Part 1: Living Priorities

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of pastoral ministry from Titus 2:1-3:11.

“You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. 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.

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Then 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, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good.

In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. 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.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who 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. These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.

Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men. At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone. But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

At several points in this series, I have drawn attention to the way the teaching Paul wants Timothy and Titus to undertake embraces not only the propositional content of the gospel itself, perhaps narrowly defined, but also how to live. That has been emphasized again and again, and now we read explicitly (2:1), “You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine,” and then a whole slew of very practical counsel.

In this last session, I thought it would be useful to survey one of these blocks. There are several of them in the Pastoral Epistles. I have chosen this one so we might ourselves gain a better grasp of teaching people how to live in the light of the gospel in chapter 2, verse 1 to chapter 3, verse 2 (this can be broken down in a variety of ways) and then how the gospel grounds our living in chapter 3, verse 3 to verse 11. We begin to look at it through the other end of the telescope, as it were.

1. How to live in the light of the gospel

The apostle begins with specific groups. Chapter 2, verses 1 to 10.

A) Older men

Verse 2: “Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.” In other words, they are to be free of overindulgence or self-promotion or foolishness or dissipation. They are to be self-controlled, respectable if you like, if that’s not too bourgeois, but also sound in faith, love, and endurance.

That’s an interesting threesome. You are aware, of course, very often in Paul the typical triad is faith, hope, and love. Everybody knows 1 Corinthians 13, but that shows up pretty often. Once in a long while, however, a fourth is added: faith, hope, love, and endurance in some sense. That’s what we find, for instance, in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1, verse 3 where we are told, after all, “We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Once in a while, as here, hope gets replaced by endurance, so it’s faith, love, and endurance. One can guess why. What is needed here now is the steadfastness and stamina that keeps pressing on precisely in the midst of confrontation and conflict. After all, these older men have more time to pursue these things. There is more time to read Scripture, more time to read books, more time to learn to pray, more time to work out love in service within the church.

It has to be said part of our duty as preachers is to recognize different ages and groups in any congregation are more susceptible to particular sins. If you’re in your late 20s or early 30s and still single, probably the particular pressures on you are going to look a little different than the pressures on a 28-year-old mother or father with three kids under the age of 5.

When you’re an old person, there are certain pressures on you, too. I knew that theoretically, and then my dad died, and I got his diary. Someday if the Lord gives me enough birthdays and I don’t have anything to do with my time, I’m going to edit my dad’s papers under the title Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor.

He wrote them half in English and half in French, depending on what was coming more easily that day, and that’s the way he quoted the Bible unless he was quoting in Greek and, on occasion, Hebrew. He flipped back and forth from language to language, from hymn to hymn, from reflection to reflection. He didn’t write them for anybody, but they were remarkably candid.

My mother died of Alzheimer’s. He nursed her for nine long years, and when she finally went, he started preaching again. By this time he was 78. He started serving and started visiting some more. When he was about 80, I found a note in his diary. “Merciful Father, save me from the sins of old men: too much looking backward, a tendency toward self-pity, whining because of aches and pains, the ease with which I now turn on the television. Save me from the sins of old men.”

It’s important for pastors, therefore, of any age to think through where the various groups in our church are and to teach them how to live, not because we’ve been there before. If we’re 36 we can’t really teach 80-year-olds, “In my vast experience I’ll tell you how to live,” but there are certain priorities you can lay out in the light of the gospel, aren’t there?

We have a certain responsibility to be a dignified Christian, sound in faith and in love and in endurance and to pass that on as a heritage to the younger ones coming along behind. “If I can help you with some reading or some things.… You have so much more time than some of our younger men who are holding down high-pressured jobs and four teenage kids. There are some things I’d really love for you to do in the congregation. Do you know the old widow whose shutters broke down this week in the storm? I wonder if you’d fix them.”

I sometimes read the blogs of these new cutesy churches where everybody is supposed to be under 26 and have earrings. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t give a rip whether a guy has earrings. One of the best secretaries I ever had was a guy called Charles who had earrings. I don’t give a rip. I start caring where it’s the only cutesy thing that’s acceptable and where they’re all proud that everybody in their congregation is under the age of 30.

I know in some parts of the world the surrounding environment has a whole lot of DINKs. That’s the way much of Manhattan is. At Redeemer Presbyterian the average age is something like 33 or 34 because the whole metropolitan area, in terms of people actually living there, are DINKs (Double Income, No Kids). That’s what they are. That’s the profile, but where the profile of the surrounding area, in fact, includes a range of ages, why is it that we’re hearing more and more Christians say, “We really ought to be cross-racial in our churches,” but there aren’t many saying, “We ought to be cross-age wise in our churches”?

