Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, that seeks
to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking and challenging talks and interviews.
In this episode, from the first part of his plenary address at the 2025 Priscilla & Aquila Centre annual conference
held on Monday the 3rd of February, Paul Grimmond, Head of the Ministry Department at Moore College, unpacks Titus 2
and the commands given to specific groups of people: older men, older women, younger women, younger men, and so on.
Paul reminds us that the way we read the Bible is often influenced by our original context and our view of Scripture, and he encourages
us to think hard and carefully about the parts we hold close, the parts we hold at a distance, and why we are actually doing that.
We hope you find the episode helpful.
Please note: Part 2 of Paul Grimmond's talk will be published on this podcast in July.
If you would like to listen to it before then, head to the Priscilla & Aquila website using the link in the show notes.
Please pray with me.
Father, we thank you for your word in our own language.
We thank you for the privilege and freedom of being able to gather and read it.
We pray for the gracious work of your spirit to soften our hearts that we might hear your truth.
We might understand it and put it into practice that we might obey it and love you.
And Father, we ask these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well is godliness complimentarian?
Uh, that's the question that I wanna engage with as we engage with Titus two today.
I chose to ask it because of the nature of instruction to us as followers of the Lord Jesus.
Why does Paul in Titus tell Titus to tell Christians how to live as older men and older
women and younger men and younger women, and as bold servants in spite of our common faith?
At one level, the New Testament calls on every Christian to be like Christ, right?
Um, you can see lots of examples of that, but Colossians chapter three gives us a classic example.
We are all to put away Roth anger, malice, obscene talk, and lies because we are being renewed in the image of Jesus.
And there is one set of instructions that applies to Greek and Jew, to circumcised,
uncircumcised, barbarian, Syrian, slave, and free, and of course, to male and female.
In March of the Scriptures, the injunctions are given to all of us because we are all called on to be like the Lord Jesus Christ.
And yet there are other passages in the Scriptures where God chooses to address us more specifically than just that there
is not just a set of generic instructions that exist for all of God's people in all God's time and places in passages like
Ephesians five or one Timothy five, or one Corinthians 11, or today in our section of Titus, the Bible instructs us according
to categories like our gender and our age and our station in life, and the set of relationships that we are a part of.
So what I wanna do today is actually to have a little bit of a think about how Titus two makes sense in the light of the
rest of the book of Titus, but also more broadly as the rest of Scripture speaks to the things that are there in Titus.
And I wanna think particularly about how we read and engage with instructions like these, uh, in order to fully and faithfully
obey them, uh, but do that in a way that honors Christ and it also protects and loves and cares for the people in our community.
Now, of course, part of the reason that we're having this conversation at all is because in our particular part of the world at this particular
moment in history, there are certain encouragement to Godly living in Titus two that are, for lack of a better word, somewhat contested.
Some of the instructions in his chapter, seems straightforward.
Others raise questions for us.
So I wanna actually begin by making some observations about that lay the groundwork for trying to think about these things.
Some of these I think are obvious, but I think that they're important to state.
I. First, these instructions are contested not just because of our cultural situation, but because of our convictions about the word of God.
You think about it, there are lots of texts that tell you lots of things about how to behave or what to
think or what to do, and we don't argue about any of those because we don't actually particularly care.
We think that these are generic things you're gonna believe or not believe, but our convictions about what are going on in Scripture.
Our belief that the Lord who made the whole world and who sent his son to die for the salvation of all people who speaks in these
words, then it's impossible to read the words of Scripture, dispassionately or removed from our own existence and belief and life.
So Titus, as much as it's a book written by a man called Paul to a guy called Titus about how to conduct
yourselves in life in a church on Crete some 2000 years ago, we are deeply convicted that those words are
actually God's words that have significance for people way beyond that original context and situation.
But therein, of course, lies the rub for all of us.
Once you say, this is relevant and important and this is God speaking to me, then what I do with it and how I do
something with it becomes very important, hopefully for every person in the room and every person in our churches.
But I think that leads us to thinking and reflecting a little bit about this second point.
Our context affects the way that we read Scripture.
You see, when we say the Bible is God's word, it becomes very important, and at least theoretically that
should mean it's important for all of us all of the time, but we're still affected by our humanness as we read.
I. As fallen creatures, our experience of reading Scripture is not uniform.
We feel the weight of different parts of the Bible and different commands at different moments
in our life and at different times and places according to our own experience and other things.
I. Now, this was brought home to me a number of years ago now when I was having a chat with what I will call the famously controversial passage
in one Timothy two, in which Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather, she used to remain quiet.
The experience actually taught me that that's an incredibly relative experience that I caught famously controversial.
