Book of Titus - Ch. 3, v. 4

Park Meadows Church

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We're still in Titus chapter 3, and we are all the way up through verse 3 at this point.

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And we'll read through it once more because it's very important.

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We have, as is the case in a number of passages in this book that we've been going through, an argument that spans a number of verses.

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In some cases, it's literally one flowing sentence that may be three or four verses long.

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And this is another case. And so we go back to the beginning of Titus chapter 3, and Paul is telling

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Titus to then tell his congregations to put in mind, put them in mind, or to remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work.

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And then he kind of shifts to their fellow citizens to speak evil of no man, to be not fighters, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men.

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And then last week, we get to verse 3, and we see that Paul then begins to give us the foundation for why we obey the words in verses 1 and 2.

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He says, For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, or at one point foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living, in a continual sense, in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.

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And so Paul reminds us quickly, and this is very important for us to do.

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There's a great biblical balance in remembering what our previous condition was so that we can constantly be reminded of the grace that saved us and that it wasn't of ourselves, so that we don't get haughty, so that we don't get prideful.

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There's a biblical balance between remembering that and not ever being succumbed to false guilt over sins that have already been forgiven, sins that we have already confessed to the

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Lord, and things like that. So it's not, when Paul says things like this, it's not like he's telling us to stew in our own guilt and shame and all of these types of things.

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There are certain sects of religious movements, factions of different parts of even

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Christianity, so -called, that hones in on a lot of that type of thinking, and it can be very dangerous.

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And of course, there's also the opposite end of that spectrum, where people don't ever think about their sin at all and just are cool with everything.

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So again, there's a biblical balance here. We need to remember what our previous condition was, not to be succumbed to self -shame, but to remember, wait a second, we were like this once ourselves.

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We were sinners in need of a Savior too. We needed mercy just like these people need mercy.

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That's the point that Paul was getting at, and of course we looked at that in detail last week.

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So then we get through to verse 4, and the argument continues, and he is reminding us again of why we need to be obedient to the first two verses, the opening verses of this chapter.

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He says in verse 4, but after that, after all of the sins that we ourselves were indulging in prior to salvation, after that, the kindness and love of God, our

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Savior, toward man, appeared. So, like we've mentioned previously,

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Paul, continuing in verse 4, and he will keep moving through for a number of verses doing this, he is building upon the basis for why we should be obedient Christians, why we should obey verses 1 and 2 specifically, but obviously this is the basis for all obedience as believers.

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The basis is God's mercy toward us. When you look at verse 3, Paul gives us just a very quick, abrupt list of seven specific vices, seven specific sins that we ourselves were once taking part in, and not, we mentioned this last week, but it's not like every now and then we messed up a little bit.

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No, he says we were living in malice and envy, in the continual present active sense, and so it was a lifestyle.

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It's who we were prior to our conversion, and so it's because of God's mercy and his mercy alone that we were able to come out of that.

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In verse 3, he reminds us of the condition we were saved from. We were slaves to our own sin.

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We were living continually in malicious wickedness. That's what malice is. It's wickedness to the nth degree, and this was kind of Paul's way in verse 3 for priming the pump, so to speak, for delivering what will be his ultimate argument from verses 4 through 8, and it'll take us some time to get through all four of them, or I think it ends in verse 8.

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Verses 4 through 8, maybe verse 9. It'll take us some time to get through all of those because what we will find pretty quickly here is that some of the deepest theological truths we have in all of Scripture are found right here in the middle of or near the end of this little epistle in just a very brief number of verses and things like that, and so verse 3 was getting us ready to be impacted and to see the potency of what is coming in verses 4 through 8, and so once more, the basis for our obedience as Christians to God, to our civil leaders, to all those who

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God puts over us is God's mercy toward us. So once more in verse 3, we ourselves also were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusted pleasures, living in malice, and envy, hateful, and hating one another, but after that is how the sentence continues.

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But after all of those things that we were experiencing, something miraculous happened, which

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Paul will expound upon in verse 5. We'll look at that in just a minute. But it was motivated.

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The miraculous thing that took place was motivated by a couple of specific attributes of God, two specific attributes of God, without which the people that are in verse 3, which was us, would have been without hope.

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So you look at the people group in verse 3, which are believers post -conversion, but being reminded of what we were before conversion, that group of people, which includes all of us in this room, would have been without hope if it weren't for the two attributes that Paul now shares in verse 4.

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Let's look at the first one. It says, but after that, but after the sins that we were living in continually, kindness and love of God.

