Titus 1:5-9 "Titus's Work in Crete"

 ⁵ I left you in Crete so you could finish doing the things that still needed to be done and so you could appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.⁶ An elder must not be guilty of doing wrong, must have only one wife, and must have believing children. They must not be known as children who are wild and do not cooperate. ⁷ As God's managers, overseers must not be guilty of doing wrong, being selfish, or becoming angry quickly. They must not drink too much wine, like to fight, or try to get rich by cheating others. ⁸ Overseers must be ready to welcome guests, love what is good, be wise, live right, and be holy and self-controlled. ⁹ By holding on to the trustworthy word just as we teach it, overseers can help people by using true teaching, and they can show those who are against the true teaching that they are wrong.


It is evident in this passage that a trickle-down effect in leadership holds true even in the Christian church.  Also, these qualifications involve a person's character, not profession, or skills or intellect.


Not only is it important to have effective preachers of he gospel, but even moreso to have those who strive to live it out, and be examples for others to follow.

Titus 1:1-4

¹ From Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. I was sent to help the faith of God's chosen people and to help them know the truth that shows people how to serve God.² That faith and that knowledge come from the hope for life forever, which God promised to us before time began. And God cannot lie.³ At the right time God let the world know about that life through preaching. He trusted me with that work, and I preached by the command of God our Savior.
 ⁴ To Titus, my true child in the faith we share:
   Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.


The more direct translation of "a servant of God" would be "bond-slave" or "bond-servant".  Right off the bat though, Paul declares his role in life and his relationship to God, calling him self a servant of God...one who is committed to obeying God.

It's easy to miss, but in this greeting, Paul spends quite a bit of time addressing honesty, using words like "truth", "cannot lie", "trusted", "true child".  Apparently, lying was a common thing in Crete v.12 (the city where Titus was).  Paul makes abundantly clear that it is not in God's character to lie.  God cannot lie.  The foundation of our faith is trust in this.

A brief background on Titus, taken from a study Bible.

"Titus was a Greek man, and one of Paul's most trusted and dependable co-workers.  Paul sent Titus to Corinth on several special missions to help the church in its troubles (2 Corinthians 7-8).  Paul and Titus also traveled together to Jerusalem (Galatians 2:3) and Crete (1:5).  Paul left Titus in Crete to lead the new churches springing up on the island.  Titus is last mentioned by Paul in 2 Timothy 4:10, Paul's last recorded letter.  Titus had leadership ability, so Paul gave him leadership responsibility, urging him to use his abilities well."

A Meditation - Psalm 22: Abandonment

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?"  Psalm 22:1

I've been having these bouts of bad dreams lately.  The biggest theme amongst all these dreams is the feeling of abandonment, either from my parents, my brother, or my friends.  The last time I woke up, my mind drifted to those famous words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?".  Why did Jesus quote this phrase from Psalm 22?  It's easy to stop there at the first verse seemingly have found our answer, that it was simply God turning away from Jesus while He took sin into Him.  But reading through the psalm as a whole, one finds a much more deeper and profound meaning in Jesus' last words.  In light of the whole psalm, the phrase transforms from one of loneliness and lament into a source of great comfort to suffering believers.

The whole of Psalm 22 applies not only to Jesus' death but also to His resurrection.  In fact, the writer of Hebrews cites Psalm 22:22 as also being words of Christ (Hebrews 2:12).  In other words, Jesus meditated upon this entire psalm, not just the first verse.

A step-by-step summary of the psalm would sound like the following:

• The first third of the passage the psalmist overcomes his feeling of abandonment by God by reminding himself how God delivered his ancestors (v. 6-8) and remembering God's past faithfulness to himself (v. 9-10).
• Despite the suffering found in the next 10 verses (v. 12-21), the words found are definitely not one of panic and despair.  Rather, the tone of the middle verses (v. 12-21) is one of composure and poise, having an utmost trust in deliverance.
• The final verses brings the psalm to a triumphant climax of praise after deliverance from death.  He calls upon his brothers to join in praise (v. 22-26) and foresees future generations giving testimony to what God has done in raising him from the grave (v 27-31).

What a beautiful link Jesus has created for us, now that we have read this psalm in its entirety!  If we stop reading the Psalm at verse 1, or even in the middle somewhere, all we still end up with is defeat.  It's not until we read the Psalm as a whole that we can grasp the full message of the gospel.

A Rumination

(Paraphrased from a web-article I read a while ago)

Even if atheists reject the idea of God completely and claim to live according only to cold hard logic of science, they still live with an element of morality.  When a con-artist scams you out of $50, an atheist won't nod his head and say "Fascinating!  This guy is is genetically predisposed to unfair exchange of goods, that generations of Darwinian sexual selection in favor of right social behavior has instilled in me.  How intriguing, this difference is!"

Obviously not; an atheist would think what that guy did was wrong.  He, and anyone else, would want justice.  He would think he should have acted differently.

Despite the fact that there is no "justice" element on the periodic table, no one would think of the con-artist as just a fellow animal who happens to behave differently than you.  Any normal person would think he should have acted some other way, according to an invisible ideal that everybody is aware of and knows they should obey.

When that "Janet Jackson's boob at the Super Bowl" incident happened a few years ago, for a long time afterward, I heard a bunch of people making fun of Christians and their puritan silliness over sex.  They were saying stuff along the lines of: "We're all just mammals!  It's just a breast, all females have them.  What are you getting so worked up about?"

Yet, the moment you find out that while you were on vacation, your girl got drunk and slept with the entire Chicago Bears... suddenly sex is something to get upset about.

Suddenly it's not just meat slapping against meat.

Suddenly the exclusive sexual bond between you and your girl was important, was to be protected, was almost.... sacred.

Again there's this invisible rule that was supposed to be followed, that everybody was supposed to be aware of, that can't be proven by logic.  Whatever it is, wherever you think it came from, you can't deny that it's there.

Studying

Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin.

I feel like I'm precisely in the same predicament, only with MCAT knowledge.