"Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ: for [κατὰ] the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, for [κατὰ] godliness, and for [ἐπί] hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior. To Titus, my true child in a common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior." - Titus 1:1-4
What is the mission of the God's people? The Apostle Paul provides the answer in Titus 1:1-4. Here Paul is writing to a younger leader named Titus, and he starts off with an unusually long introduction about his own personal mission--he's doing this because he is really "centering on the nature of gospel ministry" for Christians in general.[1] As Kenyan theology professor Samuel Ngewa writes, we are supposed to recognize in Paul's introduction that "we are called to the same task that Paul was."[2] So, what are the main themes of Paul's mission, and ours, as part of the people of God? The mission of God's people centers around three things: faith, godliness, and hope. Or, put another way: (1) telling people about Jesus; (2) living for Jesus; and (3) being people of hope.
FAITH: TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT JESUS
The first part of the church's mission is telling people about Jesus. Paul made it his mission to spread the Gospel to all of those who God might draw to himself. Or, as he put it in another passage, "I endure everything for the sake of the chosen people of God, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory" (2 Timothy 2:10).
Paul dedicated his life to this. He used to be a persecutor of the church who hated Jesus, and he might have even murdered some Christians (Acts 9:1; Galatians 1:13). But God met Paul in a powerful way and turned his life around. From that day forward no one could stop him from telling everybody he met about the mercy and grace that God had shown him through Jesus. Maybe you're reading this and you're the same way. Maybe you were happy with your life, doing your own thing. But then you had an encounter with Jesus and it was like taking your first sip of water and realizing for the first time in your life that you had been thirsty for years. Your life changed as a result of hearing the Gospel, or being around other Christians and realizing something was different about them. But either way, your comfortable life wasn't comfortable any more, and you realized that you needed Jesus in your life. Since then, you haven't been able to keep yourself from sharing the same hope that you found with others. Maybe you got to the end of your rope. You tried to do everything that the world offers to make you feel at peace. You got involved in charity; you traveled; you got involved in the groups, showed up to make a difference at the rallies, tried the drugs, separated yourself from the toxic people, and you said your affirmations in the mirror: "I am a positive and powerful person, I am a positive and powerful person." and none of it did anything! Some of it made things even worse. And then you met Jesus. And not everything was fixed, not everything was solved. But there was something there, some kind of peace or something, that just didn’t have any kind of explanation that you could put your finger on. And after that it was just very hard for you not to tell people about what Jesus had done for you.
Let me tell you about what Jesus did for me. I grew up being bounced back and forth between Winnipeg and Toronto, between my dad and my mom. My mother left my dad and I when I was eight months old. I landed in foster care for a couple of years because my father put my head through a wall when I was five. Winnipeg Child and Family Services released me back into my mom’s care at the end of that time, but she only stuck around for a couple of months and then left me back with my dad. I grew up pretty much exclusively around strippers and bikers. I got into a lot of fights, got expelled from a lot of schools, committed a few crimes that would still be ruining my life today except that I was counted as a juvenile offender—and then I met Jesus when I was 16. I was in the back of a youth center, showed up to a Bible study, and the guy there just opened up the Word of God and told me about Jesus. And at the end asked me if I wanted to pray. And I said sure, I didn’t know what he wanted to pray about. Maybe the peace of the world or something. But he started to say “repeat after me” and led me through a prayer of asking God to forgive my sins and help me follow him. And I prayed that prayer. And I’ll tell you, I don’t think I believed in God when I started that prayer. But when we finished, and it was my turn to pray in my own words, I really did. It was just like faith happened to me. Like something supernatural that I still can’t explain to this day. And after that I just told all my friends about Jesus. They thought I was crazy; I didn’t care. I went back to my school and apologized to everyone I had ever hurt or been awful to. Jesus has changed my life to the point where it just feels like there is no continuity between who I am now and who I was then. Stories about some of the things I did as a teenager just feel like a different person did them. So here’s my deal: I love Jesus. He changed my life. And I want to tell other people about him. So that’s pretty much what I’ve dedicated my life to.
That’s the first part of the mission of God’s people as the church: to be people who have put our faith in Jesus, who to tell other people about Jesus, so that they can put their faith in him too.