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The kindness and love of God. Kindness is basically the Greek word that is referring to the moral goodness of the person.

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It carries the connotation of gentleness, and moral goodness, and having integrity as well.

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And so God, due to the fact that He had previously made a promise to make the sins of His people white as snow, and we have this promise all the way back in Isaiah chapter 1, in the opening chapter of that massive prophecy.

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He promised that He would make His people white as snow, though it's like scarlet. It will be in the future white as snow.

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Though it is like crimson, it will be in the future like wool. He made that promise, and because He made a promise, because He can't lie, as we learned in the opening verses of Titus.

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God cannot lie. He is immutable in His character, in His essence. He can't change.

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If He makes a promise, it must be kept on the basis of His own character. He cannot change once He has made a promise.

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It is because of that that He had the moral right to act in history in a saving way, even toward a people that didn't deserve it.

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And that's what grace is all about. It is salvation for a people that were damned and deserved the damnation because of their offenses toward their

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Creator, and yet they were saved anyway. And so we see this kindness, this moral goodness come and appear to men that needed a

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Savior, that needed salvation. And again, He was morally correct to do so because of the promises that He made.

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He actually put it on Himself to act in history toward these people.

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It's not like He was thinking about it and then decided at the last second, okay, I'm going to save a remnant. No, this was the plan all along, and it was the moral thing for Him to do because of His own constraints that He put on Himself, that being a promise that He could not break.

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I will make their sins white as snow. Now, the next attribute of God that we see here, and this is a big one, and this is one that we could spend weeks upon weeks talking about.

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In fact, we are kind of doing that in our Wednesday night Bible studies as we're going through the fruit of the Spirit. We're talking about love right now.

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But what we have to remember, it says, But after that, the kindness and love of God our

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Savior toward man appeared. Love, as we know, has a number of different Greek terms that can be used to refer to love, and they all can carry different connotations and things like that.

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The attribute of God, when we talk about the fact that God is love, it's the whole package.

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It's all of it. So He is agape. He is phileo. He is eros. He is the one we're about to look at in a second.

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And so even though the apostles will make distinctions sometimes, we have to realize, yes, this is an attribute.

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He is the fullness of love. But sometimes a specific Greek term will be used to highlight a portion of it, and Paul does that right here.

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Because the word love here, when it says the love of God appeared toward all men, that's not agape. It's not phileo.

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It's the Greek term philanthropia, which is where we get the word philanthropy from.

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It's not agape love. What it is is it is a benevolent love. It's a little bit more general. It's a benevolent love toward mankind.

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So there are contexts in which he is talking about the agape love maybe between him and a disciple,

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Jesus and a disciple, or him toward his people. And, of course, this is a reference toward his people as well in a more broad sense.

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But what Paul is doing here is he's essentially playing off of the same exact idea that he gave us back in chapter 2, verse 11, when he says,

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For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. What was the preceding context there?

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He's talking to old women, young women, old men, young men, slaves, masters. He's talking to every type of people group that you can imagine in the preceding ten verses.

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And then he lets us know that his grace appeared to all of them. His grace appeared to the slave and the master, to the man and the woman, to the young and the old.

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And he's playing off that same idea here with the Greek term that he used when he says that the kindness and philanthropia of God, our

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Savior, appeared toward man. What's interesting, if you look at the Greek, if you look at the sentence of this verse in Greek, the word love and the word man later on are both coming from the same

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Greek word, philanthropia. It is specifically a term that has to do with a benevolence toward mankind as a race.

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And so he loved the human race, and therefore he committed the greatest philanthropic act that you could ever imagine.

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We talk about philanthropists. We talk about people that are doing humanitarian aid and things like that.

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Well, that's what God did here, except it was on a scale that was unimaginable.

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He literally saved the human race. The entire human race was on a fast course to paying for their own sins themselves, which, of course, is eternal condemnation.

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And what he did was he saved, he rescued the human race via his atoning work on the cross and dying for his people so that the human race could continue.

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And that's what Paul is referencing here. And the term, so we talk about philanthropy.

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Imagine, we think about, and of course, there needs to be distinctions made because there's some philanthropy that, you know, if you're working toward, you know, helping people getting gender -affirming care in Bosnia or something, that's not philanthropy.

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That is an agenda of a sort. But when you think about people that are, you know, think about the children that many of us in this congregation have helped in Uganda through Heinz Mission, what's it called?

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What's the mission? Heinz Ugandan Ministries. Thank you, Ash. That's philanthropy.

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That is, you know, we're paying for their education. We're paying for their food. We're paying for their supplies, their clothing.

