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.”

In the verse above it is important to note that Paul uses the word “insist” to place great emphasis on what he is saying. The word means “to confirm strongly.” If a person insists on something, it means that they won’t take “no” for an answer.  It is a critical command.  As I was thinking about the use of this word, I was reminded that it is actually the Holy Spirit Who inspired Paul to say this.  In other words, what is being said here is something that God is insisting that we act out in our Christian walk. 

Someday every Christian will stand before God to give an account of his or her life.  In 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 we are told this: “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I (i.e., the apostle Paul) laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”  Indeed, these are sobering words that we should be mindful of as we live out our faith. 

As I was thinking about the urgency of the commands that God has “insisted” upon, I could imagine one day standing before God and being asked the question, “So, what about these things I insisted that you be about?  What did you do about them?”  And as for the command above, what is it that is actually being insisted upon? In essence, it’s a call to love those both within the faith as well as those who are outside it, for that’s what he had been talking about in the verses that preceded the one above.  Those are the “good works . . .excellent and profitable for people” that he is referring to. 

You see, “to love” is God’s foremost command.  In Matthew 22:37 we have Jesus’ answer to the following question: “Teacher, what is the great commandment in the Law.”  The answer? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  A Christian’s life should above and beyond all be a life characterized by love.  Love of our God and love of our neighbor should be what makes us tick. It should motivate all our behavior.  As 1 Corinthians 13 tells us “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  Above all, It will not be that we did things that will matter on that day, but why we did what we did.  You see, the motive of love for God and love for our neighbor will be the test that will separate the gold, silver, and precious stones from the wood, hay, and stubble on that final day.  It is, by far, the most necessary thing. Thus, our Lord’s insistence upon it.  It’s the message of the Bible, that God is love, and because of His great love toward us, He would have us love one another.  It’s the Holy Spirit’s insisted command. 

May God help us to live a life of love.  May He help us to live out what He has insisted upon over and over in His Word, for here’s one more example, this time through the words of John, who referred to himself in his writings as, “the disciple whom Jesus loved”: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:7-12).

May God help us to make love the great motivator of our lives.