Paul’s letter to Titus is commonly referred to as a “pastoral epistle” along with the apostle’s two letters to Timothy. These three letters provide the New Testament’s clearest instructions on the who, what, when and why of pastoral ministry.
Paul has left Titus in Crete to “put in order” the things that are yet undone in the church. He has left Timothy to minister among a people with a reputation for hardness and immorality. In our day and age, we would call Crete an “inner-city” or a “tough neighborhood.” Of course, such labels do much to misrepresent many, many people living in such places. But they do remind us that there’s a kind of frontier that the gospel is meant to penetrate and claim as its own. Christians, like Titus, are meant to do ministry in “Cretan contexts.”
Paul has called Titus to (1) appoint leaders and (2) instruct those leaders to rebuke the hard hearted. Now he comes to a third instruction: Teach the people how to live. We see this in the opening lines of Titus 2.
But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. (Titus 2:1-6)
Titus himself is to be a model of such behavior, and his teaching is to have a gravity and soundness that’s unimpeachable (v. 7-8). I find several things fascinating and instructive about this section of Paul’s letter.
First, Titus is not only to teach sound doctrine but also what accords with sound doctrine. He is to have a concern with the life that follows from the truth. The Christian lifestyle needs as much exposition as Christian doctrine. We’re not done with our teaching until we make application to where and how people live. That application ought to be particular to the several categories of people in our churches–older men, older women, younger women, younger men. Ministry requires the pastor know how to insert the truth into life where people find themselves.
Second, I find it instructive that Titus is to teach older women how to be older women. That’s fascinating. I can’t think of a single pastor job description where that was listed as a main job requirement. Not one. Perhaps that helps to explain why many ministries known for their teaching ministries are also sometimes known to be great places for men but not so great for women’s discipleship. There’s a step missing, a link broken between the pastor and the older women who are then responsible to teach younger women. In a Cretan context there tends to be a lot of women around. In most churches there tend to be a lot of women around–usually more women than men. So we miss a vital gospel opportunity and a vital way of strengthening communities if we neglect the older women and by extension the younger women of our churches and the communities we’re trying to reach.
Third, at the heart of “what accords with sound doctrine” is self-control. That’s at the heart of what it means to be a man or a woman, really. It’s a fruit of the Spirit that needs greater emphasis in today’s culture and perhaps particularly in communities like Crete where, as verse 12 puts it, people were “always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” What’s the remedy to wantonness? Self control. That’s why elders must have it and people must be taught it. And it’s vital on the forgotten frontiers of the gospel.
Fourth, this requires that pastors closely know and live with their people. How else will they be able to make the application of the word of God in such intimate situations? Moreover, this means that the local church must become a surrogate family to many. The local church has a responsibility for raising younger saints into maturity and encouraging the older saints to carry age with respect and dignity.
Finally, teaching people how to live is nothing short of reconstituting, restructuring, and remodeling families and households. Contexts like Crete tend to exert tremendous pressure on male-female relationships and weaken families. Living according to the philosophy of the world tends to pull apart marriages and leave children uninstructed in the things of God. The gospel of our Lord works against all of that by insisting on lives that conform to the truth. It’s slow, difficult work. But the gospel in Crete (and everywhere else!) calls us to what is typically described as “traditional” views of marriage, marital roles, and child-rearing. I don’t mean to say that everything someone puts under the label “traditional” is a good thing. It’s not. A lot of abuse, oppression and privilege hides under that label. But I do mean to say that stressing in a Cretan context the virtues of marriage, of complementarian gender roles, of child-rearing, of respectable behavior and self-control is what “accords with sound doctrine” in this text. As such, it becomes a vital part of how we show forth the gospel with our lives in tough situations.
It’s one thing to preach the gospel in difficult places. It’s quite another to show people how to live in a manner worthy of their calling in such places.