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And Christians all over the globe are contributing to various works like that. That's philanthropy.

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And that is nothing more than a tiny picture of what God did in his ultimate work, his ultimate humanitarian aid when he saved the human race from total condemnation.

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And when you think about philanthropy, when you think about legitimate philanthropy, what do you do? You're looking at a person or maybe people, maybe a tribe of people that are in need of help.

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And you have pity on them and not in the negative sense. It's a legitimate, caring, compassionate pity where they are in a position where they need help.

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They're in a position where they cannot bring themselves out of that situation. So what do you do? That pity is a motivating factor for you doing the philanthropy, you doing the work, you giving the aid, you helping bring them out of that particular scenario.

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And so to have this philanthropy toward all mankind, it's referring to a pity that God had for man because of the state that mankind was in and bringing salvation to them.

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There's only one other time in the New Testament that this Greek term is used, and it's at the very end of Acts. And it says in Acts 28, 2,

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And the barbarous people, the barbarians on a particular island showed unto us no little kindness, for they kindled a fire and received us every one because of the present rain and because of the cold.

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The context here is Paul and those that were traveling with him were just shipwrecked, and they were rescued and brought onto this island with literal barbarians on the island, total pagans.

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They did not know the Lord. They did not know who these men were. They didn't know Paul. A little bit later,

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Paul is bit by a snake. He survives it, and they call him a god. And so they didn't have a recognition of who

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God was. They were about to through Paul's proclamation of the gospel. But the context is they're shipwrecked.

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They are rescued. They are brought in. It's raining. It's cold. And these barbarous people showed us no little kindness.

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That means they showed an unusual, extraordinary philanthropy. They had pity on them.

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They showed kindness toward them because of the pity that they had. It's the same

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Greek term that's used here in Titus. So that's the connotation that is being brought out.

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Now, it's worth noting that this kindness and this love of God appeared.

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And this is another word that we can't ignore here. It's the same term I mentioned 2 .11

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a second ago. The grace of God hath appeared. The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.

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Again, we're talking about the human race. Paul, again, in 3 .4 is talking about the human race.

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Well, there's another callback to the same verse, and that is through the term appeared. It's the same term used in that verse when he says that the grace of God bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.

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It's the Greek term epiphaneo. Get the word epiphany from.

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I had an epiphany. We get it from this Greek term that Paul is using. When he says there is an appearing, it's where we would use the term epiphany.

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It's to turn a light on. When something appears, it's to turn a light on. It's to show upon something.

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And so this is the epiphany of God's grace, His kindness, His love to mankind.

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It's an epiphany of grace. It appears. It shows up. The lights are turned on. That is the connotation here with the terms that Paul is using.

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So it's the same term in chapter 2, verse 11. It's used again in chapter 3, verse 4.

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An appearing of these things. When you look at verse 3, it says, Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great

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God and our Savior Jesus Christ. It's a slightly different Greek word there for appearing, but it's the same root.

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What's the difference? In chapter 2, verse 11, and in chapter 3, verse 4, we are talking about something that has happened.

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In chapter 2, verse 13, it's talking about something that will happen. That being the second coming of our

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Lord. There will eventually be an epiphany of Jesus in the clouds. But there has already been an epiphany of grace, kindness, and love in the form of Jesus in His first coming.

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And in His sacrifice on the cross. Again, it's an epiphany of grace to mankind.

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Saving the human race. I want to mention also that just kind of looking at this verse somewhat quickly, you might wonder,

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How is it that these glorious attributes of God, that being His kindness, that being

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His love, How is it that it has appeared at the point in time that Paul is referencing, which would be post -cross.

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It would be in the incarnation itself. Jesus, God in the flesh, His sacrifice on the cross,

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His resurrection, and then the ensuing Holy Spirit coming. So that's what

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Paul is talking about. It has appeared in this form. The kindness and love of God. The ultimate sacrifice was made.

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When Paul says that, you might at first think, now wait a second. I've read the Old Testament, and I know that I see

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God's kindness and His goodness there too. So how is it that it wasn't that it appeared until Jesus, when we know these attributes of God pre -existed that.

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And it doesn't take long. It's an interesting thought experiment for a second. And then you can kind of start, you know, you get the wheels turning.

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And you can see that you might think of it in the sense that the Old Testament saints did understand these attributes of God.

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They did understand God's goodness and His kindness and even His grace. Even though they were under law, grace was still present.

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They understood all that. But it was largely anticipatory. They were looking forward to something.

