Parable of the Shrewd Manager

In Luke 16, Jesus tells a parable about a manager who's about to be fired. Concerned for his future, he uses his position to earn favor with his master's debtors so they will welcome him in their home after he is fired and he won't be destitute. The master commends him for this and Jesus concludes: "I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous [or worldly] wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings" (v9).

While this parable raises several interesting questions, I'm going to focus on its imperative that we should be building relationships with others with eternity in mind. The epistles have no shortage of passages talking about our imperative to connect with others for the sake of advancing the Gospel. One of the things we hammer hard here is the importance of living on mission for Christ. It's why all advice threads require stating your mission. Most guys have caught on now, "I'd better mention sharing the Gospel/making disciples in my mission or the mods will be all over me," but even taking you at face value - for everyone who is serious about the mission to advance the Gospel and make disciples, social advancement is critical. Especially if you want to be someone of influence in God's Kingdom/the Church the Bible is clear that such people "must also have a good reputation with outsiders" - and those with no social presence don't even have a reputation at all, much less a good one.

The Basics of Guardrails

So, how does one actually build good social skills? The Bible has some general guardrails on this. For example, there are a lot of "don't do"s in the Bible about how we interact with others.

  • Don't covet what they have.

  • Don't steal from them.

  • Don't lie to them.

These will ruin your relationships, not help them. The Bible also has a lot of "do do"s.

  • Be patient.

  • Be kind.

  • Season your conversation with salt.

  • Be gentle.

... just to name a few. Of course, it also has a stricter set of guardrails for unique contexts. For people like Cretans, for example, Paul implores: "rebuke them harshly." For others, certain disciplines are warranted. This is because as a social network expands, opportunity for conflict inherently expands with it. Guardrails are not only about how to build healthy relationships. They're also about how to keep them healthy when these moments of conflict arise.

It's important to know the biblical boundaries of how we should/shouldn't interact with others in various contexts - and we certainly won't be creating any exhaustive lists here. That said, Titus 3:1-2 provides a nice summary of some of the most critical interpersonal guardrails. But before we get there, we need to know the context for the passage ...

Let NO ONE Ignore You

Before we can get to Titus 3, we need to know how chapter 2 ends.

  • 2:11 talks about God bringing salvation "for ALL PEOPLE." That's a lot of people!

  • 12-14 then proceeds by sharing the Gospel and imploring us to live according to it. Are you living what you preach?

  • Paul then continues in verse 15, "DECLARE these things." When was the last time you declared something in an "ALL PEOPLE" context? Me either!

  • But he goes on: "exhort and rebuke with ALL authority."

Pause there. This is giving me Matthew 28:19-20 vibes when Jesus also implores us to spread the Gospel to "ALL nations," prefacing it with, "ALL authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore go ..." as if he is giving us that authority that Paul is now telling Titus to exercise. Another way I like to think of this is to imagine you work for a mega-company and the CEO calls you up and says, "Heyo Bob. Can you do me a little favor and get this report done?" Okay, imagine how you'd respond to that compared to if the CEO said, "I am the head of this company. There is no one higher than me. I have all authority over everything that happens with this company. Therefore, I'm telling you to get this report done." How do you think you'd respond to that request? Sometimes we treat the Great Commission like the "Heyo Bob" approach, whereas Jesus used the "All authority" approach, and Paul now refrains it here in the context of the Gospel bringing salvation to "ALL people" (parallel to "ALL nations") before finishing ...

  • "Let NO ONE disregard you."

Okay, so you may be wondering why I keep capitalizing "ALL" here. No, I'm not a universalist - I vehemently oppose that notion. I'm drawing context to ALL-encompassing verbiage of who the Gospel is to be brought to and the impetus of Paul's charge to Titus to declare it to ALL people with ALL authority in a manner that NO ONE would disregard him. See the pattern now?

