Do good, and not because it makes you look good
by Julian Mann, TCW:
We are coming to the end of our summer sermon series on the Apostle Paul’s letter to Titus. As we have seen so far in this gem of a New Testament letter, Paul had left his fellow Christian worker Titus on the Greek island of Crete with a job to do. They had together preached the good news of God on the island in the 60s AD and people by God’s grace had become believers in the Lord Jesus and new local churches formed. Paul then left Crete for evangelistic work elsewhere and gave Titus the task of appointing leaders for the new churches in the various towns on the island.
We see in verses 9-11 of Titus chapter 3 how Paul reprises his command to Titus to deal with the scourge of false teaching on Crete, teaching that claimed to be Christian but was in spiritual reality Judaism dressed up as Christianity.
In his calling to uphold the ‘truth that leads to godliness’ (Titus 1v1 – NIV), Titus’s No had to be as good as his Yes. False teaching must be refuted and false teachers firmly dealt with for sake of gospel truth and for the sake of God’s people.
And then we see the importance of God’s people doing good deeds also reprised in these final remarks. In verse 14, Paul reiterates his concern about the behaviour of the Christians on Crete: ‘Our people (our Christian people belonging to local churches) must devote themselves to doing what is good, in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives.’
Paul was thoroughly vindicated in this concern because one of the reasons why Christianity spread so rapidly throughout the Roman Empire in the first four centuries AD was because of the practical good Christian people did, especially for the poor, the sick and the weak. The concern Christian people showed to people in dire need really did mark them out from the self-serving pagans around them.
Christianity spread in the Roman Empire because Christian people by God’s grace did devote themselves to good deeds and did provide for the daily necessities of others in need and did lead lives that commended the gospel message, the good news of God’s salvation for all who put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘the truth that leads to godliness’.
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