When Jesus started preaching, he came into Galilee and
announced: “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good
news!” He did not say that the kingdom
was thousands of years away – he said it was at hand – it was near.
He told the Pharisees, The
prostitutes and tax collectors are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.
Jesus used present-tense verbs there: these people are entering. Not “will enter,” but are entering. The kingdom of God was already a reality, already
existed, and they were entering it.
The kingdom of God is in your midst, he said. It is here
and now, and he was inviting people to enter it right away. By faith, people
were entering the kingdom of God when Jesus preached the gospel, and people are
entering the kingdom of God even today when the gospel of Jesus Christ is
preached. Paul said that God has rescued us from darkness and brought us into
the kingdom of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:13). That’s past tense. We are already in
the kingdom.
Now, the kingdom of God is not like
the kingdoms of this world. It does not occupy a specific territory, and it is
not based on force. We enter the kingdom only by faith, only if we agree to,
only if we accept the offer. We can choose to remain in the old kingdom if we
want to – we can remain in the kingdoms of this world, and we can choose to
enjoy the things that these kingdoms offer: money, power, sex, selfishness,
sin, conflict, sickness and death. We can remain in bondage to sin and death,
or we can accept the offer that Jesus gives, to rescue us from the grip of
Satan and to give us the benefits and blessings of the kingdom of God.
Yes, he offers us a rescue. That’s what salvation is—a
rescue. It’s like we are trapped in the swirling waters, hanging on to a rotten
log, and he throws us a life preserver tied to a rope. We can choose to let go
of the rotten log and grab the life preserver, or we can choose to stay in the
swirling waters. It’s our choice.
The kingdom of God offers us certain
benefits: love, security, peace, eternal life and joy. Best of all, it offers
us the friendship of the King, a love deeper
than we will ever experience anywhere else, the warmth of knowing that our
life is important to the King, and to all his angels, and to all his people. We
will be in a web of friendships, and in an environment of love, of wealth that
is far greater than anything this world can offer. Jesus is offering this to
us, if we will only let go of the world and the temporary illusions that it
offers.
Now, we cannot experience all the
blessings of the kingdom of God while we are trapped in the ways of this world.
We will never fully experience the joy of being loved, as long as we think we
have to earn God’s love. If we think
that God loves us only because we obey him, we are missing out on the full
dimension of his love.
As long as we are attached to the
things of this world, we cannot experience the joy of trusting in God. As long
as we are greedy, we cannot know the joy of being generous. As long as we are
selfish, we cannot know the joy of giving love to someone else. We cannot know
the joy of being in God’s presence as long as our heart is really attracted to
something else in this world. We can’t be pulled out of the swirling waters
unless we are willing to let go of the old rotten log.
So the kingdom of God involves some
changes in the way we live and think. That’s why Jesus said, Repent, and believe the good news. Only
people who accept the gospel can enter the kingdom. It is good news only for
those who believe it, only for people who are willing to let go of everything
that causes pain and sorrow, and are willing to grasp onto God through the
offer that Jesus is making.
Now, the really good news is that we
don’t have to do this perfectly to get started. We don’t have to let go of all
our conflicting emotions in order to start making progress. We don’t have to
have perfect obedience, and we don’t have to have perfect faith, and we don’t
have to have perfect understanding. God knows that we are mentally defective,
and he doesn’t expect us to do
everything right, when we are taking our first baby steps toward him.
And that’s why the gospel is good
news. If it required that we were perfect before we could even get started,
then it wouldn’t be very good news, because none of us would ever get started.
And besides that, if we could be perfect on our own, we wouldn’t even need the good news, because we’d already
be where we wanted to end up. If we
could save ourselves, then Jesus didn’t need to come and he didn’t need to die.
The very fact that he came shows that we could not do it on our own.
Now, Jesus was saying that the
kingdom of God is at hand, and we can enter it even now, even while we are
imperfect, even if we have been a prostitute, a thief, a corrupt government
official, or a self-righteous religious leader. The point is that God loves us
not because of what we do, or how well we do it, but simply that he loves us no
matter what we do. And because he
loves us, he wants to rescue us from the mess that we’ve made of our lives, and
even though we smell like pigs and have bad habits and mess up again and again,
he still loves us and he still wants us in his kingdom. He sent Jesus to die
for us, so that we can live again.