I had a friend that I was talking to about teaching this passage in my own context and what it meant to preach it faithfully, and he laughed.
His ministry was to a church of people who are from a very different ethnic background to my own.
He said, we did that passage recently.
No one asked a single question about that verse.
He said, our big problem actually was verse nine.
Likewise that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty
and self-control, not with braided hair, gold or pearls or costly attire.
Although we're not often aware of this truth, what is controversial in our space is mundane in other people's space and vice versa.
But it's interesting that what we perceive as controversial shapes the nature of our engagement with the text, doesn't it?
What we experience gets questioned in different ways if we feel the pressure of the way that it pokes against us.
You see in my friend's church, the very important exo question was what was meant by the word not?
Women should adore themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair.
Gold or pearls or costly attire is not an absolute or relative prohibition.
Is he saying that braids are always wrong?
Is expensive clothing out?
Is there a difference between going to a wedding reception and going to the shops?
All sorts of questions actually come into play at a particular moment where the text starts to engage us in our own
cultural context in a way that other people will just dash past that piece of Scripture and move on to something else.
All of which is to say that engaging with the text as the word of God, which is precisely what we should do.
Increases the complexity we find with reading it most acutely, where we feel that it presses most
heavily against the things that feel awkward or uncomfortable or difficult for us to engage with.
Of course, there's a danger here because where a text becomes difficult or controversial or uncomfortable and we start
to read it closely, it also becomes possible to start to use someone else's level of questioning as a test for orthodoxy.
We should actually expect that where things are poking our culture, we're gonna have to work harder at them.
Although in other ways, that's a reminder of what we should be doing with the whole of the Bible, isn't it?
Reading slowly and carefully and thoughtfully.
But all this brings me to the third point that I wanna make, and that is, I actually think.
We all as readers do a little thing when we come to approach Scripture, um, which is both potentially unhelpful and completely right at the same time.
That is, we filter Scripture as we read it.
We hold some things slightly more at a distance from us and we bring some things closer depending on how we read.
Now, it's actually important that we do that.
The Bible tells us that lots of people in Scripture are an example for us, but not everything that they do is exemplary.
Um, the Lord Jesus Christ has done lots of things that you and I can't do, and yet he's also held up as an example for us.
You don't read the Bible as a flat book.
You don't just go, everything that Jesus did is what I should do.
What Jesus did and how he lives and how he functions actually are things that we ought to think carefully through and think about in their context
and in the broader context of Scripture in order to work out how do we bring them near to us, or what do we hold at a little more distance?
How do we engage in that process of reading Scripture well.
And so I wanna point out to you, actually, we do this all the time, and not just do we do it, but the Bible does it to itself.
So let me just very momentarily, take a little detour through Hebrews with you.
Uh, this will be short, but I hope illustrative, and then we'll come back to Titus.
If you think about Hebrews for a moment, Hebrews is saying The Old Testament
sacrificial system is deeply relevant and thoroughly irrelevant to you as a Christian.
It is a shadow of a reality, and that shadow means two things simultaneously.
It means that there is a spiritual reality of sacrificial categories that are fundamental to your salvation.
If you don't have these, you don't have Christ and you don't have life, but it
also says all of those things that they used to do, you shouldn't do any of them.
And in fact, if you do them, you are also letting go of Jesus.
You see, the shadow and reality metaphor means that you need a heavenly place, a faithful, eternal high priest, and a once for all sacrifice.
And without any of those things, you cannot be saved.
The Old Testament pointed to an ontological and spiritual reality about the whole of your relationship with God.
But at the same time, you shouldn't kill bulls and goats and sprinkle their blood around on altars.
I mean, I guess possibly you're free to do that kind of thing, but you know what I mean.
But, and here is the big, but Hebrews takes a lot of space to explain the intricacies and complexities of how the shadow applies and doesn't apply.
And just when you think you've sorted the whole thing out, you get to Hebrews
chapter 13 and you find this paragraph which is about to appear on the screen.
I just wanna highlight for you all the words in this paragraph that I think are sacrificial categories or words.
I'm gonna read it slowly.
I wanna ask you to think about the words in italics.
How are these words, which are sacrificial words being applied to you as a Christian?
Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings.
For it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods which have not benefited those devoted to them.
We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.
For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.
So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.
Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.
For here, we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come through him.
Then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.
That is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name, do not neglect to do good, and to share what you have with such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
See, it's interesting, isn't it?
You've had this whole book that's all about how to apply and not apply the Old Testament system, but did you know by the time you got here
that where the remains of the sacrificial offerings were burnt was significant for you and your Christian life and how to follow Jesus?
He just kind of slips it in there at the end.
By the way, the remains of the sacrifices were burned outside the gate, and actually that's where Jesus got crucified.
