To Encourage You

Titus 3:8 “The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.”

If you are a Christian, when is the last time that you’ve done something beneficial for another person that doesn’t think and believe like you do?  Is your life primarily lived among those who are like-minded?  Are you helpful to those who are like you, but relatively disconnected from others that aren’t of like mind and faith?  In the verse above, Paul is talking to his protégé Timothy about the things he should preach and teach the church that he pastored.  Throughout Chapter 3 of the letter Paul is focused on how Christians are to think and act toward non-Christians.  Paul calls on Titus to remind Christians that they are to obey the government (which will likely be led, primarily, by unbelievers), to not speak evil of people, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to be very courteous toward all people. Again, these admonitions are directed towards believers’ interactions with unbelievers.  In all of this, Christians are to remember that they, too, were all once unbelievers, and the only reason any of us are now believers is the wonderful grace of God that has been poured out on us.

So, in context, the verse above, which follows these admonitions, calls on believers to “devote themselves to good works,” particularly good works toward unbelievers.  He tells them that to act in such ways is “excellent and profitable for people.”  In other words, all people, not just some of them.  It’s excellent and profitable for believers, in that walking in obedience to God’s Word brings glory to God and is a means by which we lay up treasures in heaven, and it’s excellent and profitable for unbelievers in that such actions are often the means by which their hearts become open to hearing the truth of the gospel and thereby be saved. 

But note, Paul uses the word “insist” in calling the church to such things.  The Lord knows our tendency to focus our love on those who love us, like other believers.  Jesus told us that “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount”(Luke 6:32-34).  But then Jesus speaks on the contrast. He says that believers are to be markedly different from those who don’t follow Him in this way: “But (you are to) love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6: 35). 

So again, are you doing this? Are you devoted to doing good works towards those who are outside the faith? Do you think about this? Are you praying about it and making the most of every opportunity that the Lord gives you (for the Lord will, indeed, give us clear opportunities to obey the commands He has given us)?  It should be a focus of our life, as Paul, actually the Holy Spirit through Paul, has insisted upon, in the words above.