Now, all of us, to some extent, still
have our hand on the old rotten log. We are still in the swirling waters, as
long as we live in this world. We still have struggles and doubts, but we have
grasped the life preserver that Jesus has thrown us. We have latched on to the
kingdom of God, and God promises that he will never push us away. He will never
cut the rope, he will never take his offer of salvation away.
However,
some of us here today haven’t even started this process. We are clinging to the
old rotten log, stuck in the swirling waters of a meaningless life. We see the
life preserver that Jesus has thrown, but we aren’t willing to grab it. We
would rather have the old rotten log that we know, than to accept a rescue that
we don’t know.
But Jesus is telling you that your
old rotten log is going to sink soon and you are going to die if you keep
hanging on to it. And deep down, you know he’s right – you are going to die, and Jesus is telling you that you have nothing to
lose but this life of fear and swirling and death. The life preserver is not a
perfect life, but it leads to a
perfect life, and Jesus went to the trouble to throw it to you because he wants
to rescue you. So I encourage you today, to take what he offers, to see that he
can be trusted and, to switch back to the other figure of speech, to enter the
kingdom of God.
OK, so everyone who has faith in
Jesus as Savior has entered the kingdom of God, and the church consists of
people who have entered the kingdom of God. That doesn’t mean that the church
IS the kingdom of God. The kingdom is perfect, and we are not. However, we belong to the kingdom of God, and we represent the kingdom of God. The
apostle Paul said that we are ambassadors for the kingdom. We represent it,
preach its message, and live its life.
In Paul’s letter to the Philippians,
chapter 3, verse 20, Paul says that our citizenship is in heaven; we are
citizens of the kingdom of God. Let’s turn to the book of Philippians and see
what he wrote there. One thing we need to know is that the word “citizen” had a
special meaning to the Philippian people. That’s because the city of Philippi
was a Roman colony.
About a hundred years earlier, the Roman empire had
fought a big battle in the area, and after they had won the battle and peace
was restored to the empire, they rewarded all the soldiers by giving them homes
and land in the city of Philippi. That way the soldiers would stay there
instead of coming back to Rome, which was already overcrowded and didn’t need a
lot of soldiers in it. And as the custom was, the soldiers were also given
Roman citizenship, because they had risked their lives for the glory of Rome.
So they had lots of Roman citizens
living in Philippi, and they declared the whole city to be a Roman colony.
Everyone in it was a citizen, and Philippi was an outpost of Rome in Macedonia.
They were not given Roman citizenship so they could learn Macedonian customs
and bring them back to Rome. No, they were Roman citizens so they could live
like Romans and bring Roman customs to Macedonia. They were an outpost of Rome,
planted in Macedonia to bring Roman ways to the Macedonians.
The Philippines was a colony of Spain
for 300 some years. The Spanish were not trying to learn Filipino customs and
bring them back to Spain. Oh, no, what they wanted was for Filipinos to learn Spanish customs,… and in that, they were
partly successful. At least I see quite a few Spanish words in the Filipino
vocabulary, and I see Catholic churches in every city. The idea of a colony is
to expand the influence of the home country,
and the idea of giving citizenship is to expand the influence of the home
country.
So, when Paul was saying that the
believers in Philippi were citizens of heaven, he was not saying that they were
there to bring Roman customs into the kingdom of heaven. No, quite the
opposite. They were there as a colony of heaven,
bringing the customs of God into
Philippi. They were ambassadors of heaven, representatives of heaven,
showing people in Philippi what God’s ways were.
They were not the kingdom of God –
certainly not all of it, and certainly not perfect examples of it – but they
were an outpost of the kingdom of
God, living in the midst of the kingdoms of men. They were not perfect
representatives of the kingdom, but they were still representatives. It was their
responsibility to represent the kingdom, to BE the kingdom, in Philippi.
In the same way, it is our
responsibility to represent the kingdom, to BE the kingdom, in this city, right
here and right now. We are to be citizens of heaven, even while we are living
on earth. And in the time we have today, I want to explore a little bit of what
that might look like. What will it look like for us to be the kingdom of God in
this city?
I suggest that we can look at it in
three ways – we can look to the future, or we can look to the past, and we can
look at it in the present.