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They were looking forward at these promises that are being made from Genesis 3 .15 all the way through Malachi.

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There are promises that are being made by Jehovah to His people. And because they understood that those promises would be kept.

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I mentioned a second ago in Titus, Paul tells us God cannot lie. Well, the prophet Samuel told us the same thing.

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So God's people have always known God can't lie. And Moses told us this too in Deuteronomy.

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He cannot lie. He will keep His promises. Therefore, we understand God's grace and His goodness and His mercy.

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Even though we haven't seen it in the person of Christ yet. But we know He's coming. We know a

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Messiah is coming. We know a Savior is coming. And so they understood these attributes. They were fully on display, but more anticipatory than realized or manifested in the person of Jesus.

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I want to read to you guys a quote from Calvin's commentary on this section of Titus. And it's a somewhat lengthy quote, but follow me here because it's really interesting.

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And he's talking about this idea of the Old Testament saints looking forward to the cross and seeing the attributes of God in that anticipation.

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Even though they didn't see the person of Jesus yet. And he begins this quote by asking a question, and it's kind of a lengthy question, and then he answers it.

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So listen to this for a second. He says, First it might be asked,

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Did the goodness of God begin to be made known to the world at the time when Christ was manifested in the flesh?

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For certainly from the beginning the fathers both knew and experienced that God was good and kind and gracious to them.

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And therefore this was not the first manifestation of His goodness and fatherly love toward us.

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The answer is easy. In no other way did the fathers taste the goodness of God under the law than by looking at Christ on whose coming all their faith rested.

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Thus the goodness of God is said to have appeared when He exhibited a pledge of it and gave actual demonstration that not in vain did

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He so often promise salvation to men. It is a customary way of speaking in Scripture that the world was reconciled to God through the death of Christ, although we know that He was a kind father in all ages.

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But because we find no cause of the love of God toward us and no ground of our salvation but in Christ, not without good reason is

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God the Father said to have shown His goodness to us in Him. So what

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Calvin is saying is that yes, the Old Testament saints absolutely understood the attributes of God that we understand now.

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But it was looking forward to the person of Jesus that would come and actually manifest these attributes in the most physical ways.

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Again, what Jesus did was He put all of the attributes of God in bodily form.

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He was fully man. He exhibited all of the divine attributes of God as a man so that we could see it, hear it, we could fellowship with Him.

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As the Apostle John says at the beginning of 1 John, we handled Him, we were there, we felt

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Him. This was real. There were acts of goodness and mercy and miracles throughout the

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Old Testament. The parting of the Red Sea obviously was a demonstration of His goodness and of His grace, but it culminated in the person of Jesus in the future.

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In the Old Testament, saints were waiting for that. They had the promise. They had the faith. Hebrews 11 tells us who they were looking forward to.

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And it was the man, Jesus, that we now look back at and know that presently He is there on His throne watching us as we speak, ruling and reigning, and is with us.

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Now, as we press into verse 5 here, we will see, I believe, Paul's specific meaning of the use epiphaneo.

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In other words, where we get the word epiphany, he's saying there was an appearing, there was an epiphany of these attributes, kindness and love.

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How did those appear? How did they show up? He's saying that they did. So now, verses 5 through 8, he is going to walk us through how that took place.

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Namely, in the moment that we were awakened by the gospel of Christ through the

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Spirit. When we were saved, when the Holy Spirit called us, when the

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Father called us, the Holy Spirit was drawing us, the Holy Spirit was awakening us, He was quickening us, we were literally enlightened.

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Remember the term epiphany. It was literally an epiphany. It was the lights being turned on.

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We were literally enlightened. It's not just kind of a metaphysical term that we're using, kind of like philosophers sometimes do.

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It literally happened that way. We were enlightened. The lights were turned on. And so Paul is not speaking, when he says that there was an appearing of these things, when he says that love and kindness appeared, he is not constraining it to himself and to those in his generation.

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He's not saying this appeared to us, but not to y 'all out there reading this 2 ,000 years later.

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What he's doing is he's talking about the moment that every believer is born again.

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He's talking about the moment where every spiritual birth takes place for all of time.

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At the moment we are spiritually born is the moment this epiphany takes place. It's the moment the lights are turned on and we feel that kindness and that love appearing to us on an individual level and, of course, to the church abroad as the ages unfold.

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Now, of course, Jesus appeared physically. We know that, too. And you could certainly argue there's a reference to the appearing of Jesus, the man, the first coming, the incarnation, in Paul's use of these terms here.

