God’s Book of Titus for Lent Wednesday of Lent 3 Adorn the Doctrine of God Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. Last week, you heard God say do well to we Christians must use our office(s) to live everyday life in a manner that “accords with sound doctrine, or teaching” (Titus 2:1). Tonight an element of beauty gets added. Tonight God says at the end of verse 10 of the reading that faithfulness to our offices “adorns the doctrine [teaching] of God our Savior.” Dear Christian friends, “Adorn” simply means to decorate, to put into order, or to accentuate beauty. Think of a jeweler carefully setting a diamond in such a way as to accentuate and highlight its natural beauty. When God says “adorn the doctrine” in tonight’s reading, He uses the same word from which we get our English word “cosmetics.” Women do not wear cosmetics to become beautiful. Women wear cosmetics in order to accentuate their natural beauty and to highlight their best features. So it is with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, also known as “the doctrine of God our Savior.” God wants us to know in tonight’s reading that our behavior works as a cosmetic or an accentuation, of His pure and holy teaching. Like a woman wearing makeup, our behavior does not make the Gospel beautiful. Rather, our behavior brings out and highlights the beauty of God’s Word, “the doctrine of God our Savior.” God has written these Words primarily to slaves, which only one of many offices in the ancient Greek world. Slavery is not an appealing idea for our culture today, partly because of our American history and partly because of our American arrogance. None of us really wants to be a slave to anyone. All of us should change our minds about that. We can rightly think of ourselves as slaves—and we can even love our slavery—if we carefully distinguish our person and our office. · In my person, I am slave to no one. In my pastoral office, I am the servant and the slave and the foot-washer (John 13:14) of every person gathered here. Among everyone here, my office makes my life worth the least. · You should not be appalled by that. You should be looking at your own office(s) with the same sort of eyes. You should see that every mother is slave to her child; every husband slave to his wife; every teacher slave to the class he or she is given to teach; every employee slave both to the employer and to the customer. Do they not demand your time? Your devotion? Must you not set aside of the things you wish to do, in order to provide the things they demand? · We all have someone to whom we must submit. Even more than that, we all have been given an office through which we must show sacrificial love and protective care to someone else. The first must be the last and servant of all (Mark 9:35). Office is true slavery, pious slavery, worthy slavery. Office is where slavery can be wholeheartedly embraced and even enjoyed. The slavery of your office is where love for neighbor lives, and where love for God gets played out in everyday life. God wants you to know that a beautiful thing happens when you distinguish between your person and your office. You cosmetic “the doctrine [teaching] of God our Savior”! You do not make the Gospel beautiful. The Gospel is impossible to make the Gospel beautiful because the Gospel is a supernatural beauty, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). When you distinguish your person from your office, you adorn the doctrine, highlighting and accentuating and displaying for the world the magnificence of God and His Word. Think of a jeweler setting a diamond. “The doctrine of God our Savior” stands in its best light when you are faithful to your office and I am faithful to mine. Maybe all this sounds like a lot of obligation and requirement. So be it. Lent is a good time for you to straighten up and fly right. Jesus did not give you an office so that you could ignore it. Jesus gave you an office because you are part of His living body; because His Word of forgiveness and life shines both for you and through you. Again, distinguish between your person and your office. Your person is secure: blood-bought, forgiven, wrapped in Christ’s holiness and destined for resurrection life. Your office requires your slavery and devotion, but that familiar territory for your Lord. When you devote yourself to your office, and thus “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior,” you go nowhere Jesus has not already gone. _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
