Actions Speak Louder
“To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” —Titus 1:15-16, NIV
I think it is pretty easy to consider ourselves as patient, generous, forgiving people when no one is actively requiring patience, generosity, or forgiveness from us. We can have wonderful theology about loving our neighbors until those neighbors do something difficult to love. Then we have an explanation…several explanations and justifications, typically. We still believe everything we said—we would just appreciate an exception for this particular person or situation.
We have all heard it said, “actions speak louder than words.” Well, unfortunately, it is not just some saying your parent made up to get you to be nicer to your siblings or to do your chores. Friends, even the Bible shows us that our actions have a way of revealing what our words can keep politely concealed.
Paul writes, “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him” (Titus 1:16, NIV).
Now I don’t typically gravitate towards The Message version, but its wording here really just drives the point home: “They say they know God, but their actions speak louder than their words. They’re real creeps, disobedient good-for-nothings” (Titus 1:16, MSG). That leaves very little room for interpreting how Paul feels about the situation. But before we begin mentally assigning the description of “creep” or “disobedient good-for-nothing” to someone else…we should probably evaluate how this passage addresses us.
Paul is confronting false teachers whose conduct contradicts their claims to know God. In the preceding verse, he describes their minds and consciences as corrupted. Their attention to religious rules could not cleanse what was happening within them, their unbelieving hearts. His statement about purity does not make sinful behavior acceptable—it exposes how deeply the inner condition affects the way we perceive and handle things (Titus 1:15, NIV). We can know all the right “vocabulary of faith” while actively resisting the God we are talking about.
That resistance tends to show up in the most ordinary places. We speak about grace but keep secret careful records of someone else’s failures. We value honesty until the whole truth becomes inconvenient to us. We ask God to lead us while mentally reserving the right to decline his direction. The question becomes personal: Is the faith I profess shaping the way I actually live, including when obedience costs something or when no one is watching?
James gives us a painfully practical example—someone needs food and clothing, and we send them away with encouraging, kind words while doing nothing to meet the need. A lovely sentiment, with absolutely no dinner or winter coat provided. He explains that faith left without action is dead, then compares it to a body without the spirit: “faith without deeds is dead” (James 2:14-17, 26, NIV). In verse 18, he makes the connection visible: “I will show you my faith by my deeds” (James 2:18, NIV). Genuine trust in God begins showing up in what we actually do.
Hear me: this does not mean we earn salvation by accumulating enough good behavior.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10, NIV).
We are saved by grace through faith, and God creates us anew in Christ for the good works he has prepared for us. Those works flow from the life he gives us. We depend on his mercy for salvation—and that mercy begins shaping how we live.
Paul describes this as “faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6, NIV). He also thanks God for the Thessalonians’ work arising from faith, their labor motivated by love, and their endurance sustained by hope in Jesus (1 Thessalonians 1:3, NIV). Their trust had become recognizable. It moved them to serve, love, and persevere. Our faith should become recognizable, too—in an apology we offer without attaching a defense, the help we give even when it interrupts our schedule, and the honesty we choose when a slightly edited version would make us look a lot better.
An honest look at our lives does not require treating every failure as proof that we do not belong to Christ (or that we are “real creeps” or “disobedient good-for-nothings”!). We are examining whether we are responding to him or continually defending what he calls us to surrender. When we recognize a gap between our words and our actions, we can confess it and ask for help. Romans 8:13 teaches us that we put sinful deeds to death through the Spirit’s power, and Romans 12:2 calls us to transformation through renewed minds (Romans 8:13; Romans 12:2, NIV). We receive God’s truth, depend on his strength, and take the next step of obedience.
Where does your life need to agree with what your mouth has been saying? We can bring those places honestly before God. The people around us should be able to experience something of the faith we profess in the way we treat them. Our actions are already speaking… By his grace, may they tell the truth about whom we follow.
bytaylormcgee