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He appeared physically in the incarnation to all those who saw him. But here's the kicker, and this is why

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I believe it goes deeper than just that, is he appeared and men saw him, but that appearance, that physical living a life in ministry that Jesus did, it doesn't mean anything to anybody unless they are spiritually quickened.

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There were dozens, hundreds, thousands of people that saw the physical appearing of Jesus that it didn't do anything for.

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They turned away from him. They rejected his gospel. They rejected his kingdom. They rejected him as Savior, as Messiah.

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And therefore, the physical appearing of Jesus was not inherently salvific, if you will, to the people that saw him.

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They had to be quickened as well. There had to be a spiritual enlightening. There had to be a spiritual appearing that takes place.

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You have to be brought to new life. So unless by faith we recognize that he appeared and paid for our sins, then there is a sense in which the appearing is then salvific.

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It saves a person. It is saving. It is a saving appearing. It is a saving epiphany.

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So you can see him physically. You can see him in the flesh. This will happen at his second coming as well.

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But that will not do anything for you unless by faith you recognize who he is.

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That spiritual quickening takes place. We are awakened. And at his first coming, he was rejected.

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He was mocked. He was scorned. At his second coming, it will be so frightening that everybody that rejects him will simply want the rocks to crush them.

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And so that physical appearing isn't going to save them in and of itself. They have to turn to him and recognize him for who he is.

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That is the appearing that Paul is ultimately talking about, I believe. The ultimate epiphany is our spiritual rebirth.

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Now, we're going to briefly touch on a couple of verses that follow. But we're going to have to spend a few weeks here because there is so much that we just have to dive into it.

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We're just going to have to take the time. I'm sorry to have to tell you that. But look at verse 5 and you'll see why. Just read it with me and you'll see why.

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Verse 5, right after being told that the kindness and the love, these attributes of God, the

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God our Savior hath appeared to mankind, Paul again is now going to show us how those things were demonstrated, how those attributes appeared, how those attributes showed up.

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Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the

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Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ, our

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Savior. Now, again, as you can see, there's lots to dig into here.

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This is simply a sweeping statement of the greatest theological significance that you can imagine.

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You can go through and start parsing the New Testament and maybe trying to put down a list of what are some of the most significant phrases that have ever been said, have ever been uttered by Jesus and his apostles.

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Let's put them up, let's see what they are, and maybe try to rank them and decide which was the most significant.

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If you were to boil all of it down, what would be it? Of course, I don't think we would be able to do that. That would be a pretty futile attempt.

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There would be way too much material to work with. But this would make the list. If you tried to make a list like that, this would make it.

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We have the doctrine of regeneration. We have the doctrine of grace. We are reminded once more that works of righteousness mean nothing in the eyes of God, that our righteousness is nothing more than filthy rags.

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It's a callback to Old Testament prophecy. It's a callback to his mercy that saved us. Again, what is the basis for our obedience?

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His mercy. Why are we to treat our fellow citizens and our civil magistrates with a merciful tone?

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It's because we were no better than them at one point. Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration.

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What is that? What is that? And the renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed upon us abundantly.

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So, to the max, as much as it could have possibly been shed upon us, it was. And who was it through?

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The man, Jesus Christ, our Savior. And so, again, the greatest theological significance you can imagine is all wrapped up in this phrase here.

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And like I mentioned, while we'll be spending a lot more time on it shortly, in the weeks to come, we'll briefly recognize the fact that the believer has truly and literally passed from death to life.

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That is what is ultimately being talked about here. That's what this regeneration is. We were literally dead, and we were literally brought to new life.

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And this passage, Titus 3 5 -6, and some following verses we'll kind of elaborate on a little bit more as well, it's the proof of it.

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This is the proof that we have passed from death to life. Not exclusively. There are other passages that prove it as well, but this one is, in the most meticulous terms that Paul could have used, a proof that this is the case.

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And I'll end with this, and in the following weeks, again, we will break these verses down even more.

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But that first phrase, not by works of righteousness that we have done, that's significant.

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We have to remember this. We had to have this new life brought to us.

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It couldn't be earned. And Paul reminds us of what that looks like in the most drastic terms, and we'll end with this passage if you want to turn with me to Philippians 3 for a second.

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And we've read this before. It wasn't all that long ago that we did. In one of the more recent sermons that I did, we were in this passage a good bit.

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And what Paul is going to do here is he's going to show us what the ideal righteousness of man looks like.

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What does it look like to be the best at the top of the pyramid, to be the apex predator of Pharisees?

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What does it look like to be the most respected of men? And you need to emphasize that.

