The Overview - Titus 2

I think so much of the letter to Titus has been discussed in other epistles that this phrase from the article on this chapter form gospeldoctrine.com says, “Admittedly, Titus is not the most quoted of Pauline epistles. Titus chapter 2 is not particularly well known for any particular passage.” This makes me feel better for not having tons to say about this book. There are several themes throughout chapter 2 and I think I’ll just focus on them. First is Paul’s commission for Titus to “speak thou the things which become sound doctrine.” I’ve heard the phrase “sound doctrine” numerous times throughout the scriptures so I finally decided to look up what “sound doctrine” is and why it matters. Sound doctrine to me means the good news of the gospel, it’s that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected and we can all be with him again if we want to. An article about this from gotquestions.org says, “Sound doctrine is important because our faith is based on a specific message… Change that message, and the basis of faith shifts from Christ to something else.” This was a point that I hadn’t considered before. I feel like when I was growing up in the church, our focus was on being good wives and mothers, etc. I don’t think I heard Jesus mentioned hardly ever and that was a problem because when I went with a friend to their new age church, it was all about Jesus and it was amazing and I felt left out. I thought “if we are supposed to be the true church then why don’t we hardly ever talk about Jesus?” I would say that at this point, sound doctrine was not being taught. The article continues, “Sound doctrine is important because what we believe affects what we do… For example, two people stand on top of a bridge; one believes he can fly, and the other believes he cannot fly. Their next actions will be quite dissimilar.” Concerning sound doctrine, the IM quotes President Boyd K. Packer as teaching, “True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior.” What does this mean? I think about my situation, the more I’ve come to learn about who God really is and who I am to Him, the more I want to do and be better. The more I learn about the plan, the more I want to bring that same peace to others, and the more I trust God to take care of me. Most of the rest of this chapter is about character traits of believers, all of which has been discussed before, such as being sober, having self-control, being kind, being obedient to God and “masters” in the case of servants, but that could translate into employers today. Wives are commanded to be “obedient to their own husbands,” even though there is no similar charge to the men. But there was a quote in the IM that said something like, “wives are not to follow your husbands into an evil pit. Wives are to follow their husbands as the husbands follow the Savior.” Ok, that’s a little better and I’m not really irritated about it, it was a different time, both when Paul said it and when this quote was made. It’s fine, I’m confident in my place. In verse 13, Paul says that a characteristic of a disciple of Christ is “looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” The reason I bring this phrase up is because I’m listening to a different book about Paul’s life and ministry and one of the things the author wrote that I just absolutely loved was that “hope” isn’t a passive wishing, it’s a choice that we make every day. I love this because it’s something I can control. When I first heard about hope, I thought that it was stupid because I “hope” I will a million dollars, even though I can’t do anything to increase my chances of being successful. I didn’t want to leave my salvation up to something as flimsy as “hope” if it meant a cross your fingers because there’s nothing that you can really do about it either way. Then I decided to define “hope” as a trust and that is more accurate, but maybe it’s because I have trust issues, because that really wasn’t all that much better for me. It was almost like “I don’t trust anyone, but I guess I’ll do it for you and cross my fingers that you don’t betray me.” And again, this took it out of my control because I can trust all day long, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be betrayed. And plus it just made it so much more complicated for me. So I like that “hope” is a choice, I’m choosing to hope that it’s all worth it. I’m choosing to act and live in a certain way as an investment in my hope of salvation. The other part of this chapter that I thought was interesting was when Paul said that the Savior wanted to “purify unto himself a peculiar people.” The article quotes Russell M. Nelson as teaching that today, we associate the word “peculiar” with “weird,” or “strange” or even “exclusive”, but it means something different in the scriptures. He explains, “In the Old Testament, the Hebrew term from which peculiar was translated is cgullah, which means ‘valued property,’ or ‘treasure… With that understanding, we can see that the scriptural term peculiar does not mean ‘queer’ or ‘odd’ at all. It signifies ‘valued treasure,’ ‘made’ or ‘selected by God.’ Thus, for us to be identified by servants of the Lord as his peculiar people is a compliment of the highest order.” I thought that this was an interesting statement because I’ve always thought that we were to be different from everyone else, looked at strangely or even acted a little off. I’ve even heard it explained as “of course we’re peculiar, we are not like the world, we live differently,” and that is true and I feel that it’s an acceptable way to look at this statement, but I haven’t ever heard the one about us being treasure and so I wanted to share that one.