1 Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness;
2 In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;
3 But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour;
4 To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Introduction
Verses 1-4 of Titus chapter one introduce to us to the man Titus. Sometime ago Robert Schuller wrote a book entitled Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do! The book was a best seller. The reason is people are having a tough time. Life is hard. There are difficulties, there are hardships, there are obstacles, there are sorrows of every kind and of every description. People are desperately in need of help in dealing with the tough times of life, so any book that points in that direction is bound to capture the attention of people.
When I think about tough people and tough times from a biblical perspective, my mind always goes to Titus, because I am persuaded that Titus was God’s tough guy. He was a man who was equal to any task, any trouble, and any hard time laid upon him. And in all probability, he has not received nearly as much attention in biblical preaching as he ought to have received down through the years. He played a very prominent part in the New Testament church. Although his name is never mentioned in the book of Acts, he was one of Paul’s most trusted and valued helpers. And whenever the apostle Paul had a tough assignment, when he had a hard job that needed to be done, he sent Titus to do it. For the tough times of life, God’s tough man Titus was always there to see that the job was done.
We meet Titus in three different books of the Bible. He is mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:10, where Paul tells us that he sent Titus (or that Titus went) to Dalmatia. It was just a simple statement about him. It doesn’t give us any insight into his character or his work, but beyond that mention there are three other references to Titus in scripture. In all three of these references he is on a tough assignment. He is in a hard place. He is in a trying circumstance, and because of his fellowship with other believers, his commitment to the Lord Jesus, and simply because of the grace of God, Titus is able to handle it.
We first meet Titus in the book of Galatians chapter two. It is a brief account of the Jerusalem council that is described in great detail in the book of Acts. In the passage in Galatians 2, Paul tells us that Titus played a prominent role in that Jerusalem council.
It is strange then that the Acts 15 account that gives us great detail about the meeting has no mention of his name. The background of that Jerusalem council is that Paul—on his first missionary journey—experienced such marvelous success that vast numbers of Gentiles were converted to faith in Jesus Christ. There were some people who refused to believe that these Gentiles, Greeks and Romans, could be saved apart from some of the Jewish rites, namely circumcision. So as a result of the tremendous success in the preaching of the Gospel on that first missionary journey, there arose a great debate over the church’s doctrine of salvation. Paul tells us in Acts 15 that all of the leaders of the church assembled in Jerusalem to discuss how a person could be saved. Could a person be saved (as Paul preached in his first missionary journey) by grace through faith alone? Is that all that was necessary for salvation? Or must they go through certain Jewish rites before they could really be saved?
In that Jerusalem council, everybody who was somebody spoke. They all gave their opinions, their impressions, and their convictions from God. And Paul tells us in Galatians 2 that he brought to that Jerusalem council a young Greek convert who had never been circumcised. His name was Titus, and Titus was “Exhibit A” of the grace of God. When those leaders of the church heard the testimony of Titus, and when they learned of the work of grace in his life, there could be no doubt in anybody’s mind that a Greek or a Roman Gentile could be saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. It is that grace plus nothing else.
That is our introduction to Titus, and it suggests to us that from the very outset of his conversion he was cast into the fire of controversy, caught right in the middle between two sides squabbling over church doctrine. But because of his experience of grace, because of his willingness to stand there to be counted, and because of his testimony and his conviction, the truth won out and Titus proved himself to be equal to the tough situations of life.
The second time we meet Titus is in the book of 2 Corinthians, chapters seven and eight. He is mentioned a number of times in 2 Corinthians, but in chapters seven and eight, he is mentioned most often. Perhaps you know that the church at Corinth was the one church that gave the apostle Paul more trouble than seemingly all of the other churches put together. It was a church that was always in controversy, a church that was always getting off-center, and it was a church that was always susceptible to false teachers. Again and again the apostle Paul had a hard time with that church at Corinth. In fact, the last time he had visited that church, false teachers had been so influential in the church that they actually treated Paul rather harshly and rudely and it greatly troubled him.
In response to their treatment and to what he found in that church Paul wrote a letter—a strong and severe letter. After having written that letter, he decided to send Titus as his apostolic negotiator to deal with that church, to find out how they were getting along. He was to find out how they responded to his letter, how they were feeling about him, and how they were handling their problems. If the church had dealt unkindly with the apostle Paul you can imagine how Titus must have felt going on this special mission as a negotiator. “If they spurned the apostle Paul,” he must have thought, “what will they do with me?” It was a tough assignment. It was not the kind of job that anyone would want to do. But when he returned to tell Paul about his visit, he came back with glowing reports. Paul mentions those rather explicitly in the book of 2 Corinthians. He had sent this tough young man on another tough mission to deal with the troubled church, and again he had proven equal to the task. He was a tough man who could handle a tough job.
The third time we are introduced to Titus is in the book of Titus. Paul had sent him to the island of Crete to be the bishop there. There must have been a number of churches on that island and Titus was given the responsibility of helping to straighten out problems in all of those churches. As I suggested in the sermon this morning, Crete was a sick place. It was a bad place. In verse 12 of this first chapter one of their own poets had said that all the Cretans are liars. You can’t ever believe what they have to say. They are like wild beasts. They are vicious and uncontrollable. They are lazy gluttons. All they want to do is to lie around, to eat, and to sleep. They don’t want to work. They don’t want to do anything. Crete had a sick society. And when God needed somebody to go down there and straighten out the churches, Titus was the man Paul picked.
