Crash Course on Good Works
So right now, in these days, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, the hap-happiest season of all — and one of the things we like to do at my house is play boardgames. It’s cold outside, so we like to get the metaphorical chestnuts roasting on an open fire, we gather around the table, and we play — and one game that is new for us this year is this game Codenames. [Anybody know this game?]
It’s a word association game — and there are a lot of games like this — but what’s fun about word association games is the different ways different people connect different words. One person might see the word spider and think insect. Another person might see the word spider and think nightmare. And that’s fun! We enjoy that sort of thing.
So let me just try a couple words on you this morning. These are two words in a phrase. I’m going to say it, and I want you to keep track of what comes into your mind when you hear this. Okay? Here it is: “good works.”
What comes into your mind when you think about good works?
Now in the Book of Titus we’ve seen that the way we live is a major theme. As we’ve been walking through this letter we’ve talked a lot about this —
That we must live congruent with the Scriptures, empowered by the gospel;
Pastor David Mathis said, “God’s people should live in this world like he lived in this world in the person of his Son.”
Pastor Joe said, “Our conduct must be in line with our convictions;”
Pastor Joshua said, “We live right through God’s grace because we’ve been made right by God’s grace.”
All this is true and good, and I still wonder what you think when you hear the phrase “good works.” And as it turns out, the apostle Paul has a lot to say about good works at the end of this letter.
In this last half of Chapter 3, verses 8–15, Paul gives us something like a crash course on good works, and there are at least five lessons we find here. And so for the rest of our time, we’re gonna look at each one of these.
These are five lessons on good works that should shape the way we think about good works. Let’s pray again and we’ll get started:
Father in heaven, thank you for your Word, and for the power of your Holy Spirit who attends your word. We need your Holy Spirit! Help us, we pray, in Jesus’s name, amen.
#1. Good works flow from the wonder of triune grace (v. 8a–b)
Verse 8. Paul starts: “The saying is trustworthy.” And that’s a phrase that Paul has used only four other times, all in 1–2 Timothy (see 1 Tim. 1:15; 3:1; 4:9; 2 Tim. 2:11).
The New American Standard translates it: “this is a trustworthy statement.” The King James says: “this is a faithful saying.” And Paul uses this phrase to emphasize what he’s saying. Sometimes he uses it to preface what he’s about to say, and other times, like here, he uses it to highlight what he just said previously. And either way, as readers, when we see this phrase, we’re supposed to pay extra attention. It means this is a part we can’t miss!
And in Chapter 3, verse 8 “this faithful saying” is referring to all that Paul just laid out in verses 4–7. These are the verses we looked at last week, and they show us the vastness of our salvation:
It starts with God the Father who in his nature is good and merciful; And who resolved to display his nature through the appearing of God the Son in his life, death, and resurrection; Who rescued us despite us by God the Spirit bringing us to life and then being poured into our hearts so that we are gifted with a righteous verdict in order to inherit the future world that God has promised.
That’s verses 4–7 and we could just call that the gospel — because that’s what it is — but I want you to see the trinitarian glory in what Paul is saying. The grace of God behind our salvation is triune grace. This is the grace of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
And the way that Paul describes this grace here in Chapter 3 is like a burrito bowl of gospel metaphors. It involves rescue and regeneration and new creation and justification and adoption. It’s like Paul is hat-tipping every angle of the diamond of triune grace. Which should make us say Wow! This is stunning. And Paul says, Yeah, it is. Don’t miss it! This is important. You can take this to the bank. You can build your life on this. The wonder of triune grace is a faithful saying.
And so Titus is listening. And we’re listening. And then Paul says, Titus, I want you to insist on these things so that believers may be careful to devote themselves to … good works.
Okay, what are good works?
Let me just give a little definition here. Other words for “works” are duties or deeds. So good works, or good deeds, are things that you do, from faith, in love, for the good of others.
