pastoring, I was so thankful when ladies would say, you know, I could go work and I'm not going to degrade those who do. But I was so thankful for those who said, you know, I just want to make myself available to the church. Are there young women here that I can work with and help? I like a man that's about as biblical as biblical can be. So anyway, that's in going through these different age groups. That's the emphasis that Paul has on older women. Make yourself available to mentoring relationships. Um, any comments on that and. Younger men are to be self-controlled, be a model of good work or dignity. Slaves, he goes in versus nine and ten. But again, look at the motivation for slaves. Look, the first ten slaves are to be well pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, showing all good faith. Why? Because in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God or Savior and receive. They're not doing it because slavery is a biblical institution.

 

They're doing it because it'll help the spread of the gospel. And at the end of the day, that's more important. We then get into one of the two beautiful hymns of salvation. And I think in all of the Bible in Titus 211 and 15. And the thing I want to challenge you and this to do is to look at the relationship between justification and sanctification. Now, this is a huge ongoing divide ever since the Reformation, right? What's the relationship of justification and sanctification in traditional Orthodox Catholic beliefs? Justification is is the word. Justification is equal to faith plus sanctification plus works. The Reformation came along and completely well separated out. Justification for sanctification, justification as a as a legal declaration of innocence to your guilt. And the reformers were very clear that a person who is truly justified will also truly become sanctified. There is none of this. The once saved, always save mentality you cannot find in Calvin anywhere. But they did hold to the necessity of justification by faith alone, by works alone, and then sanctification. Their growth into Christ's likeness was separate but a necessary consequence of it. Wesley had a different way of explaining it, but he to emphasize the role of holiness. But this whole. The whole. Well, look at the Southern Baptist Church. Look at the divide in the Southern Baptist Church. Right. There's there's part of the Southern Baptist Church that is the one saved, always saved crowd that I would say violently separates justification from sanctification with Bob theme say that that thinking about the cross, all you need to have is a moment of positive volition. You hear that expression, All you have to do is have a positive thought about God. Then you say, I don't think he'd know if you'd like me to say it that way.

 

But his expression is a moment of positive volition. And then on the other side, you have very, very, ah, many in Wesley and Southern Baptist. So, I mean, you ought to try teaching at Southern Baptist, a Southern Baptist seminary. I mean, this is the I hear from my story, my friends at Southern, that this is a real challenge, that this particular divide, any way to divide Titus to 11 or 15 is the answer to that divide. I believe this is this is where I go. So the grace of God has appeared. And what happened when God's grace appeared? It brought salvation for all people. What do you mean? Well, that Grace trained us to do two things. It trained us, first of all, to renounce and godliness and worldly passions. And the appearance of God's grace trained us to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age. In other words, the coming of God's grace and the person and the work of Jesus Christ had to do with sanctification. It had to do with repentance, and it had to do with sanctification. Right? Both ideas are right next to each other. You see that? That's what I wanted to stress. And we renounce and godliness. We and where I were, my objection is, is when people preach salvation, apart from sanctification, that you don't know it by now, you're going to hear it really strongly. I just think it is one of the most unbiblical things that there is in the church because God's grace teaches us to renounce on godliness, God's grace teaches us to live self-controlled lives. That part of the purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ was sanctification, not just justification. The book I'm working in right now is building on the theme of the gate and the path.

 

And my contention is that a large part of the problem in the American church is that we've we've correctly preach the gate. We preach the necessity of justification. Billy Graham and this whole group that saw this trail was all preached on the necessity of repentance. But what's happened, I think, is that people move through the gate of conversion and they think, okay, everything else is optional. I don't have to do anything else and I can live any way I want and it doesn't matter. And Jesus says, You choose the gate and you walk the paths. And I don't think I'm a Calvinist and I think the path is mandatory. So messed up. My Calvinism as Calvin thought it was mandatory too. Calvin was very clear that you were changed in conversion, and that meant your life had to change. But it changed in response to conversion. Not in an attempt to earn salvation from God. That was Calvin. Separation from Roman Catholicism. And so the things that I'm exploring are all about the joy of the journey and the challenges of the journey and the necessity of the journey down the path. So this is what my head is all wrapped up in. And that's why passages like this are so important to me that that it is when you preach conversion. The grace of God appeared also to renounce some godliness and to get us to live self-controlled lives. And we do this as we wait for the blessed hope. Now, here's where predators have real trouble, because predators and has no blessed hope, right? Jesus came again in 8070. There's no nothing necessarily ahead of us. But for Paul, he wasn't a predator. And he would say, you know, we live our lives out.