Oh, yeah, there are some elderly folk who jolly well need to learn a few new hymns now and then and move over for some of the young people and give them space and let them grow. There are also some young people who ought to remember there are some senior saints who have walked the face of this planet for 60 years and they have a few things to teach them about what it means to be devoted to Christ.

Part of that is to be worked out in the context of the local church, so teach your men that. You’re going to find a lot less hassle from the young people if some of the older men are coming alongside as encouraging mentors and prayer warriors and helping them out rather than sitting back and criticizing because they’re in another generation and another class. It doesn’t just happen. You teach them that.

B) Older women

Verses 3 and 4a. “Likewise,” it begins. There’s a certain similarity of principle, an appeal to maturity, to respectability, to responsibility. In some ways, the particular descriptions that are given here reflect the particular tendencies and problems and challenges of the time. I’ll give you evidence for that in a few minutes.

These are not meant to be exhaustive lists of all that you teach women or all that you teach men. That’s not the point at all. These are representative lists that have to deal in particular with the particular problems of that particular time and place in Crete. Yet, the way the argument works is still important.

“… not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine …” It was well-known, especially in the upper levels of status in the Greco-Roman Empire, there was an awful lot of alcoholic addiction around. Add to that freedom, retirement.… They spend all their time getting together and gossiping. Even the Christians are going around gossiping with one another.

No. They, too, positively should help to train a new generation, not only with the specifics in verses 4 and 5 as we’ll see, but the principle itself goes much, much farther. Many of these women have been through grief. Until very recent times, there weren’t many mothers who had reached old age without having lost a child or two or three or four. Who’s going to help the young ones the first time they face it?

Bringing up their kids? We have some young women and young men today, genuinely converted, and now they have children. They don’t have a clue about literature. They don’t know what children’s books are out there. They don’t what Christian books and they don’t know what pagan books are out there. My wife has lists and lists and lists for kids of various ages of books to read.

And then, supposing the woman has been through some tough stuff.… I have to tell you my wife has become an angel of mercy to two or threescore of women with the most acute cancer. She has lost some. She has helped others through it. It’s not just sort of spiritual talk. There are a lot of things when you go through the worst of it, and she had everything go wrong that could go wrong. There are a lot of things you don’t just pick up in medical books or from doctors or anything. You just don’t.

She was allergic to all the antinauseants. One of the things that produced was endless itch. We know what works. None of the doctors told us. We found out because she had some major problems along the same lines when she was pregnant, and we found oatmeal baths are fantastic, and every time we recommended it to somebody going through similar things, the itch was taken away.

She made notes on all of these things. I have them on my computer. We readdress them and revise them. Then we started making notes for the men whose wives had breast cancer, what that does to their sex lives. Supposing she has an amputation or two, what does that do? Who’s going to talk about this stuff? Where do you teach people how to live?

One of the most moving experiences we had this past year.… A couple in our church invited us over to their place for a meal. They said they wanted to talk to us about something. I thought, “Oh, boy. Another problem.” We got there. This was a couple who my wife, in particular, and myself, to some extent, had nursed through this cancer business three or four years before.

We had a lovely meal together. Then what they said was, “Because you have helped us, we want to help somebody else. The long and the short of it is we want to set up a quarter of a million fund with the interest going to help students, anyone you designate, get a free education at Trinity so that it’s an open fund, world without end.” That came about because my wife had cancer and because she has become an angel of mercy, teaching other people how to live and die.

It can be the most mundane stuff, can’t it? “Let 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. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children …” There are both Greco-Roman and Jewish sources that say if a woman really does love her husband, she’s a very, very extraordinary wife. There was a lot of sense of duty and obligation. There wasn’t a formulation of love in many ancient marriages.

Paul insists this will be the norm in the church, and you can teach people how to live like that. Of course, in some of these instances, there are large theological principles behind them all. “… to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” Paul has some much broader principles where he works some of that sort of thing out in the typology between Christ and the church as well as in Ephesians 5. I don’t have time to go through each of these ones in detail, but they are things to be passed on to a new generation, aren’t they?

C) Younger women

Verses 4 and 5. They should be bound up with the older women, learning from them the things discussed above.