So, when it says not to let anyone disregard you, what does that word mean? Let's define it with a quick Google search.

English Dictionary | Disregard: pay no attention to; ignore

Greek Dictionary | Periphroneo: think beyond, depreciate, contemn, despise, look down upon

The ESV seems to be a bit interpretive here to say "disregard," but it makes sense in the context. If you've got a message you're meant to declare authoritatively to all people, you'd better do it in a way where people don't think so little of you that they ignore the message (remembering that YOU are the message, not just the words you speak).

With that said, how many people feel like you've been walking around the world being ignored all your life? How many of you have been "invisible" in the crowd?

I remember going to NYC a couple months ago for vacation. I love Broadway. Ironically, one of my favorite songs I heard (from the Beetlejuice musical) involved the line, "You're invisible when you're me. There's no one to see my truth." Times Square and Central Park are fantastically beautiful. They're also fantastically crowded. How long do you think you, men, would have to sit on a park bench in the Big Apple before someone would approach you and initiate a conversation? Quite a while, I can assure you. Everyone's bustling with things to do. Being ignored is the default state. You must make an active effort to change that. You can't just expect it to happen magically, all by itself.

Our imperative to get the Gospel to ALL people comes with an equal imperative not to let anyone disregard what we have to say - whether by directly ignoring us or ignoring our message because they look down on us with contempt.

Guardrails in One Verse

Okay, NOW we can get to the actual verse, now that we realize its context. Titus 3:1-2 ...

  • "Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people"

Yikes. That's quite a bit there. Let's break this down, remembering that this is just a summary of some key guardrails, not an exhaustive list of them.

Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient

How did Paul do this? When the Roman Empire ordered Christians to be put to death, did he submit willingly and encourage believers everywhere to put their head on the chopping block? Nope. But when he was caught, he accepted his situation without fight. In fact, even when Got allowed him an opportunity to escape, he and Silas chose to remain (Acts 16). In short, as one of my friends aptly and succinctly puts it: "submit to your rulers and authorities" = "don't run from the cops."

Why does this matter in the imperative to get the Gospel to ALL people? Because if you're being defiant against your "rulers and authorities" instead of submissive to them, do you think the people who are loyal to those rulers and authorities are going to give you much credibility? In their mind, you're as good as a criminal at that point and they will "disregard" or "look down on" with "contempt" anything you have to say. Paul just implored us NOT to put ourselves in a situation when they will do that. Now he's explaining the guardrails to make sure we don't lose that influence.

For an easy example, consider when Trump was elected and all the liberals were shouting, "He's not MY president." Now imagine one of those liberals, after rioting against Trump, were to come across a die-hard Trump supporter and try to teach him some new philosophy/way of life/belief system that he'd never heard before. Or imagine when Biden was elected and countless people were shouting, "The election was rigged. Biden isn't the legitimate president" - and a republican were to try, after shouting on the street corner about this - try to persuade a Biden-supporter to consider some new philosophy/way of life/belief system that they'd never heard before. Do you think they're going to be likely to accept what you have to say or treat your thoughts with contempt?

to be ready for every good work

Notice the wording here. It's not merely that you must "avoid evil." Too often we are focused on the "don't sin" part of living for Christ that we forget about the "do"s of Christian living. "Good works" can mean acts of service, speaking kindly of others, showing generosity, etc. - the standard "good works" we often read about. But one that's often left off the list: it can also mean the "work of the Gospel" that Paul frequently talks about, which he is engaged in, with several others who he calls into that work with him, and which we are all called into as well.

Even more significant in the wording is that we must be READY for EVERY good work. Both those words need emphasis.

