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Full Episode
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.
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