D) Young men

 Verses 6 to 8. The way this particular one is focused, instead of dealing with the young men’s obligation in marriage to love their wives, for example, and things like that which are certainly taught elsewhere by the apostle.… The way this one is focused here suggests the young men in this case were at the forefront of the opposition that was developing in Crete.

Because what Titus is here told to teach them in particular is not only the truth of the matter but in such a way that the quality of his integrity, the carefulness of his answer, the way he responds will shut their mouths, as it were, by the sheer attractiveness and persuasiveness of his life. Do you hear that?

“… the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.”

E) Slaves

Chapter 2, verses 9 and 10. What is stressed here is just because they’re Christians doesn’t mean their slavery automatically comes to an end, and in whatever place they are in life, they had better act with integrity. That means respect for their masters, not pilfering anything. They are eager to be trusted, to be trustworthy, not unlike Joseph in the Old Testament.

We are told the Lord was with him, and the way that was manifested was that he became so utterly trustworthy the master or the prison warden came in due course to invest a lot of confidence in him.

There are other groups not mentioned here, and even these groups are not meant to be exhaustive summaries of all these groups are responsible for. Rather, what is chosen here is necessarily dictated by the peculiar pressures of Crete, and I suspect, by the pressures of the particular heresies you find in both Timothy and Titus.

That is, what I described on the first day, an over-realized eschatology that means people think they’re free from cultural obligations and responsibilities and family responsibilities and so forth which begins to change biblical roles in anticipation of a new heaven and a new earth when there won’t be marriage or giving in marriage, when things will be very, very different.

It has to be said there are a lot of other things Paul says to each of these groups and to other groups that are not mentioned. For example, with respect to slaves, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul also says, “You mustn’t forget your freedom. By all means, get it.” Here, no mention is made of masters.

Probably they are not the heart of an over-realized eschatology here, but certainly elsewhere, Paul has a great deal to say about masters. In a book like Philemon, the groundwork of transformation that ultimately destroys slavery is put out. You start treating a slave as a brother, as the apostle himself, and sooner or later, you start undermining the entire institution without bloodshed.

Then husbands, of course, are addressed very powerfully in Ephesians 5. “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the church.” Do you know what that means? That means self-sacrificially and for her good. That’s how Christ loved the church: self-sacrificially and for the church’s good.

Before you lay on all the responsibilities of the wife, you must always ask yourself, “What precisely am I sacrificing for my wife for her good? How does my love for her serve passionately to advance her, to serve her, to do her good, to promote her well-being and interests? What do I cheerfully, gladly, and repeatedly give up so I can serve her and that for Christ’s sake?”

That’s merely what it means to follow Jesus as a husband. There’s much more. Do you see? The question we must ask ourselves is.… How much of our teaching specifically thinks through teaching our believers how to live? Paul clearly sees this as an important component for Titus and Timothy as they undertake their ministry.

After these particular groups, in the second place, there are two paragraphs devoted to addressing the conduct of everyone. First, priorities of personal conduct in verses 11 to 14 and secondly, priorities of political conduct at the beginning of chapter 2. Verses 11 and following of chapter 2: “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.” That is, all without distinction, all these various different groups.

It’s not just the Jews only or to some elite from amongst the people. No, no. This grace touches all groups. “It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” This, in the light of the fact that we “… wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who 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.”

That text is going to be unpacked in the next chapter. The heart of it is simply the salvation Jesus brings is not merely forensic. It’s not that he came along merely to forgive us, although I hesitate to use the word merely in front of forgiving us; yet, I will. It’s not merely to forgive us but to transform us, to purify us, to change us in anticipation of what will be on the last day.

Since that is the case, then part of our ethical obligation flows from that. How can we claim we are saved at all if, in fact, we show no signs of being purified, of moving toward the goal for which we were ultimately saved? “These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.”

Likewise, in the political arena, the priorities for political conduct (chapter 2, verses 1 to 2), “Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.”

I suspect with the over-realized eschatology and approach to law and so on that I mentioned on the first day that some of the manifestations of this emerge, bubble forth, in a kind of slanting condescension toward political authorities. “They might have the clout of Rome behind them, but we’re the children of the eternal King. Christ is already reigning. He’s the real King, and we’re heading toward the new heaven and the new earth, aren’t we? We don’t have to give allegiance to this two-bit pagan monster. At the end of the day, Jesus alone is King.”

The church has wrestled again and again and again with the relationship between Christ and culture. When I was in Paris a few weeks ago, that was what I was lecturing on. I hope in due course to bring that material out in a book because we need to think it through in urgent terms. Let me mention a couple of things that spring to mind immediately.