It’s not less than Christian behavior, because the heart matters — it’s from faith working through love (see Galatians 5:6; 1 Tim. 1:5) — but it’s more than just ongoing behavior because these are volitional actions. They are things that we do directed at the good of others.
And there’s a lot of freight we’re gonna unload here — but for now, more broadly, just notice the connection in verse 8 between good works and the wonder of triune grace. Titus is to insist on (assert! repeat!) the wonder of triune grace for the purpose of believers devoting themselves to good works.
Preach God’s grace to the church so that the church will do good works. That’s the connection, and that’s never what we would think. If it were left up to us — like if you were to send a group of humans into a room to brainstorm the best way to get other humans to do good works, do you know that they’re coming outta that room with? Purgatory. Indulgences. Do good works or else.
But that’s not what the apostle Paul says. Paul tells Titus that the way to lead people into doing good works is to tell them that they are not saved by good works, but by the grace of God. That’s precisely what Paul says in verse 5: “[God] saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.”
The basis of our salvation is the grace of God alone in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who paid for all our sins so that no debt remains that requires our contribution. Preach that fountain and watch the good works flow. Lesson #1: Good works flow from the wonder of triune grace.
#2. Good works come by deliberate, consistent attention (v. 8c).
Look closer at verse 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.
Do you see how Paul says that? It’s not just “so that those who have believed in God may do good works.” But it’s that they “may be careful to devote themselves to good works.” We see this same idea in verse 14. Look over at verse 14: “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works.”
In both cases, good works are something that involves deliberate, consistent attention. Good works are things that we mean to do, that we’re careful to do. We must learn to do them. And in verse 14 that word for “learn” is where we get our word “disciple.” Good works are the sort of things that we are apprenticed into.
Which means that tomorrow morning when you wake up, in most cases, you are not going to stumble out of bed into good works. The path of good works is not a red carpet that just magically unfolds before you every step you take. Now God has prepared good work for us that we should walk in them (see Ephesians 2:10) — but the walking in them comes by means of you thinking about them. You have to consider and calculate and make choices that will turn into actions that flow from the wonder of triune grace in your life. And it’s not an action that is one-and-done, glad-we-got-that-over-with. But this is a way of living that we’re devoted to.
Here’s an example … On Thursday last week, Ang Easterwood went to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children’s Hospital, and she rescued a newborn baby. Pastor David was out of town on a work trip, and he sent me a text and said that when he left for the trip they had four children, but now he’d be coming home to five!
That’s because the Easterwoods are foster parents, and now they have two children in their care, and that is a good work.
But when they got the phone call last week it wasn’t some random call out of the blue. They didn’t just decide all of a sudden, Hey, I think we’ll be a haven for endangered children. But see, they’ve given deliberate, consistent attention to this. They’ve made choices, including hours of training and preparation, to put themselves on a path where they get those phone calls and take those steps to care for a four-pound newborn with nowhere to go. They have been careful to devote themselves to good works — they’ve given it deliberate, consistent attention — and as Christians we are all called to this.
And sometimes it’s big, high-level steps of faith like what David and Ang have done, and other times it’s smaller, simpler things that you do on a daily basis. Right now, for me, in this season of life, every morning I get to pack my kids a lunch for school, and I think it’s a good work — and you might say: Wait a minute, can you really claim that feeding your children is a good work? Well I just did, at least for my kids. I put the lunch in a paper bag that I personalize for each kid. And I do it on purpose, by faith, as a labor of love from a Christian father who wants his children to know “You matter to me” — I think it’s a good work. It’s the sort of thing that I see my wife Melissa do all the time. Simple, volitional, non-Instagrammed actions for the good of others.
And there are all kinds of things like this that we all currently do or could do, big or small, that are good works if done from faith, in love, for the good of others. And we should be careful to do them. Learn to do them. Good works flow from the wonder of triune grace, and Lesson #2: They come by deliberate, consistent attention.
#3. Good works have effects that matter. (v. 8d)
Look at the end of verse 8. There’s a lot going on in verse 8. The end of verse 8 says: “These things are excellent and profitable for people.”
