For the Grace of God has Appeared

Sunrise over mountain view

If you were to imagine your life in a storybook, what kind of story would it be? Would it be a comedy where everything turns out right in the end for the main character (i.e. yourself)? Is it a tragedy where surely everything is going to go wrong for you? Or is it going to be something in the middle? This passage gives us a peak into what kind of story that we are in, but the most revealing is that we are not the main character. It actually isn't my story, but I still have a significant part to play in it. So do you.

Our problem is that we don't step back to see the whole story. We don't know what will happen, so we often don't know what to do next. Horror movies know this and use it to great effect. I remember one of them was a very tight shot of a field. A sunny field. The protagonist was searching for a monster, but the movie gave you no cues. There was no music, just the ambient sounds of the man's boots crunching the ground beneath. You could only see so much and hear nothing, and it did that for seemingly several minutes before finally the monster appears in the scene.

Now, the way to ruin the scary is to slowly ramp up the music so we know exactly when the protagonist is close and show us way in advance where the monster is. We might feel for the limited knowledge of the character, but we aren't involved in the story anymore.

These days it can feel like we are living in a horror movie. Whether it is national events or personal troubles, we just never seem to know what is around the corner next, and we don't even have any scary music to guide us!

Well, we have something better, a full view of the story God is writing, and over the last few weeks, we have had the opportunity to see how we fit. Last couple of weeks we looked at the roles of men and women, and now we come to the roles of pastors and slaves and how all these roles fit together.

We all have a role to bring God glory

Pastors

Let's take a look at the role of the pastor. Here, Paul is challenging Titus not to just teach but to be the example of these teachings. It is easy to assume that the pastor these days must primarily be CEO guy or leadership guy. Yes, he must lead, but he does so from the front as it were. It doesn't mean that everybody must look like the pastor in that everyone teaches or mirrors his personality. But it does mean that the pastor is formed by God's word and leads in what that looks like.

Yet he can't be just a "good guy" with a heart of gold and a head of pudding. Be a model of good works, yes, but also have integrity of teaching. He can't play fast and loose with theology. What he says must be the truth, not his own opinion or worse the opinion of the culture he lives in.

At the end of the day, enemies are watching and talking. The devil loves nothing more than to see a pastor fall. So please pray for me that I will stay close to God. My M.Div degree doesn't grant me extra protection from sin. As Paul Tripp likes to say, I am not a grace graduate. I haven't outgrown my need for Jesus.

Now, by this point, Paul has talked about elders, unordained men, the women of the church, and now has given a charge to the pastor. For society as we know it today, that's pretty much all the roles in the church. But in Greek and Roman society at the time, there was one more status of human being that hasn't been covered yet, the slaves.

Slaves

Let's talk about slavery for a minute. Sometimes Christians get uncomfortable when we see slavery mentioned but not explicitly condemned in the Bible. And that is a natural reaction. Our experience with slavery is an ugly blight on our history, and in some places around the world, is still the lived reality of many.

But what was it like back in ancient Rome? Again, it is hard to know. Being a slave was never a fun experience, but Greek and Roman slavery were different than we knew it. In Rome, slavery was not restricted to a certain skin color. You became a slave likely from being conquered by the Romans at the time, and they were happy to have slaves from any and all countries and colors.

While slaves certainly did do backbreaking and dangerous tasks, that was not the only jobs they had. In fact, a slave could hold nearly any job that a freed person could hold (except public office). There were slave doctors, engineers, cooks, household managers, as well as mine workers. The status of a slave didn't come from his slavery but rather the person he was enslaved to.

The main difference comes in the world of legal rights. As a slave, you had no rights. Your master could beat you or even kill you if he wanted without facing legal penalty. As a slave, you were considered property or a resource much like we would consider a trailer or a shovel. No one would prosecute you if you broke a shovel today, and the same was true then.

That being said, as Bray points out, to beat or kill your slave was to damage your resources, and that is bad for business. He also points out that since Paul has to charge slaves to obey their masters, there must have been at least the option for some to be lazy and non-compliant!

There also seems to be evidence to suggest that slaves were often set free after a master's death or in some cases after only a period of around 7 years of work. When set free, even though born abroad, they would be granted Roman citizenship. In this way, slavery at the time much closer mirrors modern employer-employee relationship.