As a reminder that actually following Jesus means being someone who lives
outside the gate who lives outside of the, the normal space of religious life.
And actually, you are going to bear the kind of reproach that Jesus bore if you're
actually gonna follow him and understand how his sacrifice mirrors the sacrificial system.
Oh, and by the way, you know how you're not supposed to offer up sacrifices anymore?
Well, you are.
Because you're supposed to offer up the sacrifice of praise and of lips, and actually your
good works are the pleasing sacrifices that God now desires for you in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, we could spend ages picking this passage apart, and I'm not going to, and I'm now outlawing all questions on Hebrews during question time.
But my point is that actually the Scriptures themselves, and not just here, but in many places,
give us complex examples of the ways that Biblical truth understood in light of the fullness of the
revelation of God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus brings application to us in complex ways.
And as readers of Scripture.
Therefore, we do not read Scripture as a flat book, but we're actually called to read it thoughtfully with the
gospel in mind, reading it carefully in its own context, but with the fuller revelation of the whole Bible engaged.
And this means actually that we're always involved in a dangerous process.
When we read the Bible, sometimes we will see truths there that we hold at
arm's length to distance ourselves from truths that ought to be brought close.
Sometimes it's actually completely inappropriate to say some of these truths need to sit at
a different distance from me or relate to me in a different way to other truths in Scripture.
We can get it wrong in both directions, if I can put it like that.
All of us, and I think rightly because this is what the Bible teaches us to do, are continually engaged in a sophisticated theological process.
When we come to ask the question, what should I do with what I'm reading?
We are convicted that this is God's word.
It is to be obeyed, but when it comes to obeying it, how should I obey it is actually part of asking how does Scripture treat itself.
Now, for all of these reasons, as we come to a section of the Bible that feels contested for our particular time and
place, we need to be aware of the need to be slow, thoughtful, and careful in our reading when something is complicated.
We can either over complicate it, but we can also dismiss thoughtful and helpful arguments
because our anxiety means that we want simple, clear, quick solutions to the problem.
We actually need to be comfortable enough to sit in the discomfort of holding some tensions together.
Wrestling with the immediate context and the broader realities of Scripture in order to be thoughtful and careful
about what we say these words do and don't mean, um, for the sake of God's glory and for the good of one another.
So let me just bring some of those truths to bear in terms of our own passage.
Look at Titus chapter two and verse two with me for a moment.
Should older men be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled sound, in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.
You should answer on the count of three.
1, 2, 3. Yes.
Excellent.
Now you can see where this is going.
Um,
most of the commandments in this passage, we just naturally would say, yes, they're the kinds of things that Christians should do.
I wonder the ones that you just jump over or just assume or applied to you,
is that because you like them or because they feel vaguely relevant to you?
Or because they've just got that kind of flavor about them, that feels okay actually if, if Scriptures to be read thoughtfully and carefully.
Why are some held at a distance?
Why are others brought close?
Do you have theological reasons?
Do you have thoughtful, biblical reasons about how you engage with the different commandments that are part of this text?
Have you thought about when and how you do things with them?
I'm gonna suggest to you that actually one of the reasons if you've been reading carefully, that you bring
these commandments naturally close to yourself, is actually that there is a whole shape to the Book of Titus,
which speaks very clearly to the fact that these commandments are for all of us, uh, at all times in history.
I. Now there are a number of these, but the most significant is actually the central theme of the entire book of Titus.
Titus is all about the connection between truth and godliness.
And Paul very helpfully tells us in verse one that that's exactly what he's doing.
Paul, a servant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth.
Which accords with godliness.
And as you read the rest of the letter, those two ideas are just gonna keep speaking to
each other over and over and over again as you go right through the text of the letter.
Chapter one is all about the connection between godliness and the truth.
And in that chapter it's about who you point to eldership.
In church, Paul is instructing Titus, where there've been new churches planted and there is a need for godly eldership and leadership.
Particular characteristics ought to be sought out for those who ought to be appointed as overseers and elders.
In that congregation in particular, the appropriate qualifications involve very much the character and nature of their life negatively.
They must not be arrogant or quick tempered or known for drunkenness or for their violence or greed.
And positively, they must be above reproach.
There to be people who love what is good.
They must be known for being hospitable.
They ought to be known for being self-controlled, upright, wholly, and disciplined.
It is completely inappropriate for somebody to be appointed as an elder in the church, if any of their life, either public or private.
A distinction that actually probably wouldn't have occurred to the first readers in the way that it occurs to us.
Unless their life actually exemplifies all the fundamental characteristics of loving Jesus and being faithful and gracious in our
relationships, that person should not be made an elder because actually having these characteristics is related to what you will teach.