Looking to the future
First, let’s look at the future. We
know that the kingdom of God already exists, but that it will expand and take a
great leap forward when Christ returns. We look forward to living forever in
the kingdom of God, and it will be an exceptionally good life, in which there is no more crying and no more tears and
no more sorrow or sin.
So what does that mean for us today?
If we eagerly look forward to a world
in which everyone loves one another, in which everyone respects one another, in
which everyone helps one another,
then we need to begin living that way even now. Our lives should reflect the
kingdom of God, should reflect the qualities that make the kingdom good, should reflect the way of life
that God wants.
We need to bring the future into the present – to bring
millennial blessings into the present. We need to prepare for the future
kingdom of God by being the kingdom
of God, and living like the kingdom
of God, even in this age. We are to prepare for our future by living that way
right now.
In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus told us
to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In
the second part of that line, he was explaining what it meant for God’s kingdom to come – it means that God’s will
–whatever God wants – should be done on earth now the way that it is in heaven.
It means that people would live like
the kingdom, here on earth. It means that we would be representatives of the
kingdom, even while we live on earth. In
the Lord’s prayer, we are asking that God make us a better representative of
who he is and what he stands for. We want that way of life, and we want it now.
So, if we want to see how we ought to
live, we need to look to the future. If we want mercy, we need to be merciful.
If we want love, then we need to love others. If we want to live in an
environment in which there is no more sorrow and no more sin, then we need to
avoid sin right now. That’s because if we really like a particular sin, then we are not really going to enjoy an
eternity in which that sin won’t be allowed.
We need to live the future, even in
this age. We see how we want the world to be in the future, and that teaches us
something about the way we should live today.
Looking to the past
However, to see what the future will
look like, to see the way we ought to live in the present, it is also helpful
to look to the past—specifically to the example of Jesus. Jesus not only died
for our sins, he also showed us something about the way we were designed to
live.
So, if we want to live with Jesus in
the future, we need to live like he does, and we need to look to the past to
see how he lives.
Now, we do not have to copy all the
incidental details. We do not have to go to Jerusalem for the festivals, like
he did, or speak Hebrew, like he did, or wear special blue threads in our
clothing, like he did. Some of the things that Jesus did, he did simply because
he was a Jew living in first-century Palestine, and we do not have to imitate
all those cultural details.
But we should take special notice of
the ways in which Jesus was NOT like his culture. He lived in a culture in
which life was a contest, or a competition to see if I am better than you.
People felt important if they were better than other people. They looked down
on people who didn’t measure up to their standards. The Romans used force, and
the Jews used religion as a way to feel better than other people. Life was all
about money and power and status. It was a lot like today.
But Jesus didn’t use force, and he
didn’t use religion as a means of pushing other people down. He didn’t push
people down at all. Instead, he lifted them up. Jesus was willing to spend time
with poor people, he was willing to touch lepers, he was willing to eat with
sinners. He wasn’t worried about money or power or status. In fact, he gave up status in order to help people
who had less.
Paul tells us about it in
Philippians, chapter 2. And Paul’s letter gives us some clues to help us
understand the situation in the church at Philippi. Later in the book, he tells
people to avoid arguments, and he asks two prominent women to settle their
disagreement. There seems to have been a little contest going on in Philippi to
see who was most important. So in chapter 2, Paul gives them some instructions
that will help correct the situation.
Let’s start in chapter 2, verse 1.
Paul writes, “Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort
of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy…”
Now, when Paul says “if,” he really
isn’t asking a question. The way that he phrases the question, both in Greek
and in English, he expects an answer of “yes.”
Yes, there is consolation in Christ. Yes, there is comfort in his love.
Yes, we do have fellowship with the Holy Spirit. And yes, there is affection
and mercy.
So he’s saying, if we have these
things – and we do – then we ought to, verse 2, “fulfill my joy by being
like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.” Here he
is pleading for them to stop arguing with one another, and to focus on what
they have in common.
Verse 3: “Let nothing be done through
selfish ambition or conceit” – and that may well have been the problem in
Philippi. Selfish ambition was the way that most of Greek society worked.
Scholars call it an “agonistic” society, in which life was a continual contest
for status and importance. So Paul is saying that we shouldn’t live that way.