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What does it look like to be the most respectable person in the eyes of other men? And what does that mean ultimately?

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Paul answers all of this. First, he demonstrates what it looks like. Then he tells us what it means. Look at verse 1 of chapter 3.

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Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord, to write the same things to you. To me, indeed, is not grievous, but for you it is safe.

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Beware of dogs. Beware of evil workers. Beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision, which worship

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God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. I just want to pause for a second and recognize something very theologically significant, which is he just said we are the circumcision.

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What on earth does that mean? What that means is that we as Christians, we as Christians are the heirs of Abraham.

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We are the children that were prophesied about as the stars of the sea, excuse me, as the stars of the sky, as the sands of the sea.

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In Genesis chapter 12, we are those people. We are the circumcision. Why is that?

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Because it was our hearts that were circumcised by God, not by man. It wasn't an outward symbol.

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It was an internal thing. The Pharisees were external. We are internal. Now, what's interesting about it is when you start with the internal, it necessitates external as well.

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So good works will always flow from that which is happening in the heart. But if you start with the external, it stops there, and the inside is dead men's bones.

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We are the circumcision. We can't miss stuff like that. It's very helpful as well when it comes to these new ideas of Christians believing that the

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Jews are God's people. I'm talking about Orthodox Jews, false religion, falsely religious

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Jews, and that they are somehow saved kind of in a different way than we are because, well, they're

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Jews. You know, we have to remember the prophecies of the Old Testament, yes, were applicable to the ethnic

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Jews that believed in God and still are today, just like Brother Rocky, just like Charles Feinberg, just like a number of faithful brothers and sisters that were ethnic

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Jews that were the circumcision. But they are the circumcision along with us, the

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Gentiles as well. These types of things are very, very significant. We are only saved by faith in Jesus.

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You can't be saved by a perceived faith in the God of the Old Testament who's not actually the

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God of the Old Testament. Why? Because Jesus said, if you do not believe in me, you do not believe in the

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Father. So they can pray to the God of the Old Testament. They can write down our

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Old Testament scriptures and put them on little notes and put them in the wailing wall, but they're falling on deaf ears because they rejected the

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Son of God and therefore they reject the Father that they think they're worshiping. We are the circumcision.

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All right, continue with me in verse 4. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh, and by the way, Paul right now is building an argument based upon the things

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I was just saying. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh, in other words, if there was ever a person that could have confidence in the flesh, we've got him right here.

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He's the one writing these words. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh,

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I more. You think you got it? I have it even more. Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

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Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law, a Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.

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But what things were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ? Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my

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Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung.

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And that is an extremely colorful Greek term that he just used there. You could translate it a number of ways, but it is trash, it is garbage, it is dung, it is refuse.

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All of that stuff he just mentioned, circumcised on the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

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Hebrew of Hebrews, the Pharisees, blameless upon zeal, or in the context of zeal,

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I was persecuting the church, all of it was garbage, all of it was trash. In verse 9 he says,

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And be found in him not having mine own righteousness. What was he talking about in Titus 3 .5?

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We are not saved by the works of righteousness that we have done. He says it right here. Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know him.

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Here is the crux of the matter. Why is his mercy necessary for us?

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Why is it that we, and I say we, I'm talking generally, why is it that people have to come above the idea that they can somehow live in a manner that will ultimately bring them salvation?

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Why is it that we have to get beyond the Pharisaical ideals of any religion in order to recognize who

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God is? That is why. That I may know him. We can't know him unless we first remove ourselves from thinking that we could do anything in and of ourselves that would earn our salvation.

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That I may know him and the power of his resurrection. We cannot understand or even comprehend the power of his resurrection without faith, apart from works.

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And the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death, if by any means

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I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. So, when Paul tells us, just in that opening phrase of Titus 3, 5, not by works of righteousness that we have done, and then he goes in to the extremely detailed argument of what it takes, regeneration, mercy, the renewing of the

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Holy Ghost, all of that being shed upon us abundantly, he begins with reminding us we can't do that.

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We cannot do that. It takes one greater than us. And that person, as verse 6 ends,

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I'm back in Titus again, as verse 6 ends with, through Jesus Christ, our Savior.

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So, we'll end there today. Tons to unpack, like I mentioned. But we will pick it right up here next week.

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We'll start with verse 5. We'll start working through some of these very doctrinal themes here and break it down a little bit.

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And this will be ultimately what winds down Titus. Once we get to about verse 9, he gives kind of the ending salutations.