The “these things” here is referring to the good works that Paul just mentioned. It includes the wonder of triune grace in verses 4–7, because that’s where good works flow from, but specifically here, Paul is saying that good works are excellent and profitable for people. We see this same idea again in verse 14. Verse 14: “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to [— which means for the purpose of —] to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.”
In other words, most basically, do the good works because of the practical effect they will have. Putting verses 8 and 14 together: Do good works because they will truly be good for others.
What we see here is the legit horizontal dimension of good works.
One adage in ministry, and in the Christian life, and you’ve probably heard this, is that faithfulness matters more than fruitfulness. And that’s true — in the sense that the vertical dimension of faith and obedience is non-negotiable.
It doesn’t matter how successful or helpful you are (or seem to be) horizontally, if you’re not doing it right before and unto the Lord, it’s nothing. Faithfulness is the main thing — the chief purpose of our ministry and good works is the glory of God. So the final question is What does God think? And we should ask that routinely because we want that kind of Godward orientation. This is how faithfulness looks!
But that doesn’t mean that fruitfulness doesn’t matter.
In verse 8 Paul says that good works are excellent and profitable for people. In verse 14 he says that good works help people who have needs, and that helpfulness means fruitfulness. To not help cases of urgent need is to be unfruitful — and Paul does not want that. He says meet the needs to be fruitful.
And if we look ahead to verse 9, the reason Paul tells Titus to avoid foolish controversies is because they are unfruitful. Foolish controversies are unprofitable and worthless. They do not help! Therefore, avoid them! Avoid them because of their effect. That’s what Paul is saying.
So our saying “faithfulness matters more than fruitfulness” is true, but we should not diss fruitfulness. We should rightly emphasize faithfulness as essential, and we should beware of ever compromising faithfulness for an effect, but we should also remember that God cares about the effect. It’s not just the thought that matters.
We just can’t get past this in the text. The effect matters!
Faithfulness matters most; faithfulness pleases God — and good works done in faithfulness, over time, will be fruitful. People will be helped. And that matters. Lesson #3: Good works have effects that matter.
#4. Good works require avoiding foolish controversy. (vv. 9–11)
This is in verse 9. Paul gives Titus a directive that’s put in contrast to the previous directive of verse 8:
In verse 8 Paul says “I want you to insist on these things.” Insist on the wonder of triune grace.
In verse 9, he says “but” — in contrast to insisting on the wonder of triune grace — “avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law [because they don’t help.]”
I think the banner description for all these things is “foolish controversies.” Foolish controversies include disputes about genealogies, and dissensions, and quarrels about the law — and these were all things that were brought up by the false teachers. What Paul says here in Chapter 3 is connected to back to the false teachers he talked about in Chapter 1.
In Chapter 1, verse 10 he calls them “insubordinate, empty talkers, and deceivers.” We don’t know all the details of this false teaching, but because he references the circumcision party in Chapter 1, verse 10, and the mention of “genealogies” and “quarrels about the law” in Chapter 3, verse 9 — most likely these were Jewish false teachers who made a mess of the Old Testament. But we don’t know the full details on purpose.
Paul means for this to apply to not just one kind of false teaching, but to all kinds of false teaching. Because, whatever it is, false teaching upsets whole families. It’s divisive. It’s harmful. And therefore it must be silenced.
But we need to reconcile something here:
In Chapter 1, verse 9 Paul says to silence false teachers, by, verse 13, rebuking them sharply. But in Chapter 3, verse 9 he says to avoid foolish controversies. Everybody see that?
Rebuke false teachers. Avoid foolish controversies.
Well, what if the false teaching becomes foolish controversy? What do we do with that?
Well, look at verse 10:
As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, 11 knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.
So say a pastor does the rebuke like Paul says in Chapter 1, verse 9, but it doesn’t land, so he does it a second time. Well, after the second time, if there are still no positive results, the pastor should “have nothing more to do with him.” Another word for that is “avoid.”
