Exercise Your Mind to Live Good

 February 4  2024

Titus 3:1-11

         One of the things that has been interesting about our children moving out and living their own lives is that they do things that you just never imagined that they would do. Take for example our son Matt, who is twenty-seven, who can be found at the gym more often than not. Now, Jennifer and I were never the kind of people who could be found running on treadmills or lifting weights. I always thought that if I was going to work that hard then I wanted paid for doing so. So, it catches us off guard that Matt spends so much time working out but in his defense he has a very good reason for all of this exercise and that is so he can eat all of the junk food that he craves and not have any guilt about it.

         Now, Matt is not alone in his exercise endeavors because, as he told us,  January is one of the few times that his gym, Planet Fitness, ever advertises. The reason why this is so is that at the start of the year there is always this mad rush of people going off to the gym to work off everything that had been put on in November and December. It is here, at the beginning of a new year, that people stop and take stock of their life and perhaps decide to do something to alter the course that they are on. Most people know that they need to exercise to live well and what better time to put this truth into action than here at the beginning of a fresh, new year.

         Since it is here, at the beginning of the year, that we take stock of life, I believe that perhaps we should take this time to pause and to think about our spiritual life as well. Today is the first of a series of messages I’ve given the title, “Think.Good.Work.” The idea is that there is a connection between our thinking and our doing good work. Much like people know that they must exercise their bodies to live well, we as followers of Jesus must exercise our minds to live good. Yes, this sounds like bad English but nonetheless, to live good is the very way God has for us to live. Yet in order to live good, being people who do good work, requires that we exercise our minds. At least this is what Paul explains to his friend,Titus, in this letter Paul has written to him.

         There in the third chapter of this letter to Titus, Paul in the eighth verse, says, “I strongly desire, I insist emphatically, make absolutely certain, about these things that I have just written, so that those who have faith in God might connect what you know to be true in your minds with your outward behavior”. In other words, Paul is telling us, that we need to be people who exercise their minds, people who think about the good and then go get it done. We are to exercise our minds to live good, always standing ready to do the kind of work which is helpful, beneficial. This is the kind of good that makes the people around us to sit up and take notice of our life of love.

         This life of good, a good which is the kind of good that draws others to stop and wonder what we are up to, this kind of living good, this all has its source, Paul insists, in what we are thinking about, the way that we are exercising our minds. The first area of our lives that we are to think about is our past, you know,  before God reached into our lives and turned us around. It is telling that the first thing Paul describes is those who are far from God. They are people who are foolish, literally, “without a mind”. So, as we begin to exercise our minds we need to remember that there was a time when we were those who seemed to have no mind to exercise. No wonder we refused to put any faith in God. In our past, we just did not have any confidence in what God is doing. We were unpersuaded in the truth of what God said because we did not want to consider just what it is that God is up to. Having no faith in God to anchor us, we instead became people who wandered off just as Jesus describes in the fifteenth chapter of Luke, where the shepherd must leave the ninety-nine to go after the one who had become lost. You see if we are not persuaded by the truth does it not just make sense that we will be those who go chasing after every lie? We should not be surprised to hear Paul tell us that we end up being slaves to our hungers and our lusts wasting the time we have been given. We were people not living the good but instead living opposed to the good purposes of God. This evil intent shows up in real life as an embittered mind, always comparing ourselves to our neighbors, angry when all is well with them instead of us, somehow believing that to complain at another’s good fortune can somehow make our life better.

         You see, this life before God entered into it, is one that unravels into a life that Paul calls, “detestable”, a life that is disgusting and repulsive. This life Paul finds so ugly is a life consumed by hate. Now, the word that Paul uses here for hate is a word which really means that one loves somebody less than someone else. What Paul is speaking about here is this picking and choosing who we will love and who we will refuse to love. Can you see why Paul says such a life is so nasty? Yet, this life Paul describes is the very life that we see out in the world on any given day. This is kind of how we normally think about living and loving; there are those that I am going to choose to love and there are those who just don’t make the cut. That is very much the norm and the reason that Paul is so grossed out about such a life is that it is just common; there is nothing about living such a life that would catch anyone’s attention. It is quite normal that everyone is living with two sets of lists, those who get our love and those who get our contempt. That is where we all begin in life, our past, where we love some and hate others. We were people who might show you some love or you know, today just might not be your day, and tomorrow is not looking very good either. This is why Paul insists that we cannot forget where it was that we came from so that we make sure our past remains just that, the past. We need to exercise our minds and consider this: are we still hanging on to those two lists, you know the ones we love and the ones we don’t? We also need to remember our past so that we remember that most of the people in the world are living just such a life. Remembering where we came from is supposed to temper us when we interact with the people we meet. We are to see those we share life with as people who might not yet be persuaded of the truth that God is speaking. There are still many people who have wandered off, chasing after every lie, enslaved to their base desires. We know this is who they are because that is who we used to be, before Jesus.