 

We grow in Christ likeness, and we wait for the blessed hope. And what is that blessed hope? The blessed hope is the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ. It's one of the reasons I need to add one more chapter to my book. I got to do 12 chapters, but I don't talk about heaven and I just don't think I can write a book for new believers and not talk about where they're going for. I can't. I got to talk about the eschatological hope. I don't really want 13 chapters, not because I'm superstitious, but most church calendars are 12 week sessions. But I've got to talk about heaven because waiting for the Blessed Hope is a big deal. But here's the most important thing. This is the single strongest proof for the deity of Christ in the Bible. There is there is nothing stronger propositional than this. Now, I'm thankful that our belief in the deity of Christ doesn't depend upon a propositional statement. There's many, many proofs for the deity of Christ, his own self, his self, affirmations. And John. Mark starts as gospel at the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And then you only hear the phrase Son of God two more times you go. But that's a lousy way to prove that Jesus is the son of God. Well, no. The whole point of Mark is to show what Jesus does. And there's only one person that does what Jesus does, and that is God. That's Mark's Christology. That's how He proves it. Just look at what Jesus does. He forgives. Since he commands waves to cease, He heals. He gives sight to the blind. Only God does. He sings. So I'm thankful that there are other proofs for the DVD of Christ.

 

But when it comes to an absolute affirmation of theological, this is the strongest there is and the stuff is all given to you and the grammar. And I'm sorry it went on and on for pages, but that's because the Greek is so explicit that I wanted to give you all the tools that you need in case somebody wants, like a Jehovah's Witness wants to argue that he's just a god and the rules are all in there. But the way the grammar is laid out, God and Jesus have to be the same person. There's there's no way to punctuate this to make God and Jesus to different people. You know, you have, like, enrollments nine. Let me just read it. In some of these statements on the Day of Christ. You can you can fiddle with punctuation and and things like that. Paul is giving all of the benefits of being a Jew, and he says to them belong the patriarchs. And from them, their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. And what do you do with punctuation there while the are, as we said, who is Christ period, God who is overall be praised or something like that. The ESV puts a comma there and says according to the flesh is the Christ who is God overall. And that's and that's the right way to read it. And there are statements like that, but it's possible to misread them in certain ways. There's no way to misread Titus. 213. It's not possible. So this is a clear and again, the liberal theology theology comes along and says, well, here's the proof that Paul didn't write this because Paul would never affirm the full deity of Christ. The way the argument goes. And I say, no, Paul does affirm the duty of Christ on multiple occasions.

 

This is his clearest. We wait for the appearance of the glory of our God, our great God and Savior. Karma. Jesus Christ. So if this is a really encourage you to use this verse. But look what Christ did. Verse 14 he gave himself. Okay, so that's the cross, right? Why did he give himself? Well, he gave himself to redeem us. From all lawlessness was he? He gave us so that we could repent. He gave us. He gave himself so we could so we could be cleansed. And he gave himself to purify for himself of people, for his own possession, who are zealous for good works. In other words, it's part of the very salvific work of God in Christ on the cross, to not only redeem us from sin, but to prepare us for good works. See justification, sanctification. They're they're right. They're right. They're not the same thing. Okay. I am Protestant. I am reformed. They're not the same thing, but they are right next to each other. And they are both together. The purpose of the cross. That's my. That'd be my argument from this passage. That's why I object to preaching. That separates those two things. Because Paul doesn't separate him. He's got them right next to each other. The purpose of the cross was to redeem us from sin, and the purpose of the cross was to purify us so that we would be zealous and able to do good works. And what Paul has joined together, let no man pull asunder. Now, how you deal with that, of course, is going to be your business. But I would I would challenge you to really look at verse 14 carefully. And I just think that justification and sanctification are just butted up right against each other, joined in the purpose of the cross, the necessity of one leading to the necessity of the other.