And I want to note the personal nature of verse 10. These foolish controversies of verse 9 will come through people in the church. These are not issues out there, removed from the congregation. These are not Twitter debates, or the latest headline. Now it might start there, but these are things within the church body. We’re talking about doctrinal gobbledegook promoted by people with faces, not avatars.
And Paul’s letter to Titus includes a little handbook here for how pastors should handle these people:
All of this requires on-the-ground prudence. You have to be discerning. But by and large, in an effort to silence the false teaching, there are two rebukes, and if they don’t work, you’re done.
Because after two rounds of rebukes it becomes a nagging, foolish controversy that entangles you and distracts you from insisting on the wonder of triune grace and the good works that flow from it. And that’s what we’re about. But foolish controversies — ain’t nobody got time for that. Lesson #4: Good works require avoiding foolish controversy.
#5. Good works lead us to send well. (vv. 12–15)
We see this in the last few verses. Verse 12:
When I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there. 13 Do your best to speed Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way; see that they lack nothing. 14 And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.
There are three types of movement happening here:
Paul is sending Artemas and Tychicus to Titus
Titus is going visit Paul at Nicopolis.
And Paul tells Titus to send Zenas and Apollos on their way, lacking nothing.
You can call this the revolving door of a local church on mission, and it’s super fascinating when you consider this in light of the whole book. Because first, in the Book of Titus, we see how the church starts (that’s Chapter 1). Then we see how the church gets more established (that’s Chapters 2 and 3). And then here at the end we see how the church is sending out.
These are the three integrated pieces of a church that’s being planted, becoming rooted, and bearing fruit — and we’re gonna talk more about this next year for our church (!), but I just want you to see it in this book. And I especially want to highlight this sending piece at the end.
Because in this letter, Paul has so much to say about the health of the church in Crete. Paul is first concerned with that. He tells Titus to plant these churches by appointing qualified men as pastors — pastors who teach good doctrine and rebuke bad doctrine, because doctrine is important, and you’ve got to get that right if the church is going to be healthy and become what God intends for it be as a witness to the reign of Jesus by living in congruence with the Scriptures, empowered by the gospel.
We’re tracking with Titus here, right? Doctrinal integrity is central to the health of the local church, and you need to focus on this so that the church flourishes and abounds in good works that help people and adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. You need to pour your energy into the in-house needs of your flock, and also do your best when it comes to sending.
Verse 13, Titus: “Do your best to speed Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way; see that they lack nothing.”
So it’s not just about sending, this is about sending well.
Which means the good works of the church are not just for those on the inside, but it’s looking out there, and sending out there, and asking: What do they need?
What do our cities need? What do our planters need? What do our missionaries need? Lesson #5: Good works lead us to send well.
Good works are things that we do, from faith, in love, for the good of others—
They flow from the wonder of triune grace;
They come by deliberate, consistent attention;
They have effects that matter;
They require us to avoid foolish controversy;
And they lead us to send well.
And so when you hear the words “good works” … good works … if you hear that and the first thing you think is: I’m not saved by them! You’re exactly right. You are not saved by them. You are saved by Jesus alone, on the basis of his grace alone, through faith alone — it is the gift of God, not a results of works, amen.
And, your salvation, which is not the result of good works, does result in good works. Because you’ve been created in Christ Jesus to walk in them — Ephesians 2:10. “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
Cities Church, we are called and equipped to abound in good works!
And that’s what brings us to the Table.
The Table
Because if good works flow from the wonder of triune grace — and they do — this is the place we come each week to remember the wonder. At the Table, we set our minds and hearts on the cross of Jesus. Sent by the Father, led by the Spirit, Jesus, who is Emmanuel, came to die for us. And as we take the bread and cup, we give him thanks.
We give Jesus thanks together as the covenant members of Cities Church, but if you’re here and you trust in Jesus — if you embrace his death and resurrection as your only hope — we invite you to eat and drink with us.
The body of Jesus is the true bread. The blood of Jesus is the true drink. Let us serve you!
