Titus 1:7 For a bishop must be blameless, as a steward of God; not selfwilled…
Perhaps by now you have heard of Alex Honnold. He is the first man to make a free ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley in California. This is a staggering accomplishment! Imagine going up the side of the Empire State Building with nothing but the window ledges to aid your climb, basically going from narrow edge to narrow edge. That is exactly what Alex Honnold did. Without ropes or any safety net whatever, he scaled a sheer rock face of more than 3,000 feet. Absolutely amazing!
What would cause a guy to do something so insane? Well, there is something in mankind that God has put there. It could generically be called ambition.
George Mallory was the Englishman who wanted to be the first to summit the highest peak in the world. Before disappearing, literally, into thin air on the slopes of Mt. Everest in 1924, he was asked why he wanted to summit Everest. He famously replied, “Because it’s there.”
God has placed ambition in the human heart. Why do people sail the oceans? Why do they explore its depths? Why do we go to space? Why do we do things that in some cases don’t even have any obvious benefit to mankind? The answer is because there is a restlessness inside us. There is an ambition there. Ambition is not intrinsically wrong. God has placed it within us, but if you belong to God, you would do well to be aware of what your ambitions are and from whence they came.
Titus 1:7 says, “For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled.” A bishop or overseer is like your pastor. You may not oversee a church, but you oversee something. In fact, you oversee a lot of things, beginning with yourself. If you belong to God, everything you oversee belongs to God. So, you may be an overseer, but ultimately you are a steward. By definition, a steward is not self-willed because a steward is not self-pleasing, self-absorbed, or self-driven. I don’t think most of us consider the forces that drive us.
What drives people like Alex Honnold and George Mallory? What drives you? Sometimes we can do good things but be driven by the wrong motives. A steward is not self-willed. We don’t own ourselves and we ought not spend our best resources trying to merely please ourselves. We are not to be driven by passions like anger and greed. We are to be led by God. A steward of God is not self-willed, and God gives us some examples in Titus 1:7 that bear this out.
Titus says a steward is not to be “soon angry.” Later it says, “No striker.” I can’t be driven by rage or anger. Paul talked about men who preached the gospel out of envy. Well, it is great that the gospel is being preached, but it ought never be done out of spite. Neither should we be driven by revenge.
Titus then says a steward is “not given to wine.” A drink strong enough to control a person has already deceived him. The Bible says that I am not to be filled with wine, but filled with the Spirit. I am to be led by God, not driven by drunkenness. I am to be clear-minded, and I can’t do that if I am given to wine.
How about “not given to filthy lucre”? Now is money wrong? No. Is filthy lucre wrong? Yes. What is the difference? The difference is that money is to be a tool to the steward and not the master of him. There were false teachers in that day who did what they did, according to Titus 1:11, for filthy lucre’s sake.
I am not to be driven by anger, alcohol, money, guilt, or expectations, either mine or other people’s. I am to be driven by the God Who made me. All that is to say that it is not wrong to have ambitions, but it is a wicked sin to count God out of the ambitions, dreams, and plans that you have because a steward is not self-willed. He is not driven by anger, by wine, or by money. In contrast, he is a lover of good men, sober, clear-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, and God-controlled.
Paul says in verse 3 that we have a commitment and a commandment. The commitment is what God has entrusted to us, the Word of God and the preaching of it. The commandment is that we are to use God’s resources according to God’s will.
Today, take a moment and take stock. Ask God to help you to know what it is that drives you, and that you would not be driven by ambition, but guided by God.