On the one hand, the same Paul who wrote this writes in equivalent mode, Romans, chapter 13, where he insists not only that we’re to be subject to the powers that be, but that the powers that be themselves are ordained from God, so that if you are rebelling against them, you are rebelling against God himself.

Of course, in the light of biblical teaching as a whole, there are some footnotes carefully to put in. If the secular authorities begin to demand things that belong only to God such that to give in to them would be to defy God, then you have a choice to make. Then the rhetorical question must be answered only one way, “Is it right to serve God or human beings?”

Which is why, when you come to a book like Revelation, there is a strong opposition where the power of Rome is emerging in the power of the Beast that is brutal, and so on. Then there is direct confrontation, a refusal to bow the knee to the Caesar who demands everyone worship him. No. There is but one Lord. There is but one God. Then there is defiance of the civil authority. That reminds us of something very important.

Until the days of the Lord Jesus, virtually every culture around the world.… I don’t know of an exception. There may be one, but I’m not a competent enough ancient historian right across all the gamut of ancient histories to be absolutely sure, but so far as I know, not one … not one … had ever separated in some sense religion and state. They’re tied together in some sense or another, either in the theocratic institutions of ancient Israel under the covenant or the Hittites had their gods and the Persians had their gods and the Romans had their gods.

How it worked out varied a bit from place to place. When the Romans took over some new turf, they insisted the locals adopt some of the Roman gods from their pantheon and the Romans themselves would take on some of the local gods into their pantheon for the simple reason, again, if civil war broke out, you’d never be quite sure which god was on which side and it would sort of lower the tendency toward war. At the same time, you couldn’t separate what we could call church and state.

It’s Jesus who does that. In his famous utterance, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s,” that must not be misunderstood. This does not mean Jesus is introducing two absolute domains: “Some stuff is Caesar’s and some stuff is God’s.” That’s not what the text is saying at all.

It is saying the locus of the people of God is no longer a theocratic nation. It’s no longer a theocratic institution. It’s now an international community. That introduces a whole new set of cultural dynamics, so that, although God is sovereign over the whole, such that even when Caesar makes his pronouncements, at the end of the day, he’s nothing more than God’s Caesar. God still remains sovereign.

Yet, yet, yet, there is a subset of God’s sovereignty under which there is life, under which God’s lordship is acknowledged, and there this international community of his blood-bought, redeemed people acknowledge a different sovereignty even while recognizing the same God mediates his reign in the secular arena through all of these other voices, and it produces all kinds of tensions when Caesar begins to claims things that are not Caesar’s.

All you have to do is look closely at Islam to see the difference. Islam has no theoretical distinction between church and state. There is simply the ummah, the people. That’s all there is. The ummah live under the law. The role of the nation (this is a subsidiary role in Muslim theology) finally is to support Sharia, the law structure, which then nurtures and blesses and protects and benefits the ummah, the people. That means it’s very difficult to have any sort of notion of separation of church and state, and that generates another whole picture regarding freedom of religion.

These are things that have to be thought through again because they have emerged in many different faces in Western cultures. What freedom of religion looks like in Britain is different from what it looks like in France and is different from what it looks like in America and is different from what it looks like in Canada, owing to historical differences. Yet, there is a common rootage, not only in the enlightenment but in the teaching of Jesus himself, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Those things have to be thought through deeply all over again.

That’s a small excursus. I don’t have time to unpack that in detail tonight, but it’s that kind of theological structure that stands behind the apostles’ insistence that even though we acknowledge finally one King and one Lord and we belong to one people and our destiny is a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, and we have been redeemed, yet … yet, yet, yet … we remain obligated, save where the specific dictates of God’s revelation demand that we oppose him or contradict him, to bow and offer the appropriate reverence to every Caesar who comes along.

In other words, there is no appeal to a kind of eschatology that removes us from civil obligations. There are huge implications here for how we live in culture. Part of it is showing true humility, we are told, to all people (verse 2). This is part of teaching people how to live in the light of the gospel.

2. How the gospel grounds our living

Chapter 3, verses 3 to 11. Here the gospel briefly emerges in two ways: one longer way and one shorter way. First, the gospel in transformational terms (verses 3 to 8) and finally, the gospel in antithetical terms (verses 9 to 11).

A) The gospel in transformational terms

“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.” In the very niceness of our culture, in all of our courtesies and happy little civilities, we read a text like that and we think, “It’s a bit over the top.”