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He mentions a few brothers in the Lord that we will spend a little bit of time talking about and things like that. But he winds down everything and the significance of all that we have talked about in this study from Titus 1, the qualifications of elders, and the character of these men and those put in authority in God's church down to the congregation, why we are to live this way, why these practical instructions and commands are given, what is the purpose of them.

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It all wraps up with the doctrine of regeneration and the new birth and all of this.

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And so, I'm looking forward to that. We'll be getting into that starting next week. Do you all have any thoughts or anything you'd like to share before we dismiss?

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Yes, sir. That word, philanthropy, in the

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Greek, the root is phileo, which means love. It's kind of interesting to think about that.

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Yeah, in verse 4. The kindness and love, philanthropy. So, the root is phileo, which

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I mentioned there are three distinct Greek terms for love that can be translated to love in English. Agape, phileo, and eros.

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And all three of them, again, should be part of one big package, but sometimes those distinctions are made for instructional purposes.

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And so here, Paul uses a more broad term, but using the same root. So, it has the root of a friendship type love, a love for a friend.

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And of course, this was prophesied about in the books of Moses and in Proverbs. There is, how does it phrase it?

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A friend that's closer than a brother, a friend that sticketh closer than a brother, I believe, in Proverbs. And that's a prophecy of Jesus, ultimately, of course, and it gives us principles to live by as well.

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And so, the root is this love toward a dear friend. And then when the

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Greek word is expanded to philanthropy, again, it gives the connotation of having pity toward that person, having pity toward that human race.

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And therefore, shedding his attributes upon us abundantly, and things like that.

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And it's where we get philanthropy from. So, every time we have these acts of goodness and kindness ourselves, they are nothing more than small, little bitty representations of this great philanthropic act that God did on the cross.

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Very neat stuff. Some people throw out this phrase, well, I love him, but I don't like him.

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Which is always very strange. I think that's awesome. But this carries the connotation that God not only loves us, but he likes us.

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He enjoys being with us, like we do with our children, our grandchildren.

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Well, as fallen human beings, we can put ourselves in positions where we love based upon duty, but we don't like based upon the actual emotions.

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So, a great example of this is Jacob and Leah. So, he loved Rachel, Eros, Phileo, Agape, the whole package.

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For Leah, he had a love of duty toward her. In other words, she bore his children.

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She was his wife, but he didn't like her. But it's because we're talking about Jacob. We're not talking about God.

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God doesn't do that. God, it is the full package imperfection. And so, as fallen human beings, there are times when we separate duty from emotion.

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And of course, that is why you get to Ephesians chapter 5. And as husbands, we are told to love our wives as Christ loved the church.

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So, we are not to be like Jacob. Jacob was a sorry guy, as were most of the patriarchs, as were most of the men of the faith.

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And you get to the New Testament, and you have guys like Paul saying, I am the chief of sinners. So, we can look and imitate our forefathers to a degree, insofar as they were actually exhibiting godly character and godly attributes.

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But we can't look to them as the ultimate, like this is just okay to do because Jacob did it sort of thing.

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He separated duty from emotion. He loved her, but he didn't like her. And really, again, it was more of the responsibility aspect of it, more so than a true, genuine love, which is a very sad thing.

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So, we need to imitate God, not Jacob. We need to love our wives as Christ loved the church, and so on and so forth.

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So, any other thoughts? Yes. Quick question. I guess kind of the opposite of that.

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What's the difference between people and hating one another? Yes, and I can't remember if we spent a lot of time on that last week, but essentially,

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I believe it's referring to, number one, our disposition toward, like a particular attitude versus action.

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So, in other words, we are hateful in our character. We get to a point, if you look at verse three, this will help.

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So, we're looking at verse three here. Sometimes we were at one point foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving in the continual sense, diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy.

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So, right there, what we find is that the God we were worshiping prior to salvation was our own pleasures, our own lusts.

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We were doing anything and everything we could do to get it, to the point where if you keep on that path long enough, and Romans chapter 1 talks about what it looks like when you stay on that path long enough, you will just ram through any possible barrier that could get in the way of those lusts and pleasures to the point where you are hating, or you are hateful in your very being toward anything that acts as even a possible barrier to the lusts and pleasures.

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And then the next phrase, hating one another, carries more the connotation of the act itself.

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So, we are hateful in our being, and we are hating in our actions. And I believe, this is more of me taking this, how could all this tie together?

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This is me seeing humans get to the point, or can get to the point, where they are so lustful and want to serve their lusts and pleasures so much that they become implacable.