Instead, in the last part of verse 3 he writes, “but in lowliness of mind let
each esteem others better than himself.”
Instead of trying to feel more
important than the other person, we need to treat the other person as if they
are more important than us. This is
the way we stop arguing and find peace. Instead of trying to get for ourselves,
we need to try to give to others. The same basic concept is involved in love,
in trying to help others even if it involves some sacrifices on our own part.
Verse 4: “Let each of you look out
not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”
Now, Paul is not asking people to do
something that Paul himself was not already doing. Later in this letter, Paul
offers himself as an example. He offers Timothy as an example of someone who
cared for others, and he offers Epaphroditus as an example of someone who cared
so much about others that he got sick and almost died. That is what makes a
person truly important – not by being greedy, but by being generous.
But the real example here for all of
us is the example set by Jesus. In verse 5 Paul writes, “Let this mind be in
you which was also in Christ Jesus.” Or as the Message Bible says, “Think of
yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.” Now, if anybody in the
universe had a right to think of himself as more important than others, Jesus
did. But he saw importance in terms
of service, in terms of helping other people. He told his disciples, The
Gentile kings lord it over people, but it’s not supposed to be that way among
you. Instead, the greatest person is the one who serves others. That is true
greatness in the kingdom of God.
And that is the example that Jesus
set himself – not only in his earthly ministry, but even in the fact that he had an earthly ministry. As verse 6
says, he was “in the form of God, [but he] did not consider it robbery to be
equal with God.” That’s the New King James Translation. It’s a rare Greek word,
and it is used here in an unusual way, so the translations handle it
differently. The NIV says, “He did not consider equality with God something to
be grasped.” The Message says, “He didn’t think so much of himself that he had
to cling to the advantages of that status.”
The idea is that Jesus had a lot of
status and privilege as the Son of God living in a perfect heaven, but he
didn’t think that the meaning of life could be found by keeping all his power
for himself. He didn’t try to hang on to it, like a robber trying to grab more
stuff for himself. Rather, he was willing to let it go, in order to help
others.
Why was he willing to do that? Because
he knew that in the long run, he would not only be helping other people, he
would also have more for himself, if he was willing to let go of what he had.
If you want more grain in your storage bins, you have to be willing to take
some out and plant it in the ground. In order to do this, you have to have
faith that your sacrifice is going to pay off, that it will be worth your
while. And when it comes to life, we
have to have faith that there is another life, so that we are willing to give
up even our life, if it is necessary. We have to see that we will have a
future, before we are willing to give up some of the privileges we have right
now—and the reason we give them up is to help other people, because that is the
kind of attitude and action that makes the kingdom of God so worthwhile. It is
worth living for, and it is worth dying for.
That is exactly what Jesus did –
verse 7 – he “made himself of no reputation” – he gave up his status – and
“took the form of a servant…” he came as a human being. He was willing to give
up his status as royalty, and become one of the peasants.
I have read that one of the Filipino
presidents became a farmer for a day, to see how the farmers are treated – and
this is good, but Jesus did this for
more than 30 years. He who had all the power of the universe was willing to
become a helpless baby in a poor family in a downtrodden part of the Roman
empire.
Verse 8 says, “And being found in
appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became even to the point of death,
even the death of a cross” – the most painful and the most shameful form of
death. This is the kind of example Jesus set for us – and the interesting thing
is that this was not some unusual change in Jesus’ attitude. No, this is the
way that he is all the time. This is
the way God is, all the time, and
this is the way that he wants us to be, too.
It is not easy, and it would be
foolish for us to do it, if we did not have the promise of eternal life. But we
do have that promise, and we know that the sacrifices we make in this life are
not made in vain. We will be rewarded, and one of the biggest rewards is that
we will be able to live in a place where everyone does this, all the time. This
self-sacrificing humility is part of our future, and it should be part of our
life right now, as well. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus” – a mind that is willing to help other people.
And the result will be for us, just
as it was for Jesus, an exaltation into glory. Verses 9 and 10 describe for us
how Jesus was raised back to life and raised back to glory, and as Paul writes
this letter to the Phillippians, he reminds them several times that if we are
willing to suffer with Christ, we will also be given glory with Christ. That
doesn’t mean that we have to experience the same kind of persecution he
experienced, but it means that our own comfort and safety is not our chief goal
in life.