But I’ve lived in an awful lot of cultural units. I spent large chunks of my life in various universities. If you really want to see malice and jealousy and envy and shafting people behind the scenes, and all of that, all you have to do is get a really good graduate degree from a decent university.

I know there can be a certain camaraderie in a fire station. I know that. I worked in a post office as part of my growing up years. I also learned how to cheat as a postman and how to get off early and how to break the rules and how to get drunk. I had a lovely time in the Canadian Post Office. You just have to face the fact there is an awful lot of deception out there, stupid pursuits of silly pleasure that bring no real joy, everybody carrying a front.

God help us. Those things happen in the church, too. They’re not supposed to. The church is supposed to be the community where there is candor and mutual encouragement and forbearance and forgiving and love and truth and integrity. Let me tell you, when the church is acting the way the church is supposed to act, it just stands out. It’s another cultural entity. It’s another unit. It just looks different. It’s countercultural.

When you have a church made up primarily of people who were converted from Christian families, the disparity might not be so quickly seen. Then you start praying earnestly to our heavenly Father that he will give you a whole lot of converts who are adults when they are converted. Boy, they’ll tell you about the difference.

“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared …” Isn’t that a nice way of putting it? Not simply when Christ appeared, though that’s true and not simply when salvation appeared, though that’s true, but kindness and love are personified in those great events.

Kindness and love are personified (they are embodied) in the incarnation, in the death of Christ, in his resurrection, in his ascension, in his vindication at the Father’s right hand. What is going on here is not brute theological reality alone but the very embodiment, the very embodied manifestation of the goodness, the grace, the mercy of God, and when they appeared, everything changed. When they appeared, he saved us.

Not long ago I was preaching on a passage in Matthew 27. “He saved others; himself he cannot save.” It got me to thinking through again what it means to say, “He saved me.” Before you read Matthew 27, you’re supposed to read Matthew 1 all the way to 27. You start reading Matthew 1, and already Matthew has introduced what he wants us to understand.

“You shall give him the name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus is simply the Greek form of Joshua which means Yahweh saves. “You shall give him the name Yahweh saves, for he will save his people from their sins.” The verb to save doesn’t mean that in our culture anymore, which is why it has to be explained.

If people think in fiscal terms, saving is what you do for your retirement. If they’re thinking in athletic terms, saving is what you do with a really good goalie. If they’re thinking in computer terms, it’s that which, if you fail to do it, you lose a lot of data. If you’re thinking in religious terms, you’re some sort of kook from the televangelism stuff where you’re either saved or not, and it looks corny and stupid.

But when Matthew introduces Jesus as Yahweh saves, he’s pointing a flag. “This is how you read the whole book. This is why he came. He didn’t come to win the exile. He came to save his people from their sins.” You read the whole book in that light. Why all the Sermon on the Mount?

You’re not only to understand how the kingdom dawns and comes and relates to the Old Testament, which is what the Sermon on the Mount is largely about, but we are so to live in the light of this that transparently we are leaving our sins behind in the light of this dawning new covenant because he came to save his people from their sins.

When you see the great redemptive, miraculous acts of chapters 8 and 9, each of them symbol-laden, it’s so we may know the power by which he comes to save his people from their sins and raise the dead. When he has the trainee mission in chapter 10, it’s because he’s preparing people to preach the gospel, because he came to save his people from their sins.

When you come to the parables in chapter 13, he’s explaining how the kingdom is not coming yet with a big bang, but it’s going to grow and expand and reach out, because he came to save his people from their sins. All the way to the very end in the Great Commission, because he came to save his people from their sins. That’s just the first book of the New Testament.

It ought to shape, you see, the way we think of what salvation is. It’s not just that we made a profession of faith so we’re saved, and it’s not just forensic justification, though it certainly not less than that. Salvation is the comprehensive category. He comes to save his people from their sin.

Anyone, therefore, who claims he or she is saved and still is utterly ensnared and enchained by sin.… This is a contradiction in terms, isn’t it? Isn’t that what 1 John, likewise, says? In other words, he comes to save us from all the stuff mentioned in verse 3. “We were foolish and disobedient and deceived and enslaved, full of malice and envy and hatred. But he saved us.” That is, from all of these things.

He didn’t do so because we’re particularly worthy or because we want it. No, no. It’s not because of righteous things we have done but because of his mercy. How did he do it? “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously.”

That phrase has been understood in two principle ways. You’re going to need to follow this closely in the text to follow it. It can be understood as two steps. He saved us (here’s the first option) through the washing of rebirth (step one) and through the renewal of the Holy Spirit (step two). That can produce various kinds of two-step soteriology.