At the same time, we still have this concept of one man owning another made in the image of God and treating that person as less than human and thus still wrong.

So why doesn't Paul say, "Slavery needs to end in the Roman empire?" There's a certain sense in which we can't be sure specifically because there are a number of options. Dr. Bray advances the idea that Paul assumed that Jesus would return likely within his lifetime or pretty close thereafter. In an empire economy bolstered by slavery, to make call for the impossible from a TINY religious sect with no political standing whatsoever in the midst of a massive empire was to lose focus on the main mission of proclaiming the gospel which for all he knew he had only a few years to get out there. Jesus would set all the captives free upon his return, so there were more important things to focus our people on. Even if such a political revolution was possible, Christ's return was coming so quickly that even if Christians could get the emperor to free the slaves, it would take so long to work its way through the empire, it probably would not have done all that much good by then (519).

The other option is that Paul's teachings actually would upend the idea of slavery once there was a broad acceptance of them. This is what we see in the modern world. Where Christianity has taken a firm hold, that sort of chattel slavery ended. Paul never says that slavery is a good thing, only that it is a thing in our reality where people stuck in it need guidance, too.

In either approach, a whole category of people need to know what role God might have for them. And rather than say, "Well, you can't really do anything until you've got your own place" Paul can say, "Actually, there is something significant that you can do to."

With the gospel, the slave doesn't have to stay in the pre-defined narrative put on him, that of a prisoner of war sweeping the floor of his conquerers. In fact, since the slave is in Christ, if his master is not, it is the master who needs pity, not the slave (Chapell, 334). Yes, the slave's life might be hard now, but there is bliss coming.

In the meantime, they are to fulfill their role as best as they possibly can. Obey their masters in everything (so long as it doesn't sin against the Lord), be well-pleasing, don't steal, and do everything in good faith. If they do that, they will present the gospel as attractively as possible.

And what is that gospel? It is what we close this passage with here. The grace of God has appeared. This is Jesus Christ. Into this world, fallen by sin, Jesus has come to open our eyes. Remember that narrow field of the horror movie? Jesus is here to open up the whole view for us. By the looks of all things, the world is in the grip of that proverbial basket, and Jesus has arrived to take us—all of us—out of it.

This grace hasn't come for certain classes, the rich perhaps. It has appeared for all kinds of people: the rich, the poor, the slaves, the free, men, women, Jews, and Gentiles. No one has to be left out or forgotten. It doesn't mean everyone is going to heaven, but it does mean that anyone who puts their faith in Christ will.

And it isn't just waiting until death, but the transformation begins now. The Holy Spirit works to help us renounce the things that the world says are so important in its limited view and embrace those things that really matter, those things that will help reshape the world into what it was always meant to be and one day will be. Dr. Bray describes this very well. It can be easy when we say "worldly" that we are somehow beating down on the physical creation around us, as if all of this was a mistake on the way to heaven. No, Dr. Bray puts it like this: "Those who have been saved are strangers not to the creation as God made it but to the state of rebellion into which it has fallen." (521). In other words, we don't say, "Well, it's all going to burn, so just let it go." No, say "It's all going to be redeemed, and by being faithful to what God has called me to where I am right now is how to do that." For William Wilberforce, as a British lawmaker, he faithfully applied Scripture to his work and brought an end to the British slave trade. Bach was a musician who famously said, "The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." Not everything he wrote was for the Church (although much of it was), but that discipline and devotion is evident in the craft of his work. St. Augustine used his rhetorical power and analytic mind to write the works that became foundational for Western theology and philosophy, yet it was the prayers of his faithful mother Monica who brought him to faith.

This is what Jesus came to do. He came to make a people zealous for good works.

So what are you going to do? We've been given the foundational characteristics for our gender and work, so how are you going to leverage those things? I don't just mean sharing Jesus at work where appropriately can, although please do if you have the chance. I mean, are you looking at your life through this greater lens? How will you create in the world the wholeness that God desires for it, not needlessly distracted by money or self-advancement? Yes, bills gotta be paid, but keeping this eternal perspective, this hope, this sure promise that God will redeem all things, what will your mind be freed up to do?

I might not have a big part, but I’m happy to be in the story.