Sermon: Saving Our Former Selves (Titus 3:1-8)

Saving Our Former Selves Sunday, November 16th, 2025 Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA Titus 3:1–8

Prayer

Lord God Almighty, our heart and our flesh cries out for You the living God. And so flood our souls now with a fresh awareness of Your mercy. Grant that in hearing Your Word preached we may taste and know the sweetness of salvation, the salvation You have wrought for us in Christ, for the glory of the Trinity, One God Forever, Amen.

Introduction

We’ve made it to chapter 3 in Paul’s letter to Titus and we are on the home stretch now towards finishing this little book together. Now, do you remember what the major theme of this book has been? Early on we said that Titus is all about the marriage between sound doctrine and sound living, between right belief and right action.

• While many people try to divide and divorce truth from reality, faith from practice, a Christian must not separate what God has joined together. Yes, we can distinguish the truth in our heads from the actions of our hands, but what God wants for you is a life that is united in one single purpose.
  • As it says in Psalm 86:11, Unite my heart to fear Thy name.
  • And in 1 Timothy 1:5 it says, Now the end/goal/purpose of the commandment is charity [love] out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.
  • So unless you are loving God with singleness of heart, and loving one another for God’s sake, you have not yet internalized the faith that you profess. Paul says in Galatians 5:6 that, “the only faith that counts for anything, is the faith that works by love.”
• And so for the first two chapters of this book, Paul has been showing us HOW faith works by love in all the different arenas of our life.
  • In chapter 1 we saw how faith works by love in the Church and its government. We had multiple sermons on Presbyterianism and the qualifications to be a presbyter/bishop.
  • And then in chapter 2 we saw how faith works by love in the Home, in our household relationships. We had sermons for old men, old women, young women, young men, and servants.
  • And now here in Titus chapter 3, Paul teaches us how faith works by love in the Wider World outside, especially in our relationship with the civil government, and unbelievers who we may not like.
• And so I have titled this sermon, “Saving Our Former Selves,” because as we will see in these verses before us, the way we live in this world toward unbelievers can either be a stumbling block to them ever coming to Christ, or our lives can be the means by which God brings them into the fold. So with that in mind let me give you the outline of our text.

Outline of the Text

This morning our focus will just be on verses 1-3, and then next week we will take up verses 4-8.

• In verse 1, God tells us how to live under civil government.
• In verse 2, we are told how to live with people who are evil.
• In verse 3, we are given the reason why for our living graciously towards all.

Verse 1 – How do you live under civil government?

1Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work,

• First observe that Paul charges Titus to “put them in mind.” That is,remind the church in Crete of everything I am about to say. They’ve been told this before and they need to hear it again.
• Why? Because we are forgetful creatures. We are those people who can walk through the Red Sea on dry ground, eat miracle food from heaven, drink miracle water from a rock, and then five minutes later say we want to go back to Egypt, “O how slavery would be so much better than this.”
  • Of such sinful nostalgia Ecclesiastes 7:10 warns us saying, Do not say, “Why were the former days better than these?” For you do not inquire wisely concerning this.
  • And so God warns us of both 1) forgetting His gracious actions and commandments, and 2) also ofcommitting the “grass is greener” fallacy.
    • Sure, maybe some things were better back then (leaks and onions and Egyptian vegetables), but many things were probably worse (making bricks without straw seven days a week).
    • Our memories are highly selective and often unreliable. Jeremiah 17:9 says, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who