Christian Servants Series

CHRISTIAN SERVANTS

Titus 1:1-4

When I was involved in secular work I served in various management positions. As I result I was often required to recruit, interview, and hire people. During that period of my career I never once hired someone just so that I could offer them benefits, I hired them to do a job that would benefit the company.

With that being said, those who were hired did receive several benefits. They were provided with health, vision, and dental insurance, holiday pay, and paid vacation time. Those employees received a salary that enabled them to support their families, pay their mortgages and to purchase, insure, and maintain an automobile. With these benefits came the expectation that the job would be done and done well.

As Christians we enjoy many wonderful benefits. However, these benefits are not something that we can earn; they are benefits that come to us as a result of the finished work of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

We who have repented and believed in Christ have been provided with forgiveness of our sins, we have the assurance of eternal life, we have a relationship with the Father, we have been adopted into the family of God, we are joint heirs with Jesus, we possess a home in Heaven and we have the opportunity to enjoy and abundant life here on earth.

Though we receive innumerable benefits/blessings as a result of our salvation, our ultimate purpose in this life is to bring honor and glory to the Father. Most of the historic confessions of faith declare that “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

A major part of glorifying God is serving Him. While we cannot work to earn our salvation, those of us who have been saved are expected to serve the Lord. Furthermore, we should not serve out of compulsion, we should serve willingly and with passion.

One of the greatest examples of this type of service is the ministry of the Lord’s Apostles. Those men certainly received many immediate and eternal benefits as a result of their relationship with Jesus, but it is abundantly clear that Jesus chose them for a special and specific purpose. He called and commissioned them to share the Gospel and make Disciples for the remainder of their lives.

This was not just true for the Lord’s Apostles; Jesus has a special and specific plan to use each and every person who belongs to Him. I would like to examine the opening verses of Paul’s letter to Titus and consider several truths about “Christian Servants”.

The life, conversion, and ministry of the Apostle Paul serves as a fantastic example of how God can transform someone and use them for His glory. When Jesus saved Paul He took the Church’s greatest adversary and turned him into one of its greatest advocates.

In the early days of the church no one was feared any more than Saul of Tarsus. Saul was a devout Jew, a self-described "Pharisee of Pharisees". As a result, he was actively involved in persecuting Christians; his ultimate goal was the complete annihilation of the Church. Saul did not know and never would have believed that this Jesus that he spent his days fighting against had chosen him for a great task. The Savior would use him to advance the cause of the Church that he fought so hard to destroy.

- When examining his story we see:

THE EXPECTATIONS OF CHRISTIAN SERVANTS

In verse one Paul refers to himself as a “servant of God”. In the Greek, the word “servant” is “doulos” which literally means a slave. As a slave of Christ, Paul’s life was no longer his own. He famously declared in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Paul was able to make such a declaration because of a life changing encounter with Jesus Christ. Saul/Paul was headed to Damascus with written authority “that if he found any who were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” As he journeyed, Jesus sought him out, called his name, changed his life, and ultimately commissioned him into the Gospel ministry.

In Acts 9:15 Jesus shared His plan for Paul with a man named Ananias. He said, “he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. “ This shows us that Paul was saved to serve the Lord Jesus and that is exactly what he did. He served Jesus from the time he met Him until he took his last breath. Furthermore, God is still using Paul’s Christian service to minister to millions of people all over the world today. We will never know the true impact of his ministry this side of Heaven.