The way to be great in God’s kingdom
is not by looking out for ourselves, but to help other people. And the reward
for doing this is not necessarily in this life, but in the next. We have to
have faith in the future before we are willing to do this in the present.
OK, my point is that we are to look
to the example of Jesus to show us how to represent the kingdom of God in this
age, how we are to be citizens of heaven even while we live on earth, bringing
heavenly ways into earthly settings. We want to be examples of heavenly
culture, a culture that cares about other people, even if the culture around us
does not.
Looking to the present
My third point
is that as citizens of heaven, we should look to the present day, to see what
the results of our behavior might be. What we do has results not only in our
life, but also in our effectiveness as messengers and agents of the kingdom of
God.
And to look at
this aspect of our heavenly citizenship, let’s turn to Paul’s letter to Titus, chapter 2. Titus is a little book just after Paul’s letters
to Timothy, and shortly before the letter to the Hebrews.
In Titus, chapter 2, Paul tells us about our
behavior, and he tells us about grace, and he tells us how grace and behavior
is connected. The way we live can make our message look good. Or, if we aren’t
careful, it can make it look bad. If
our behavior is bad, it will give people a reason to reject the gospel.
Back in the 1990s, when we as a church
began to teach the gospel of grace, some people were alarmed. Oh, if you preach
grace too much, then people are going to start committing adultery because they
think, “It doesn’t matter. God will forgive me anyway.” People were afraid of grace because they thought that it would
lead to more sin.
Paul tells us about that, too, in the same
chapter. He tells us that grace should not lead to sin – it should lead to good
behavior, and this good behavior can in turn lead people to grace. The gospel
teaches grace, and grace teaches us something about the way we live.
Let’s see how it works in Titus, chapter 2,
starting with verse 1:
Paul tells Titus, “You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.” As you may
remember, in chapter 1 he explains where Titus is and what he is doing: Titus
is on the Greek island of Crete, helping some new congregations get started
with some organizational structure and basic teachings. Earlier, Titus had been
like a trouble-shooter for Paul, helping straighten out the Corinthian
congregation after they had some serious problems. He was a trustworthy
substitute for Paul himself. Titus was acting as a temporary pastor for the
churches in Crete, but after he got them up and running, he would move on to
another region.
So Titus is supposed to preach sound
doctrine—teachings that are reliable and can be trusted. Paul then describes
what this will look like – verses 1 and 2: “Teach
the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in
faith, in love and in endurance.”
Titus is working with believers who have
already accepted the gospel. Now they need some guidance about their behavior. So
Paul mentions some basic guidelines for how they ought to live.
And then for women, Paul gives slightly
different advice, in verse 3: “Likewise,
teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers
or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.” Now, when we think of
an irreverent drunk today, we don’t
typically think of an older woman. In our society, older women are the ones who
are most likely to go to church, most likely to be religious and the most
likely to avoid alcohol. But this seems to have been a problem in first-century
Crete.
Today, Paul could easily point these
teachings at men, and they are really appropriate for all Christians. The advice he gives for older men is just as valid
for young men and women. He is simply describing good behavior.
Older women should be able to teach, he
said in verses 4 and 5: “They can train
the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled
and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands.”
It is interesting that Paul does not tell Titus to teach the young women
directly, but he asks the older women to them proper behavior. Maybe it just
wouldn’t come across very well for a man to be telling the young women to obey
their husbands and to stay busy at home. It would be better if older women gave
that kind of advice.
Paul is giving pretty normal advice for
women in first-century society. In different societies, the advice might be a
little different. What is especially interesting here is the reason that Paul gives for women to do
these things: “so that no one will
malign [or speak badly of] the word
of God.” Paul wanted women to perform their typical social roles so they
did not cause people to speak evil of the gospel message.
Now, some differences of behavior might be
OK in themselves, but if they were frowned on in that particular society, they
might cause people to close their minds to the gospel before they even heard
it. They would want to have nothing to do with some new religion that caused
people to abandon their normal place in society.
