This sermon started out as a valiant attempt to cover the whole epistle at once. I quickly realized that was too tall an order. In the process, however, I was deeply impressed by three glorious “peaks” in the epistle, where Paul zooms out to view the whole marvelous picture, and it was quite a curious thing how the same word showed up on each “peak”....
Today I want us to look together at three glorious “mountaintops” or “peaks” in Paul’s epistle to Titus. These three peaks open up to us the heart of the apostle. They describe his understanding of all reality, they tell us what he understands as the central significance of everything that exists. Everything else that Paul writes in this epistle flows out of this central understanding. Let’s look at each of these peaks individually.
(Read 1:1-4)
To me, the central word in this part is “hope”, and the central phrase is “the hope of eternal life”. If you took out that phrase, then this whole part would lose its sense.
As Paul puts it, the hope of eternal life serves as the base for faith and knowledge. Paul says we have knowledge of the truth. Of what truth, exactly? Of the truth that eternal life is found in our Savior Jesus. Paul says that we have faith. What kind of faith, exactly? Faith in the Savior Jesus; we believe in him as Savior, as Redeemer of our souls, as the Lord of life. Both this knowledge and this faith rest on the hope of eternal life. Hope is our expectation, and all our expectation is completely wrapped in what we know and believe about Jesus. We entrust all our expectation to him because we know who he is.
This hope of eternal life is the gift of God, the greatest gift which changes everything. This gift changes our past, our present and our future. Therefore, this gift has to be announced, as Paul says in verses two and three: God promised this hope, and at the right time revealed it, and appointed Paul, and many others, to announce it to the world. It has to be announced precisely so that it can change everything for as many people as possible. This gift of hope is the meaning of life, and people who don’t know about the gift don’t know the meaning of life. This is why Paul talks about how God has now brought His word to light and made Paul a proclaimer of it.
And so, the key word in this first part is “hope”, the key phrase is “the hope of eternal life”, and this hope undergirds our faith and knowledge. This hope is the news which the apostle proclaims. For the apostle, the destiny of the world is defined by this hope. And, yes, the spiritual maturity of the Christian is also defined by this hope – why? Because, as Paul explains, this hope undergirds knowledge of truth, and knowledge of truth leads to – what? To godliness. If I lose hope, then I stop knowing the truth, and if I stop knowing the truth, I cannot live in a godly way.
So you see, these thoughts are not abstract or “philosophical”. They’re terribly practical. Our hope will define our behavior. If our hope is true, then we’ll have a deep desire to live in correspondence to it. And to know more and more about it. We will love that hope, because we love the Source of that hope, our Lord Jesus Christ. These are the principles of reality. They lead to many practical issues and applications, in the areas of behavior, of church leadership, of doctrine and order in the church. And this epistle is a very practical epistle with concrete instructions on order, on how to appoint leaders, on teaching, on family life, on relations with government and society, etc. But– all those things means absolutely nothing if you take away that hope. And when Paul writes his many instructions, it’s all aimed at one goal: that the hope of eternal life might continually grow greater and deeper and more glorious and spread to more and more people until the day of Jesus Christ’s appearing. This is the light in which in we can understand this epistle to Titus.
The next mountaintop I want to look at is found in 2:11-14 (read).
Well, you know what? The central word in this part is... hope! And the central phrase is “while we wait for the blessed hope”. But we can't understand what it means to wait for this blessed hope unless we really understand what the first statement in this part means: “For the grace of God has appeared to all men.” Paul is underlining the fact that this great event in history is directly relevant for literally every person in the whole world. The central question of life for every person can be put this way: “Do you know what happened?” That is, have you heard the news? Do you know what your life means? You can know what your life means only if you know what happened. Because what happened, at a concrete moment in history, precisely with this Person Jesus Christ, and in him, this reveals what your life means: “The grace of God has appeared to all.” The life of Jesus Christ, the feat accomplished by Jesus Christ, the word of Jesus Christ, the power of Jesus Christ, this is the “grace of God appearing to all” people in world history – concretely, personally.
People everywhere worry about who the next president will be, or what will happen to the economy, or who’ll win the World Cup. But the answers to any of these questions don’t change the fabric of the soul. They don’t transform you. But the “grace of God appearing to all” changes concretely the fabric of the soul, it bears life where there was no life. This grace gives, together with life, a hope that is totally intertwined with that life. This is a life lived in the blessed hope of His appearing.
Because this new life strives towards reunion with Christ, strives in sanctification, strives in expectation, strives in hope. This new life, born of grace, strives towards the fulfillment of Jesus Christ’s own desire: (v.14) “...to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.”
This desire, this goal, this hope of God, is inseparable from our hope. By God's mercy, His hope has become our hope. His hope is incarnated in our lives, through our behavior, in spiritual growth, in the revelation of the character of God’s Son in us. Yes, I know: these are intimidating words, because each of us realizes how far we still are from perfect Christ-likeness. But I want to say words of encouragement and comfort today: Hope, God’s hope, our hope in Christ, can’t do anything else but spur us on. It reminds us that there’s only one direction: forward, in Jesus. Forward to the fulfillment of “that blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Christ Jesus”.
And then we come to the third peak, in 3:4-7 (read).
It won’t surprise you that I find the central concept of this part in the last sentence: “...having the hope of eternal life”. This part talks about how each of us in Christ can testify from personal experience. Paul tells Titus, “You and I were just like all the others in the world who haven’t come to know Christ. You and I know, Titus, from personal experience what it means to be saved– saved by love, by God’s kindness. We know what it means to receive a gift that we could never even have dreamed of, that transcends comprehension.” (v. 3...) “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.” But... God saved us. This is what we were, but God saved us. We were foolish and hateful, but: “God saved us.” Astounding words. I trust that you have noticed the stark, dramatic absence of any transitional state or condition. The apostle doesn't say, “Yes, Titus, when you and I finally woke up and realized what wretches we were and decided to clean up our lives in a major reformation project, then God was finally happy enough with us to save us.” No. We were disobedient and deceived, but God saved us. No transitional stage, no merit, nothing earned. There's the richness of God’s mercy and kindness. He took our whole pathetic state in hand and resolved the issue Himself. We never had anything to offer by way of help in the matter, and correspondingly God didn’t wait around for it. He saved, He cleansed, He poured out His Spirit and made us new. Salvation is God’s glory, God’s praise, God’s credit.
And for our part, knowing that salvation is God’s accomplishment, we can hope to the very end. We can anticipate the ultimate accomplishment of God’s glorious work. The hope of the glorious conclusion of redemption is as strong as the perfection of God’s salvation is full. Now there’s a rather complicated idea, so let’s hear it again: the hope of the glorious conclusion of redemption is as strong as the perfection of God’s salvation is full.
Actually, we can say that in a much simpler way: God has done, God will do. And in this, as Paul writes to dear Titus, is all our hope of eternal life. The very same divine love that compelled Jesus to the cross in complete self-sacrifice is the love that now strives and strains forward to reunion with the redeemed. To the extent our spirits respond to what God has done, to that same extent our spirits thirst, in hope, for what God will do. And we’ll be able to deal with the multitude of issues in life in the power of the glorious gift, the hope of eternal life in the Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ.