GODLINESS: LIVING FOR JESUS
The second part of the church's mission is living for Jesus. This is what the word "godliness" means. It means living like people who’ve been transformed by knowing Jesus. It means something a little more than just living a good moral life—though it is that too, but that’s a really narrow way of putting it. Godliness means that your whole life could be explained by what you think of Jesus. So Jesus is who you put your faith in (Titus 1:1). Jesus becomes the foundation for how you make decisions about what you think is good and truthful (also Titus 1:1). Jesus is where you go when you are restless and stressed out and just need to find peace (Titus 1:4). And Jesus is the one you look to as your savior (Titus 1:3,4), who died on the cross to save you from what you really needed to escape from, which was the weight of all your sin. And you run to him -not to a political party, not to a new relationship, not to a financial opportunity; at least not primarily- you run first to Jesus as your Savior, because he saves you from the thing that really matters. He doesn’t just save you until the next election, or the next season of life, or the next financial quarter. Jesus saves you for all eternity.
Godliness looks like having the kind of life that could only make sense if God was at the center of it. I have a confession to make: I still need to be reminded of this constantly. So I had a couple of interactions this week where I was running really busy, and tired, and trying to get a lot of things running all at once, and as a naturally shy person who’s gone through some things before, I started to get worn down. And on Thursday I asked God why I was starting to have a hard time having conversations with people and just kind of interacting, and I felt like God told me, it’s because I’m getting tired out from doing things out of my own ingenuity, and strength, and work ethic. And it’s because I’ve been looking at myself and my own performance too much as the solution for what my family and other people need, and of course that brings out some insecurity because they don’t actually need me, or any person, primarily—what they really need most can only come from Jesus. And so it’s my job to still work hard and to make sure we’re on track, but before those things it’s really my job to point myself and other people to Jesus. And once I realized that, I spent some time just praying and getting close to Jesus, and asking him to help me take my eyes off myself and put them on him so he could do the work in me that really matters. So is being shy, or occasionally awkward, or worn out a sin? No—of course not. I would never say that. But how that got dealt with in my life, where I took that to Jesus and asked him about it and he worked that out with me, and how that changed things in time for the next day where I had a great time talking with all kinds of people—that kind of change is the sort of thing where there was something in my life that was different that could only be explained by a relationship with Jesus. That’s godliness. It’s not morality. A lot of moral people -according to the world’s standard- are pretty godless. Godliness is a way of life that comes from a deepening relationship with God. Godliness is a way of life that comes from a deepening relationship with God. And that’s a big part of the mission of the church: not just to tell people about Jesus; we want to live for Jesus too.
HOPE: BEING PEOPLE OF HOPE
Third, the mission of the church is about being people of hope. In the Gospel, which is the good news about what Jesus has done, we have been given the promise of eternal life (Titus 1:2-3). John MacArthur -who’s been a pastor at Grace Community Church in Las Angeles for over 50 years now- says this:
“Eternal life is the pervading reality of salvation, and the hope of that life gives believers encouragement in a multitude of ways. It is an encouragement to holiness… The hope of eternal life gives encouragement for service… The hope of eternal life also gives encouragement to endure whatever suffering we may experience for the sake of Christ.”[3]
Where does this hope come from? In Titus 1:2-3 we’re told that this hope comes from God, who promised it “before the ages began”—literally “before time eternal." And then “at the proper time” he acted. God exists outside of time. He’s not bound by it. He can pick it up and look around at time the same as you or I could take pick up and take a look at a pen. But then this passage says that “at the proper time” God acted. The God who is not bound by time stepped down for you and me and made himself known in history. How amazing is that? And how did we get this hope? This passage only suggests the answer, when it says that God is our true Savior in Titus 1:3. And then it says that Jesus is our Savior (Titus 1:4). What’s Paul saying here? The God who is outside of time acted inside of time. The God who is our Savior came down as Jesus who is our Savior. They’re both mentioned together in the same breath as the single, true source of grace and peace. They’re both given the same titles, because Jesus is God. And although it’s not mentioned in this verse, we have the hope of eternal life together with God because Jesus took all of our sin and our guilt and our shame, and he nailed them to the cross in his body, where he paid the penalty that we deserved in our place, so that we could be clothed with his perfect goodness. So God has replaced our shame with his honor. He’s replaced our guilt with a declaration of his righteousness on our behalf. He took our shame and put it on himself so that he could give us his perfect holiness. And now he’s invited us into the hope of eternal life where we can dwell together with him in a place where the Bible says there is no sorrow, nor sickness, nor pain, nor crying anymore, for the old things have passed away, and behold, the new has come (Revelation 21:4. He has come to gather up his children to him in a place of perfect justice, and equity, and peace. As the people of God, part of our mission is to live and talk about the hope that only eternal life with Jesus can give.
So Paul’s mission, and our mission, is about telling people about Jesus so that they can put their faith in him; and our mission is to live godly lives for Jesus; and our mission is to be people of hope.
- Sean
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[2] Samuel Ngewa, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, Africa Bible Commentary Series, p. 327-328.
[3] John MacArthur, Titus, MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series, pp. 9-10.
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