Well, Christianity has several beliefs and
practices that unbelievers don’t necessarily like, and we can’t always do the things that they want us to do. But in many customs,
we can be normal, and this is what
Paul wants. For example, it’s not a sin to use your shirtsleeve to blow your
nose. But if we do that, people are going to be disgusted by our behavior, and
they won’t want to listen to what we say about Jesus, no matter how true or
good it is.
So, if people are going to criticize us,
let it be for essential matters, for avoiding sin, and not for behavioral
differences that are not really required. If we break social customs, people
will be more skeptical about everything we say, so we want to keep our
differences to a minimum. We want to be as normal as we can.
Why? Because Paul is concerned about how
our behavior might affect the gospel. If citizens of heaven have disgusting
behavior, then people aren’t going to want to be part of the kingdom of heaven.
“I can’t see Jesus,” people might say, “but I can see the people who claim to follow him, and I have no desire to
be one of them.” Rightly or wrongly, people judge the gospel by the way we
live.
Next, Paul turns his attention to young
men, in verses 6 and 7: “Similarly,
encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an
example by doing what is good.” Here Paul reminds Titus that he teaches not
just with his words, but also in what he does. He must have
self-control, and he should do good works.
Even the way that he teaches is important: “In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech
that cannot be condemned.” Integrity means practicing what you preach, it
means obeying the advice you give to others. And he is supposed to have
soundness of speech – that doesn’t mean good grammar – it means giving good
reasons for what he says. It means explaining himself well, so that people
can’t say that he doesn’t make any sense.
Why? Here again, it is because our
reputation as messengers of the gospel is important: “So that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing
bad to say about us.” We are representing the kingdom of God, and we want
to put it in as good a light as possible.
Admittedly, it is not always possible. No
matter what we do, someone is going to disagree with our beliefs, but Paul’s
point is that we do not want to give any extra
reasons to dislike us. Similarly, Peter said that we should live such good
lives among the pagans that even though they accuse us of doing wrong, the only
thing they really see is good deeds (1 Peter 2:12).
Paul has mentioned old men, young men, old
women and young women. He now comments on yet one more social group, in verses
9 and 10: “Teach slaves to be subject to
their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them,
and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that
in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”
I find this advice to be particularly
interesting, because we now understand Christianity to be against slavery – but
Paul says nothing about that here. Instead, he advises slaves to be good
slaves, and says nothing about slavery itself being bad. He is telling them to
perform their social role well—but he is not necessarily saying that their social
role is good. Just because he tells the people to do something, doesn’t mean
that he is saying that everything about it is good – it might just be advice
that is good for that particular situation.
Slaves were an important part of the
first-century economy, and Paul does not want to encourage a slave rebellion.
If he did that, then everyone would say that Christianity was a threat to
social stability, a threat to the Roman empire, and it would bring the gospel
into disrepute.
But it’s not a sin to be a slave, so Paul
is saying that if you are one, you don’t have to rebel. Instead, you should try
to be a better slave, so that people will say, These people have strange
beliefs, they it does seem to have good results in their lives. Maybe there’s
something to it after all.
OK, slavery is wrong, but slave rebellions
are not. There’s a fine line here. It’s OK for ordinary people to try to outlaw slavery, but it’s not OK for us to
encourage slaves to revolt. There is a peaceful and a lawful way to change
society, and there is a wrong way to try to change society. If we fight evil by
using evil methods, then we are just exchanging one form of evil for another.
A situation that I think is similar today
is a dictatorship that oppresses poor people. Some Christians encourage the
people to rebel – they call this liberation theology, but sometimes the
rhetoric sounds more communist than it does Christian. Now, it is good for
Christians – especially those who have power – to try to change society, but I
think that Paul’s advice would be that we do not encourage poor people to use violence to try to overthrow the
government. That would bring the gospel into disrepute.
We want people to know that oppression is
wrong, but we also want them to know that the gospel does not encourage
oppressed people to become the new oppressors. We want to make the gospel
attractive, not to make it threatening.
OK, there is another way we can apply what
Paul says to our lives today, and that is in the area of employment. Modern
employment is a lot different than ancient slavery, largely in the fact that we
can quit our jobs if we want to. It might not be smart, but at least it’s
legal.