It was a tough assignment that needed a tough man, and Titus was that man. There are many who believe that after he had been there for a while, Titus became discouraged. He had written to the apostle Paul and asked for a reassignment. We can almost imagine him saying something like this: “Paul, you don’t understand what it is like here. You don’t understand how hard these people are to work with, how stubborn they are, how rebellious they are, and how wicked they are. They don’t really care about the truth. The churches are falling apart and Paul, I would really like you to send me to some other place where the work is easier and I can see more fruit from my labor.” And Paul wrote back to say, “Titus, for this cause sent I thee to Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting” (Titus 1:5). In other words Paul was saying, “Titus, the very reasons why you want to leave are the very reasons why I sent you there. I know that it’s a hard place. There are lots of things that need to be done and you are just the man to do it. I have sent you there to set things in order.”
That phrase is a medical term. It means to “set in joint.” It describes what a doctor does when you go to him with a broken bone. He takes those two fractured bones and he puts them back in right relationship to one another so that the bone can heal properly and you can have continued use of the arm, leg, or whatever bone may be fractured. It is that medical term that Paul uses to describe the mission and the role of Titus in Crete. Things there were out of joint and not the way they ought to have been, and Paul sent Titus there on a divine mission to set things in order.
It was a tough place and not just anybody could handle that job. Titus was God’s tough preacher, God’s tough man, God’s tough guy who was equal to the situation. Life is full of hardships. It is full of tough situations—not just for Titus, but for you and for me. Whatever Titus had, we need. If he was equal to the tough situations of life, if he could handle the Jerusalem council as a young Christian, if he could weigh into the mess at Corinth and come out successful, if he could straighten up things at Crete, we need what Titus had. When life gets tough, we need to be tough also.
What was it that made this man equal to the tough situations of life? There are three things that I can see readily about Titus that helped him. And those three things will help you and me with the tough times of life.
1. The grace of God above you. The first and foremost is this: it was the grace of God. Titus had met Jesus Christ in a life-changing experience. We don’t know anything about his conversion. It may have been an experience akin to the one of Paul on the road to Damascus, or it may have been an experience similar to that of Timothy’s—just a sort of continuation of that godly home he had been raised in. We don’t know anything about his conversion. We just know that here was a man who had met God through Jesus Christ, and when he was questioned at the Jerusalem council nobody doubted that he had a good dose of the grace of God. It was that grace that gave him strength for life.
You know that the apostle Paul who sent him on this hard mission was no stranger to troubles himself. Paul knew physical suffering. In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 he spoke about that thorn in the flesh. You remember that the word flesh identifies the source of his problem. It was a bodily affliction. The word thorn tells us about the intensity of it. It was a painful affliction. Paul knew about physical hardships. Paul knew about loneliness. He tells us in 2 Timothy that at his first trial before the Roman emperor no man stood with him. All men forsook him. He knew what it was to be alone in life. Paul was no stranger to fears. In fact, he says in 2 Corinthians that when he came to Macedonia he said, “We were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears” (2 Corinthians 7:5).
Paul got afraid. He didn’t always know what the future held. The difference among men and women is not that some are afraid and others aren’t. The difference is that some are mastered by their fears and others aren’t. Some succumb to their fears and others do not. Some yield to their fears and some stand up to them. Paul knew physical suffering, he knew loneliness, and he knew what fright was all about, but continually Paul faced life because the grace of God—that inner strength that only God can give—was within him. I’m here to tell you that whatever God permits to come into your life, he will give you the grace and the inner strength to be equal to it.
There are some things you can count on—that’s one of them. And the thing that made Titus tough was that inner strength that grace brings into our lives.
2. God’s conviction within you. There is another thing that made Titus tough and can make you equal to the task. It is the conviction that we are where God wants us to be. You know that conviction has kept many a trembling person in a tight spot stay at his post and faithful to his duty—not because he didn’t think of running, not because he didn’t want to run, but because his conviction and commitment to the will of God and the purpose of God was greater than his fears.
What do you think kept Jesus on the cross? You know he didn’t have to stay there and you know it was a tough experience for him. Nothing we shall ever experience will ever equal that cross. What kept him there? It was the conviction that that’s where God wanted him right then. It was his commitment to the will of God, and nothing—not access to the angels of heaven, not the taunts of men around him, not the intense pain that he suffered—could get him off of that cross. It was because there was a conviction that this was where God wanted him right then.
That same conviction had to be in the heart of Titus when he stood for the purity of the Gospel before the religious leaders in Jerusalem. It had to be that “I am where God wants me to be” conviction that enabled him to march into that corrupt city and that carnal church of Corinth. It had to be the “God wants me here” conviction that kept him there. When things were tough in Crete, only the conviction that he was on a divine assignment and that God was working and moving in his life could have kept him there.
We need to live our lives under the guiding hand of God to be where he wants us to be, and when he wants us there. When we are determined to be where God wants us to be, that conviction will give us the courage to stay there. It’s the grace of God within us and the conviction that we are where God wants us to be that gives us strength.
3. Encouraging fellowship around you. There is one other thing that must have been of help to Titus. It doesn’t exactly tell us though in scripture—we just know so. It was his fellowship with and his encouragement from men like the apostle Paul. Paul spoke of Titus as his partner. He spoke of Titus as a fellow worker. In this passage he spoke of Titus as “mine own son.” You know there was a fellowship among those early Christians where they loved one another, they prayed for one another, and they encouraged one another. They drew strength not only from the grace of God above them and the inner conviction within them, but from the fellowship of the saints around them. We were never intended to go it alone in life.
It is one of the reasons why the church came into being. God knew that we needed one another. We need mutual encouragement and support. We need the prayers of others. And when we stay in the fellowship, when we stay with the brethren, and when we stay in the center of God’s will, God makes us equal to the tough experiences of life. It is true: Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. When we know God’s grace, when we live according to his will, and when we fellowship with the saints, he makes us equal to life.