Titus 2:1-15--Teach Sound Doctrine

Titus 2
English Standard Version

Teach Sound Doctrine
2 But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. 2 Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. 3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. 6 Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. 7 Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, 8 and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. 9 Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, 10 not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

15 Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

---

Where Paul's charge to Timothy might have been summed up as "Preach the Word!," Paul's charge to Titus seems to be "Preach sound doctrine!"  The two are not mutually exclusive as we'll see as the Word (the Scriptures) are our source of sound doctrine and our instrument we use to judge which teachings are true and sound or false and unsound.

Right after making this charge, Paul tells Titus that the responsibility of teaching and discipleship is not his alone as pastor of the local church--the responsibility belongs to all the older, more mature men in the congregation to disciple and train up the younger, less mature men in the congregation.  They older men are to teach the young men (especially here on Crete) to be dignified, self-controlled, sober-minded, and sound in faith, love, and steadfastness.  These are all great character traits that we should look to when someone asks up what biblical masculinity looks like.

Similarly, the older, more mature women are to disciple and train up the younger, less mature women in biblical femininity.  They are to teach those younger (or less mature) to be reverent in behavior, to not be slanderers who use their words as weapons, or slaves to wine or other kinds of alcohol (they should be controlled by the Spirit of God, not the spirits that come from a bottle).  The older women are to teach the younger women what is good, to love their husbands and children (there is an assumption here they will want to be married and have families), to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands.  Why?  So that the Word of God might not be reviled (they would not undermine the authority of God or His Word in their homes or communities).  Again, these are all great traits that we can point to today when someone asks us what biblical femininity looks like (even if our culture scoffs at us for being "backwards" or "old-fashioned" for holding to these values that God has given to us).

Paul is not done though--he's given instruction to the older men and older women in how to train the younger generation, but now he's going to speak to the younger generation of men.  They need to be self-controlled, they need to model good works to everyone (even the older generation), they also need to be teachers by their words and actions, and they need to be men of integrity (one of my favorite words in the Bible) and dignity.  So far, the instructions are for them to be the very things that the older men are to teach them to be, so we might summarize and say that Paul is not letting them off the hook even if none of the older men step up to train them--they are still responsible to be these things that God has called them to be and they will have to take it upon themselves to learn to be these things from the Word of God, even if they have no good examples to follow.  Their speech is to be sound (don't make fallacious arguments) that will cause people to discredit their arguments or teachings.  Instead, they should speak in such a way that their opponent will be put to shame and have nothing evil to say about them.  We must remember in such situations were are ambassadors of Christ and His Kingdom and we need to speak and act in such a way where we remember everything we say or do impacts what people will think and say about God and all those who belong to Him.

Now comes the hard part for us today.  Paul speaks to the slaves (translated bondservants here which would be someone who willingly bound themselves to their master, but this word is the Greek doulos which is actually the lowest level of slave in the house with no rights or privileges who was given the worst jobs and was likely never thanked for doing what he did.  Many times you see the word "bondservant" in the New Testament, it is the translators trying to soften this word that clearly means "slave," but they don't want to say "slave" because" of the stigma that word now carries because of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.  Slavery still exists in many places in the world today and it gives us a false understanding of our relationship to God when we call ourselves bondservants (like we chose him and bound ourselves to him) instead of slaves (He purchased us and owns us).  Back to the text though.  Paul has some instructions for these lowest-level slaves who have been saved and are spiritually free in Christ, but are still enslaved to their earthly masters (the gospel does not immediately fix all the brokenness of the world immediately).  These slaves are to continue to submit to the authority of their masters as if they were submitting to the Lord Himself who is their Master.  They are to do their work to the best of their ability, trying to please their earthly masters and bring honor to them (even if they are not honorable men).  These slaves should not be argumentative, nor should they engage in any kind of theft or larceny, but they should be trustworthy and showing good faith in how they exercise control over anything that belongs to their master that they have been entrusted with whether it be goods or finances or simply his reputation.  In this way, they will get the opportunity to tell people that the reason they are serving willingly is because they are truly serving God our Savior and they might get to share the gospel with their fellow slaves or even their master.

Before I continue with the text, we should not write off these instructions to slaves as something we don't need to think about in our culture because we are all still slaves to Christ and we would do well to think of these instructions as to how we should be obedient and submissive and diligent and faithful and honorable in all of our words and actions so that we bring much pleasure and glory to our Master who will one day say "Well done, My good and faithful servant (slave)."  We also can take a lot of this and apply it to our relationships between employer and employee.  Though employers pay employees for their work, their is a compulsory component for having to do what your supervisor/boss tells you to do, and there can sometimes be an adversarial relationship because the employee does not want to submit to the authority of the employer or the supervisor the employer has put over them.  Let's not ignore the good teaching that's here just because we want to claim we no longer have people in our culture that we treat like they have no rights (if we are really honest about it, we definitely still do have people exactly like that in nearly all of our cultures).

Why did Paul take this aside to speak direct to older men, older women, younger men and slaves?  Because he wanted to make the point that the gospel is now for everyone.  By God's grace salvation has been brought to all people, and it has the power to transform all people into the image of God.  Remember in the beginning we were made in His image, but that image was corrupted and marred by sin, but now, we are born again and made into a new creation that again makes us into the image of the Son of God.  Therefore, we should be trained to "renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works."

Paul tells Titus to declarer these things authoritatively to the Church, to exhort those who do not take their duty seriously, and to rebuke those who try to rebel against this teaching.  No one should be allowed to disregard what Titus is teaching because their disagreement will not be with him because this is not his opinion--this is the Word of God and anyone that has an issue with it will need to take it up with Him and those who defy this instruction will be answering to Him one day.