  • READY - They're already prepared for us. We just need to be ready for when the time comes. These are the "good works prepared in advance for us to do." It's no coincidence that IMMEDIATELY after saying this in Ephesians 2:10, Paul then describes the calling of the Gospel to the Gentiles, the ministry of the apostles and prophets, the "mystery" of the Gospel being made known by the Spirit of the Gospel spreading beyond the Jews into all the Gentile peoples and how "of this gospel I was made a minister," and that "through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known" ... hmm ... I wonder what the "good works prepared in advance for us to do" might be. Could it have something to do with making sure the Gospel is spread to ALL nations? At least in part, yes. And we'd better be READY for when the opportunity to exercise this good work comes.

  • EVERY - Can one lackadaisically pick and choose which good works we will do for God? Can we say, "Eh, God, I don't feel like sharing my faith with that guy today. I'll take the next opportunity"? No. Our imperative is to take advantage of EVERY good work, whether we feel like it or not.

If you feel like skipping one of the opportunities God prepared in advance for you, it's probably because you weren't READY. If you're not ready, it's probably because you don't think it's necessary to do EVERY good work God prepared in advance for you to do.

to speak evil of no one

Simply put, if you are a slanderer or gossip, people won't respect you and your influence for good will be shot. Sure, slander and gossip my increase your influence to do evil, but never to do good.

to avoid quarreling

Being a quarrelsome person makes people want to avoid you. Proverbs literally says that it's better to be stranded on a roof corner than be around a quarrelsome wife. Do you really think you'll fare much better in a broader social circle than marriage if you're a quarrelsome person?

to be gentle [epieikes: seemly, equitable, yielding, gentle, mild, forbearing, fair, reasonable, moderate]

Ah, gentility. The Bible has a lot to say about gentleness. There is certainly a time and a place for everything. As previously noted, Paul tells Timothy to rebuke some people "harshly." So, gentility is not always the only card to be played in conversation. But it's a massively important one and should be our default, unless you know the context demands otherwise. Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there is a time for all kinds of opposing things - "A time to break down, and a time to build up" ... hopefully we're building up more often than we're breaking down. "a time to weep, and a time to laugh" ... hopefully we're laughing more than we weep. "a time to love, and a time to hate" ... hopefully we love more than we hate. "a time for war, and a time for peace" ... hopefully more peace than war. In the same way, if there is "a time for gentleness, and a time for harshness," ... let's remember that we ought to be gentle more often than we are harsh. There's a lot more in the Bible about the importance of gentility than harshness, even though they both have their place.

Simply put, being inappropriately harsh will callous people against you. That's no way to build a social life. Being appropriately harsh through a default of gentility will earn the respect of those who know you.

to show perfect courtesy [prauteta: gentleness, mildness, gentleness] toward all people

It's interesting to me that the word translated "gentleness" has one connotation, but the word that's more directly translated as "gentleness" is re-translated to "courtesy" (ESV) or "humility" (NLT, NKJV). Regardless, the point is doubly-emphasized. There is a common decency to be had. That common decency does not make you weak. Instead, it is a tool to strength your social skills and earn the respect of those around you, which makes you strong. As with all things, it's a tool in your belt - not the only tool, but a useful one. Consider humility and gentleness to be a hammer and screwdriver and a "sharp rebuke" or "harsh correction" like a nail gun. Nail guns are cool and fun. Some jobs absolutely require them. But they're not your default go-to for most home projects. You may be obsessed with it and find that it's more helpful than most people realize, even in projects some people wouldn't ordinarily think to use them ... but that trusty hammer is still going to need to be at your side, regardless.

TEASER

Okay, now that we've learned about the imperative to build Kingdom-minded relationships and the guardrails around doing that, something else comes to mind: You can follow all those do-s and don't-s and still not have a vibrant social circle who you're influencing for Christ. If those "do-s and don't-s" are guardrails on the path to a vibrant and Gospel-advancing social life, what happens if you stay in the guar rails, but drive your car in reverse? Or you've got a broken engine and don't move at all? Well ... staying in the guard rails still won't get you very far. In the next post, we'll hit more of those nuts and bolts of how to actually get off your butt and build kingdom-minded relationships with others.