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Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. We finished the 18th book in our New Testament plan and the 57th book in our whole Bible plan. Paul wrote this letter today to his friend and co-worker who had been assigned to do ministry on a Greek island. Tough job. But for real, it wasn't exactly a cakewalk.
The people on the island of Crete have a challenging culture that goes against the grain of Christ's teachings. And all of this is being reinforced by some local leaders who are apparently on a power trip. So it's not all sunsets and souvlaki for our friend Titus. Let's see how Paul encourages him to handle things.
In chapter 1, Paul reminds Titus that he's positioned him over the church in Crete so that he can get things running in ship shape. But when you're dropped down at a relatively new church in the middle of a bunch of bad leaders and false teachers, it's not exactly an easy task. This is a lot like the problems Timothy was facing yesterday, so we'll see some overlap in Paul's advice.
It's interesting to note what advice makes both books, because that gives us an idea of what things are situational and what things are universal. First, Paul gives Titus guidelines for how to choose elders, the people who will be the governing board of leaders over the church and its decisions.
It's vital that they reflect Christ not just in their doctrine but in their lives as well, because people are going to be looking to them for guidance and truth. In addition to that, an elder not only has to know the truth and teach it, but he has to be willing to correct those in the church who teach it wrongly. This is a big problem in the church at Crete.
There are lots of false teachers, especially among the Jews who are in the church, the circumcision party, as Paul calls them. And some of the local Cretans, and yes, that's where we got the slang term, are acting like, well, Cretans. They're debaucherous and foolish and vulgar. Their lives prove that they don't actually love God.
So Paul tells Titus to rebuke the people in the church who act like that, because if and when a person actually receives a rebuke, their faith increases and their doctrine is refined. Then Paul spends all of chapter 2 unpacking what it looks like to demonstrate godliness and good doctrine in a culture that doesn't get it at all.
He gives some broad counsel to different groups of people in the church, primarily addressing the areas where they might struggle. Even though he sections people off by age and gender, he's not making a division so much as a distinction. What I mean by that is, he tells the younger women to love their husbands and children, but this doesn't mean older women are free to hate their families.
And he tells young men to be self-controlled, but this doesn't give the older guys a free pass at doing whatever they want. His counsel here is general in nature, because the greater purpose is to point them all toward what it looks like to honor God in the most basic institute, the family.
He wants them to live lives that are set apart in the eyes of outsiders, kind of like he did himself when he took the Nazarite vow in Corinth. He tells them to adorn the doctrine of Christ, to present their faith as beautiful to the world. Why? Because God has poured out grace on them and grace changes everything. Grace is a change agent.
God's grace brought them salvation, trained them to renounce sin and worldly passion, trained them to be upright and godly even in the midst of a wicked culture. God's grace reminds them to wait for the hope of Christ's return because Christ is in the process of purifying them for himself.
In chapter 3, Paul takes his message outside the home and the immediate culture and into the larger realm of politics and leaders. He says this is another area where the church needs to stand out. We should demonstrate humble submission. Our humility has its greatest opportunity to show up when we disagree with someone. It doesn't have much of a landing pad if everyone is on the same page.
But when we disagree with someone, that's where it has the opportunity to show up in the gaps. And in those circumstances, Paul says we should aim to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. Whew. Then he goes on to say how we can do that.
By remembering, like verse 3 says, that we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. Humility is remembering that we haven't always known it all like we currently do. Right.
And Paul enriches our humility by reminding us that we weren't the ones who got ourselves to where we are today anyway. We didn't bootstrap this one. It was entirely 100% all the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior. Paul says if you believe that, then be careful to live what you believe. Aim for humility. Aim for peace. And rebuke those who don't aim for peace.
He ends by reminding them to help others and be generous like God has been generous to them. My God shot was in Paul's introduction today. It's one of those phrases that's so easy to pass over that I'm sure I've missed it every other time I've read this book.
It's in verses two through three where Paul is talking about eternal life and says God who never lies promised eternal life before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word. The gospel of our salvation has been on the lips of an eternal God before the ages began. Nothing has thrown his plan off or set it back. And at the right time, he set it all in motion.
He catalyzed his plan, created the world, carried us through the fall, sent his son to earth to live as a divine human who would die for the sins of a fallen humanity so that we could be rescued and resurrected into a perfection and a position we never would have had on our own. We could be not just his creation, but his children, his heirs.
There is one thing I know, and I will plant my flag in it for all eternity. He's where the joy is. Tomorrow, we'll be reading the short book of 1 Peter. We've linked to a video overview in the show notes, and it's a great way to spend the next seven minutes.
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