(REFLECTIONS ON Titus 1:1-9)

1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ to further the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness…

5 The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.

What if the day we believed in Jesus Christ, we were at that instance filled with the Spirit, made perfect, and whisked off to heaven by the glorious sound of rejoicing angels? Yet, we are still here, we still need to face the world, face our flesh, face our mortality, and for what?

Yes, we may believe in Jesus Christ, but now what? Now what, is that we begin to learn how to live in Christ, to live in the eternal life of knowing God and His Son, and to let the Holy Spirit work in us as we do the work of building up a community of believers. This process requires patience, endurance, and this is the type of process that leads to maturity, and maturity is what is required to love the way Christ commands us to love.

One of the unique qualities of our loving God is that we are living in the freedom of believing and knowing Christ, and also living in the freedom of obeying His command to love. If love was no longer a freewill choice, and was forced upon us, then that wouldn’t be true love, but rather control.

That is why God didn’t create Adam and Eve to just obey perfectly, without their own thoughts and desires, and with their own freedom in choosing the path that they would live. That is also the reason why we need grace and the salvation obtained through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in order to restore our relationship with God. That is because we tend to abuse our freedom to choose other things besides God.

The reason Paul left Titus in Crete was because those that believed now needed to begin the process of “now what?” That is to select and train leaders to work together to further the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.

There is knowledge that leads to godliness, but as we saw from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, there is also knowledge that leads to confusion, compromise, and a “different gospel.” This problem wasn’t just isolated to the Christians in Galatia, but is also something that needed to be addressed in Crete as well.

There is unfinished work to be done in our lives, in our community, in our church. We are an unfinished work, and we need to continue to press forward in our freedom in Christ to further our faith, and grow in our knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness and that means rejecting all other things that tempt us to be a replacement for the true Gospel.

I believe! Now what? Now it is time to grow and mature in order to further the faith of God’s elect and our knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: Titus 1