 

Calvin and I agree on this. Declare these things exalted and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Okay. Any comments or questions on that? This is not a place that normally you have this discussion, so that's going to catch you by surprise. Don't don't feel bad, but we're going to come back to it again tomorrow several times in a second. Timothy. So I didn't hear the sermon. The girl I was dating at the time and came back Sunday night and said, You won't believe what I just listened to. So what's that? And so it was it was a big church in Bowling Green. And the pastor said, I want you to know the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that if you walk down the aisle and sign the roll book of this church, that you shall be saved. And they know how to walk down the aisle and you had to sign the book. And he said he preach. The good news of the gospel is that there's two ways that you can live your life after that. You can. You can. The good news of the gospel is you can go out and you can live a good Christian life, and that's great. But the good news of the gospel is that if you walk down the aisle of this church and sign this rule book, you can go out and live anywhere you want and it doesn't matter. You go to heaven. And I don't know if it was an act of judgment, but about ten years later, the church burned to the ground. Now, I believe the way I say it, I don't believe in internal security because every person I've heard use that phrase uses that as an excuse to sin.

 

So I don't like that phrase, and I don't even like the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, because I don't think saints persevere. I like the doctrine of the perseverance of God. I think that when the Spirit comes into my life and fundamentally changes me and turns me to a new creation, that God is committed, that he will persevere with me, that first Beta one five, He will continue to enable me to respond in faith no matter what happens. That the sealing work of the spirit is permanent and cannot be redone and that no one, especially me, can snatch me from my father's hand. Do I sound Calvinist? Okay, that's what I wanted to do. But I also believe that the only biblical way to preach the Gospel is to preach that change people live, change lives. And that is across. We are changed and conversion. We are changed at the gate. We are changed. And one of the purposes for changing me was so that I would be pure and holy before him. But just as importantly. But subsequent to it, I was changed so that I could live a life of ever increasing holiness, bringing glory to God. The Father by my good works. And I just think you can't separate those things. And I think a large part of the problem in the church is that we have. Anyway. That's what I think on that. Work out your salvation. Ferran trembling because it's God is at work in you. Okay? Titus continues, and he moves on. In chapter three, he's talking about being submissive to the civil authorities. Be obedient, ready for every good work. Don't speak ill of anyone. Avoid calling. And so he describes he gives a cross-section of the Christian life, and then he's going to do the same thing again for here's why we are to live this kind of life for we ourselves anniversary.

 

We're once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slays by various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy. Hated by others and hated hating one another. That's Paul's estimate of the non-Christian world. Right. But. When the goodness and the loving kindness of God, our savior appeared. I remember Titus as a young church, Right. And so the whole issue of what is salvation and and what's the relationship of sanctification is core. That's why he's not spending all the time with Titus that he did with in first Timothy. It's a different setting. But he said, this is this is what we were all like. But then the goodness and loving kindness of God, our savior appeared. But when it did, he saved us. So it's another wonderful hymn on salvation. He saved us. He saved us not because the work's done by us in supposed righteousness. He saved us. He didn't. We didn't earn it, but rather he saved us. And according to his own mercy, that salvation is totally based on God's mercy. How did he actually go about saving us? Well, he saved us by the washing. A regeneration, which means that the cleansing part of conversion and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, which is the positive filling. This is a this is a wonderful phrase. Well, what is conversion? Well, it's in one sense, there's a negative and a positive. There's a cleansing and there's a feeling that salvation is is the washing of regeneration, the removal of the old man, the old person, and being filled up and renewed by the Holy Spirit. And if you want to read a fascinating 350 page dissertation on the word regeneration and its background in the Greek mystery religions, it's in the University of Aberdeen's Library.

 

My doctoral dissertation. I'm probably the only person that ever read it anyway. Your advisor? No, he did it. He passed it off. I think he had read it in chapters so many times that he passed me off to another internal and an external reader. Yeah, but now he read it. He read it. So. Okay, so three or four people read my dissertation anyway, and I just think it's the. I don't want to go into it, but I love the imagery of conversion as being the emptying and the filling, the cleansing, the cleansing and the empowering. I just think this is a wonderful picture of what happens when we respond to the message of gospel of Jesus Christ. So he says, We were cleansed in our regeneration. We are filled in the renewing of the Holy Spirit. And then he goes off and he talks about the Holy Spirit, and he says, whom he, meaning God, poured out of He mean the Holy Spirit. He poured out on us. He poured the Holy Spirit on us richly. He poured the Holy Spirit. So through the work of Jesus Christ, who is our Savior. Why did he pour out the Holy Spirit on us? Well, the reason they poured out the Holy Spirit on us was so that not only would we be justified by His grace, but that we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. So this is not just this. I am no longer guilty of my sin, but that we in fact have been saved and we have become part of God's family. Wayne Graham has a very powerful discussion of this and is systematic. And he says, first of all, God would have been perfectly loving and just to allow us to die in our sins.