So what Paul is saying is that we should
consider our behavior on the job, and whether our job performance will make the
gospel look good, or whether it will make the gospel look bad. If we treat our
co-workers rudely and then try to share the gospel, it’s not going to work very
well. If they see us stealing materials, or getting paid for time we didn’t
work, then that will reflect negatively on the gospel, too.
This doesn’t mean that we can’t join a
union, or that we can’t participate in a strike. Would the boss think that we
went on strike because the gospel
told us we should? Probably not – that kind of behavior might not affect the
boss’s opinion of Christianity one way or the other. But in some situations, it
might make a difference, and each of us has to make our own decision on it.
But on a day-to-day basis, Paul is saying
that believers should perform their jobs well. We should be cooperative,
trustworthy, and respectful to people above us and people below us and people
beside us.
Why? To make the gospel attractive, so that
people will be more likely to listen to what we say about Jesus. We are
citizens of heaven, trying to attract people into the kingdom of heaven. The
way we live, the way we work, the way we treat our families and neighbors, all
makes a difference in whether people are going to listen to anything we say
about our King and Savior.
Now, these rules could be turned into a new
form of legalism, if we took them out of context. But Paul is not saying that
we have to do these things in order to be saved. His logic is really that we do
these things so that other people
might be saved, so that other people
might be more willing to listen to the gospel.
Paul set the example here: When he was in
Corinth, for example, he gave up some of his rights so that he did not cause
any offense, so that people didn’t get turned off by his behavior. Paul is
advocating something similar here: Christianity does not mean pushing for all
of our rights. It means giving the gospel priority in our lives. The gospel
does not give us permission to live however we want. Rather, it calls us to
imitate Christ, to give up privileges when it can help other people be saved.
Why should Titus teach people to be
well-behaved for the sake of the gospel? In verse 11, Paul gives a theological
reason. The connection is hidden in the first word, “for.” That word “for” means that he is giving a reason for what he
has just said, and the reason he gives is this: “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all
people.” Salvation is available to everyone – and it is available on the
basis of grace.
So the idea is that Titus should teach good
behavior on account of the gospel because that
message is good news for anyone and everyone around us. Salvation is for
your supervisor, and for your neighbors, and for your customers, and for your
families. So we need to be thinking about the kind of example we are setting
for the gospel.
Now Paul is assuming that our faith in
Christ is evident to everyone. He is assuming that we are going to be sharing
the gospel. Our behavior is going to reflect on the gospel because people
associate us with the gospel. He is
assuming that the people will not keep their faith a secret, but will be
willing to share it.
Paul also says something interesting about
grace, in verse 12. He tells us that grace “teaches
us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live
self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” Grace—if we
understand it correctly—teaches us to reject sin, and to do good. Grace is not
permission to sin—it teaches us to avoid sin, and to have good behavior. Because God has saved us by his grace, we want other
people to be saved, too, and we change the way that we live in order to help
people accept the gospel and become citizens of heaven.
Thankfully, grace does more than just teach
us. It does more than just telling us rules to live by. Grace also gives us
strength to be able to do it. God graciously gives us the ability to do what he
wants. As children of God, we want to be like the Son of God, but we cannot do it on our own strength. As citizens of
the heavenly kingdom, we want to be like our King, but we cannot do it on our
own strength. It is only by God’s grace that we can have the kind of
self-control and love that Paul is calling for.
Paul is telling us a good way to live, as
he says, “in this present age,” but the rewards for this way of life are not
necessarily experienced in this age. Sometimes we get persecution instead;
sometimes we make sacrifices and don’t receive any rewards, because this world
does not work the way it ought to.
Therefore, verse 13, “we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God
and Savior, Jesus Christ.” We are waiting for the return of Christ and the
resurrection, and the reward. We have to remember our future, in order to make
the sacrifices that are sometimes necessary as we live as citizens of heaven,
even while living as citizens of human governments as well.
He also reminds us of what Jesus has done
for us, in verse 14: He “gave himself
for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that
are his very own, eager to do what is good.” Yes, he redeemed us from sin,
he forgives our sins. But Christ has a purpose for us beyond that: He wants to purify us, to eliminate the sin in our
lives, to eliminate in us everything that causes pain and suffering for other
people, and to create in us a desire for good behavior. That is the mission
that Jesus has in our lives, and that is the mission that we have as citizens
of heaven, living here on earth.