         You see, we begin with our past because it is there that God through Jesus Christ reached into our lives and gave us a hope and a future. Yes, we had a past but then…God. Here is where our story turns with this exclamation that the goodness of God, his giving to us exactly what we needed, calling us one of his own, this is the God who saves us, the one who has made himself real to us. This is the only way that life changes, when the arm of God reaches into our life and takes hold of us. The word for the love of God that Paul uses here is an unusual choice, “philanthropy”, which means the warm brotherly and sisterly love felt between people. Perhaps Paul uses this very human word for love because we have a God who became human for us, to love us as brothers and sisters. This is the love that saved us, the very human Jesus, taking our place upon the cross to save us, tasting death for all of us. He took upon himself our deserved judgment, as one of us, so we could experience the mercy so undeserved.

         So, yes, as Paul reminds us, we are not saved because of us living life in the right way. No, the only thing that rescued us was that God, in Jesus, was merciful to us. It was Jesus who gave us the undeserved gift of the Holy Spirit, the God who comes to us to make all things new. As the Spirit hovers over us the world begins again, our world begins again, and we are made new. The Spirit reaches into our lives and seizes hold of us, transforming our life. The very favor of God welcomes us, people who hate others and those who are hated by others, into his life of holy love. This love of God is an uncommon love because God only has one list of people, and on it are the names of each and every person, giving love to all. Our God is the one who makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, giving life to all. This love that draws us close to God is grace, the very grace that claims us as being people who belong to God. This is why we make the claim that at last, we are right with God; his love forgave us through the blood of Jesus. Through that same blood God made a covenant with us, an unbreakable bond of love. This is a bond which not even death can dissolve. This is the ground of our hope that we will be at home with God even in the age to come.

         So we exercise our minds. We consider, first, our past apart from God, a life opposed to God and what he is up to. Then we thought of God, breaking into our life, a life that was so lost. God has taken us and through his love, has made us a new creation. The Holy Spirit hovers over us, we are transformed through the grace of God. Now we have a future and a hope.  If we think about it, does it not make sense that what God has done will impact this present moment? Of course! This is why Paul teaches us in the first verse of this chapter, that we are to exercise our minds in order to live out the good, right here in the present. Paul has already told us that we are not saved by our good works; no, we have been saved byGod so that we might be people who are able to do good work. This just leaves us wondering, well what do these good works look like. Paul anticipates this question. He goes on to give us a description of just what is meant by good works. Good works begins by how we talk to each other. Paul very strangely tells us that we are to not blaspheme another person which is odd because normally blaspheme is unholy talk against God. So, why would Paul use a word that is only used for God here where we consider how we are to talk to each other? The answer is that all people are made in the image of God. There is something sacred about the way that God has created us but more, there is something even more holy about the way that he saved us. You see, our God considers our humanity not only worthy of being redeemed by the life of his Son but God also finds us a fitting place for him to dwell through the Holy Spirit. We need to exercise our minds, then, whenever we speak to one another because the fingerprints of God are all over every person we encounter. God takes it personally whenever we speak less of those he considers to be his own. As we think about the saving work God does through his love and grace then we must also consider that God does this not just for us, but God does this for every single person. When we exercise our minds and think about this then it just makes sense that we are to be done with fighting words, words that tear down and tear apart. We cannot tear apart those God is working so hard to make whole. No, instead of people picking a fight we are to be gracious and extravagantly forgiving those who have an axe to grind with us. The words Paul uses here echoes what Jesus taught in the fifth chapter of Matthew, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and let him have the other one as well, If anyone wants your outer coat let him have your shirt as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” Why would Paul want us to live like this? Well, if we think about it, this is what God has done for us. On the cross the blood gave us not just forgiveness, which dealt with our past, but Jesus went further because that same blood ratified the new covenant, granting us the favor of God, which gave us our future. Here in the present then, forgiveness and favor must be our way of life. And why should we choose to mimic God in this way? Paul, says that we need to exercise our minds because when you live this kind of life, people will see something different about us, we might even say, something beautiful, the rare beauty of the cross. Through our life their Savior will appear for they will see the Christ who lives and works through us. They too will come to know the God who loves them like no other. Paul continues that such a life is one that is heaping over with abundance. The image here is the one given to us by Jesus as found in the sixth chapter of Luke where we hear Jesus say to us, “Forgive and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over and pouring into your lap, for the measure you use this is how it will be measured back to you.” This life of overflowing, abundant, blessing, this is the reason why Paul’s words scream at us off of these pages. We must emphatically resolve to exercise our minds, to think about our past, to think about our future and think on this life of good we can do here in the present. Jesus promises us that the more we offer forgiveness and favor, grace and love to all people the more grace and love, favor and forgiveness will overwhelm our life. This life is the life we were made for, saved for, this wonderful life we have with God, think about that. So by all means, do a little exercise to live well, but most importantly, exercise your mind to live good, all of your days. Amen!