 

Right? There's no obligation on God's part to save us. If if God simply chose to regenerate, I simply chose to. Justify us, declare us not guilty of our sins and nothing else. That would have been great, right? We have been not guilty of our sins. But God did more than that is that He not only declared us not guilty of our sins and made us into new beings, but he brought us into his family and the whole imagery of adoption and being an heir and having brothers and sisters is such a powerful image. I think that we are, in fact, the family of God. You and I are separated by about 3000 miles and in some case, few cultural differences. There is some stuff, but none of it's important. Because we were all saved. To be heirs together. And we are inheritors of eternal life, and we are inheritors of all the blessings that God has for us. And it is a very powerful picture. The saying is trustworthy is the I think this is number five. I think. Yes, five. And I want you insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. Okay, here we have it again. Right, Paul? Paul is is is able to talk about justification by faith as a as a separate entity. But he always or almost always in here, he is moving to sanctification. He is moving. Why were we saved? So that we would be careful to devote ourselves to doing the things that are right, the things that are pleasing to God. So that's a challenge. And this is one of your possible position papers. And it's you know, it's it's a fun paper because it's a the whole issue of the relationship with justification.

 

Sanctification is a difficult issue, right? It's difficult to express. I think many of us kind of understand it, but to put it in words it won't be misunderstood is is a bit of a challenge. So that could be one of your positions. Papers is well. Any comments or questions on that. Okay. Russ, the Titus is pretty straightforward. There's this thing on false teaching. We didn't look at it because it basically repeats things we already know rather than pursuing the things of God, things that are excellent, profitable. There are others that are just engaged in foolish controversies. They argue about genealogies. They core about the law. They, you know, they just stay away from that stuff. Notice the church discipline in verse ten. As for the person who stirs up division, in my wife's words, the pot stirs. After warning him once, maybe will be gender inclusive here after warning that person once and then twice have nothing more to do with that person. This is social ostracism, right? You and you got to fit this into the Matthew 18. And if that person is an elder is probably something different, but is just saying you got to go face to face with these people that are causing the trouble, go twice. And after that you just you have nothing to do. And again, understand this is in a house church setting. So if you got one out of ten or one out of 50 stirring the pot and creating problems and and you go to that person and then you go to that person again, you say, no, you're you're done. You know that that's a lot more serious than saying you're not going to talk to someone in a church of a thousand people.

 

This is social ostracism that really affected change in people's lives. It it cut them off from fellowship. Have nothing more to do with that person, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful. He is self condemned. Not quite sure how much Paul is thinking of a divisive person in general or a false teacher who's being divisive. It's kind of a harsh description of someone who is just just a divisive person. We're the ones that are destroying souls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're pretty sure that it's. It's. I'm sorry. I just. I'm thinking of a verse. I'm trying to think of where it is. Whereas worming their way into household. That's the second Timothy, isn't it? Yeah. That has to come. Oh, something to look forward to. Tied. And then he continues from there. We're almost done here. Um, he just have some instructions. I'm gonna send Artemus and Tasha to you. Uh, when when they come in, those when they come to emphasis to help continue to clean up the mess. I'm in Nicopolis, and I want you to come and visit me there. I'm going to spend the winter there. Please spend some time here. Uh, speed. Xena's an Appaloosa on their way. Um, don't. We don't know why Xena said the police were on Crete, but they were there. You wanted to make sure that Titus made sure the church took care of them. They didn't lack anything. And then he says, Let our people learn to devote themselves. Where in the summary of the conclusion, I mean, let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, help cases of urgent need. Don't be unfruitful again, you can hear. Please, please live out your Christian commitment and community. All are with me.

 

Send greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace, be with you. And thus send us Titus, any comments or questions. I Please don't misunderstand. My speeding through Titus, is me thinking it's not important. I just think Titus is a wonderful book. I just don't think there's any place better that lays out salvation in a in a more powerful and in a. Full way then those two hymns in Titus. And when you're preaching evangelistic services, I've got to think that these are two of the main places you go to preach.