In Catholicism, bound up, for instance, with baptism (step 1), the washing of rebirth and confirmation, (step 2) the renewal of the Holy Spirit, but there are other polarities that are possible. The problem with this is the two terms themselves (rebirth and renewal) are so closely tied together it’s difficult to see on what ground they should be separated. There are syntactical reasons as well. I’ll leave those aside.

The second option is to read it like this: He saved us through the washing that produces rebirth and renewal by the operation of the Holy Spirit. That is, that washing being by the operation of the Holy Spirit. I repeat. Through the washing that produces rebirth and renewal (that’s how he saved us) brought about by the operation of the Holy Spirit.

There are some, even with that reading, who want to see an immediate reference to baptism. In my view, it’s not more than a distant secondary overtone, but that’s another debate I won’t get into here. All of this is the result of the Holy Spirit, then, poured out, for otherwise, we would not be saved, and this Holy Spirit is generously poured out on us, we are told, through Jesus Christ.

All that is secured for us is secured for us by Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is poured out upon us because of what Jesus secured in his cross and resurrection and exaltation. All that we have of this life and of the life to come, of eternity to come, of a new heaven and a new earth, our resurrection bodies, the forgiveness of sins, of the communion of the saints and not least, all that the Holy Spirit gives us in the conviction of our sins, in the washing of regeneration and renewal, is brought about through Jesus Christ. All of it comes from his triumph.

“… so that, having been justified by his grace …” Declared just before him purely of his grace as the Spirit is poured out by his mercy. “… we might become heirs …” That is, heirs of God which, in first-century terms means you act like God. An heir is not just someone who gets God’s stuff but acts like God, acts like God’s Son. “… having the hope of eternal life.”

That is, the final culmination of this salvation that has been secured for us, the triumph of eternal life in all of its consummated splendor. In case we haven’t caught this summary as basically a summary of the gospel, Paul drops in his seventh “this is a trustworthy saying.” What’s the point of all this in his argument?

“This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.” If you grant for a moment so comprehensive a view of salvation, anything that breaks out the obligation to do what is good, to leave sin behind, to turn to God, to love him with heart and soul and mind and strength, is simply a denial of the very nature of that salvation in the first place. “These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.”

B) The gospel in antithetical terms

We’re back now to the heresy we began this series with in chapter 1 of 1 Timothy. “But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.”

This raises some fundamental questions about the nature of church discipline. It is important to say in passing the whole of these three epistles taken together is a powerful witness against any view that says church discipline is excommunication or nothing. Sometimes when we ask if somebody is under church discipline, we mean, “Have they been booted out yet?”

But the whole point is both Timothy and Titus have been urged to criticize, rebuke, encourage, correct, appeal to, instruct, warn, and admonish right through. Supposing you have somebody who really is absolutely determined to go another route, when does excommunication become the last step, the final step?

As far as I can see in the New Testament, there are only three categories of sin where excommunication is applied. First, major moral defection, as in 1 Corinthians 5. Secondly, major doctrinal defections, where people are disowning, denying, fundamentals of the faith that are bound up with the very nature of salvation. Then the apostles want them out, whether they go out by themselves or they’re squeezed out, which is presupposed, for example, in 1 John.

“They went out from us because they never really were of us. If they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but their going showed they were not of us.” Likewise, Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians, wants certain false teachers out because they’re teaching a false Jesus. There’s a fundamental doctrinal problem. Thirdly, deep-seated, persistent, loveless divisiveness. That’s what’s at stake here, isn’t it?

“Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them.” It seems to me these three fundamental areas that finally demand excommunication are exactly the mirror of the three fundamental tests of authentic Christianity you find in 1 John: a doctrinal test (in that case, the particular test bound up with the confession of Jesus as the incarnate Christ), the moral test (doing what Christ commands), and the social test, the love test (genuinely loving the brothers and sisters for Christ’s sake).

God help us. We all make mistakes somewhere along the line, and we might get some little bits and pieces wrong in our doctrine, and we’re not always as obedient when we should be, and we still have to come back to the cross. The church ought to be, must be, and at its best, genuinely is the most amazingly forbearing community.

But where you have persistent, stubborn, willful commitment to any of these public sins, the biblical mandate is final steps of confrontation and excommunication. Calvin was not wrong to say church discipline is the third mark of the church. So, brothers and sisters in Christ, the last line: “Grace be with you all. Amen.”