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They become to the point where they have no care for their fellow man anymore. It is a literal and full hatred in order to get through everyone and everything they need to indulge the pleasure, indulge the lust.

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So, I believe that that's the distinction there. It's a distinction between our being and our action as that being manifests itself.

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We are hateful, and we are hating. It is in us, and it is on the external as well.

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I believe it's a reference to the internal and external dynamic there.

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Yes, sir? Some would translate the first word, hateful, as hated.

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It's an adjective, so it's telling what kind of a person we are. We're a hated person. Okay, well, yes, and I thought

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I remembered that. So, it could be translated either way, absolutely. But it's valid the way the

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KJV translators did because it can be a reference to the way that we are in and of ourselves.

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So, there's another verse. Let's see here. Disobedient, deceived.

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Oh, it was actually in 2 Timothy. If you look at the NKJV, I'm pretty sure it's translated similarly.

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I think that adjective can be translated either way. If you look at 2 Timothy 3 .13,

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Paul says, But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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So, you could translate this hated and hating in a similar way that he's talking about deceiving and being deceived there, or it can be a reference to you being a hateful person and that manifesting itself in all of your actions.

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So, either way is valid. And honestly, both are true simultaneously.

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I mean, it is true that when you go out there and you look at the world, you look at the debauchery that's taking place in people that are just, again, barreling down this path to attain the pleasures that they seek, there is absolutely a sense in which you are being hated by the others on the same pursuit that you are to their pleasures while simultaneously you are manifesting it toward them, yourself, that sort of thing.

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Do you think a modern example would be, like in the culture that we're surrounded with, there's so much self -righteousness.

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It's just self -righteousness. It's not like people trying to be self -righteous in terms of the

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Mosaic Law, but people being self -righteous according to a totally different standard that's actually, that's effectively hating someone because you have to affirm so many lies and things that will ultimately destroy them.

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And like that pursuit of self -righteousness, in action you're doing the opposite of the actions that are built into biblical love.

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Because it's not just a feeling. It's not limited to a feeling. We should have kindness and compassion and vows of mercy and all that stuff.

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But if you're not exhibiting certain actions, it's not enough for me to be like a warm and fuzzy feeling towards you if I'm super disrespectful all the time.

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But I have warm and fuzzy feelings then, but I'm going to be very impatient with you.

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I'm going to scream at you and put you down in front of other people. That kind of thing.

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So that being in contrast with hate, hate is like the opposite of that.

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You're effectively in action hating people when you affirm falsehoods.

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Their destruction. Right. The opposite of what God says is good. If you're going to affirm that in someone, basically you're just affirming them.

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Well, it is the definition of self -righteousness is to affirm things that are in direct opposition to God's word.

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Because what you're saying is that is a false standard. I say what the standard is.

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And I say this thing is good. I say this thing is good. And that's, of course, the basis of situational ethics and subjective morality.

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And that's why there is never a stopping point. People will, you know, in the 90s it was, well, you know, homosexuality, it can be monogamous, and then it'll stop there.

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Well, it didn't stop there. It kept going. And now in certain states there's polyamory that is now being recognized as civil unions and things like that.

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And, of course, transgenderism, just the wheels completely fell off. So there's no limiting principle if the standard is based upon what you want to affirm or not affirm.

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And so, yes, this attitude of having the hate is, oddly enough, can come out in a self -righteous way because, well, look,

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I am saying that these people are okay and they are covered in my love, therefore

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I'm better than everyone else kind of thing. That is an interesting reality. But anyway, well, we'll end it there because I see a lot of people in the back.

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But great thoughts, and we will pick it up in verse 5 next week.

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Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day, for bringing us together, and for giving us the opportunity to open up the pages of Scripture and to talk about truth, to talk about the objective standard that we have so that we don't have to be flailing about like everyone else in our culture does.

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Lord, we know that at one point we were. At one point we ourselves were the flailing ones and that we weren't able to orient our lives in such a way that made any kind of consistent sense whatsoever.

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And yet your kindness and your love appeared to us, and we thank you for that merciful act and for your grace by which we stand now as believers.

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Lord, we ask that grace. We are reminded of that grace that gives us the boldness to be able to approach our fellow citizens out in the world.

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And when the door opens up for us to share your word and to evangelize, Lord, that we are reminded that we ourselves needed your grace and mercy, and therefore we can show that in our actions and in the way that we present ourselves.

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Lord, we ask you to continue to be with us for the remainder of our services today, and we ask all these things in your name. Amen. I had to speed up that prayer there.

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I heard Ada going nuts. I've got to get this ended real fast. Amen. All right, get