October 8 - Titus 1: Raising Hopes

My aim is to raise hopes by pointing to life without end.   (1:2)

For me, the book of Titus has been the place to find leadership qualifications, the older women verses, and some how-tos for living the Christian life. God's purpose in Paul's writing this letter is much more than that. God wants to raise our hopes - not for ways to get life right and receive blessing. But hope for living between Christ's first appearing and His last - for living right where we are.

Larry Crabb provides some necessary background to this letter that helps put it in context,

"[Paul's] fourth and final missionary trip included a short visit with Titus to the pagan Mediterranean island of Crete. After seeing some of the islanders converted, he moved on but left Titus there to organize the new Christians into a church, a community with spiritual leaders who could help people live in a way that revealed something of the beauty of [God's] story.

"After a short stay in Colossae with Philemon, he revisited Ephesus...when he saw that they were listening to dangerous teaching that perverted [God's] story, Paul asked Timothy to remain there and pastor them back into [God's] truth while he went on to Greece.

"From there, he wrote his first letter to Timothy and his single letter to Titus, coaching them both on how to carry out their different missions. When he later returned to Rome to encourage the Christians he had so richly taught in the letter he had much earlier written to them, he was promptly arrested, thrown in to a dungeon, and eventually killed. While awaiting execution he wrote his second letter to Timothy....

"Rome's judicial system required a preliminary hearing for the judge to hear charges against a prisoner and, if guilt was clear, to pronounce sentence. At that first hearing, what Rome called the prima actio, friends of the accused were permitted to adovcate on his behalf.

"... No one from the Roman church showed up at the prima actio to advocate for Paul (2 Timothy 4:16). His community failed him. But see what Paul did. Between the prima actio when he was abandoned and the secunda actio - the second trial when he was sentence to death - Paul seized the painful opportunity of failed friendship to reveal the beauty of grace in the strength of anticipating the beauty of glory. Paul focused not on the pain of being failed but on the mission of making My story attractive by the way he related....

"When Paul wrote to Titus, he never intended for Titus to help the new converts in Crete to merely get along. Sociably pleasant Christianity is no Christianity at all. It aims too low. It fails to reveal the beauty of grace. From personal experience, Paul knew [God's] story has the power to change a stupid and stubborn man duped by the appeal of living for himself into a sacrificial servant (3:3-7), to change even Paul and to change Cretans into people who make [God's] story irresistibly attractive by the new way they relate." (66 LL)  

This understanding is a new framework for me as I read this letter to Titus - it's not a few chapters telling us what to do to live the Christian life right or a guide book for selecting the right kind of people to lead. It's God's call to raise my hopes for what He can do in me and in spiritual community that reflects His beauty and His glory.