If you are being ungodly, you will avoid, mess around with tamper, with, adjust,
or avoid bits of God's word that speak about those aspects of ungodliness.
And so Paul says to Titus in verse nine, they need to hold firmly to the trustworthy word as
taught so that they may be able to give sound instruction and rebuke those who are opposed.
Because the church has always existed in a context where there are people who will claim to be belong to Christ, but speak falsehood.
Elders must have their life and doctrine closely combined because actually the way that
you know a false teacher is by the fact that they teach one thing but live another.
Chapter one in verse 11, these false teachers upset whole families by teaching for shameful gain, what they ought not to teach.
You can skip over it, but it's wicked and it's awful.
Is it not that people profiteer off the gospel?
You know them because they are those who profess to know God, but deny him by their works.
They are unfit for any good work.
You see, faithful teachers are godly, upright, and holy.
Unfaithful teachers are ungodly destructive and unfit for doing good.
Chapter one is all about truth and godliness when it comes to appointing elders.
Because the nature of life and the content of the gospel that they preach are fundamentally in intertwined.
So then when Paul gets to chapters two and three and he says to Titus, this is what
you and those elders are to teach people to do as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The whole of the next part of the book is divided up between instruction about what Godly
living looks like and statements of the nature of the gospel and the character of God.
So you get to chapter two, verse one.
He says, as for you, Titus teach what?
Accords with sound doctrine and you are expecting excellent.
A lesson in justification, uh, and some thoughts about the Trinity.
And he says, I. Don't get drunk too often and be upright and sober and godly and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
What is in accord with sound doctrine is a pattern of life that is not independent of the gospel, but actually the truth of
who you are called to become is related to the character and nature of God and the character of Christ's work on our behalf.
That's why verses 11 to 14 are so very significant in the context of the letter and in the context of
our reading of this, you hear Titus says, this is what a accord with sound doctrine live like this.
But then he goes in depth into the reasoning chapter two and verse 11, why?
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us 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.
Notice the logic that ties godliness so closely to the gospel.
God's grace has appeared and bought the possibility of salvation for all people, but
do you notice as those who have been saved, you are waiting for another appearing?
God's grace appeared once and he will appear again.
You are waiting for the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Do you remember that about your life day by day as a follower of Jesus?
What are you living for?
What are you hoping for?
What is the outcome and goal and aim?
It is the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
I. But do you notice what the passage says about the one who you are waiting for the appearance of?
Well, he is the one who gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself are people who are zealous for doing good.
You've been saved and you are waiting to meet the one who rescued you from lawlessness and who purified you for good works.
See brothers and sisters, what is our state apart from Christ?
Well, we are in a state of lawlessness, aren't we?
And does not that word describe very aptly the world in which you live.
See, think about it.
We live in a world that has elevated and celebrated the rebel, haven't we?
I mean, Australian society is replete with it, um, from Ned Kelly to Bob Hawke telling everybody that if they fire
someone who didn't appear on the day the Australia won the America's Cup for the sake of work, well, you'd be a bum.
And, uh, actually all of you take a national public holiday, even though he doesn't have the authority to do such a thing.
But that's Australia, right?
Uh, and it's actually a truth that's celebrated everywhere.
Think about just about every buddy cop movie that you've ever seen, and the guy who's the central lead character is the guy who pursues
justice by ignoring all authority and doing his own thing on his own timetable, because that's how you actually serve it, right?
You do your own thing at your own pace.
Um, I was gonna give you examples from Dirty Harry, uh, through Eddie Murphy, and then realized that they all existed in the last millennium.
Uh, and there would be people in the room who had no idea who I was talking about.
Go and watch some real movies, people anyway,
but it's actually part of a broader cultural narrative, isn't it?
Truth is not about what anyone anywhere tells me.
There is no authority.
There's no institution.
There's nobody who has the right to tell me what to do or how to live or where to go.
Truth is about what I work out for myself and what I decide for myself.
And if it's different tomorrow from what it is today, that's okay.
Now we have this weird little thing on the side because I do quite like the rules.
I, I'm thankful that I don't live in a society of complete disorder, and I'm certainly thankful that the other people obey the rules.
It's just that, you know, well, sometimes they're awkward or difficult and just pain outright dangerous.
Um, I have an office that overlooks Carilion Avenue, uh, and Carilion Avenue in the little
stretch of double white lines leading to a major intersection in the middle of Sydney.
People do u-turns over that double white line every single day of my life.
Because of course there are rules there, and the rules are generally good, but if anything's happening to me at the moment that
causes that to be a bit kind of uncomfortable or difficult or whatever else it is, well I can just dissipate them, can't I?
Because actually the law isn't what makes us right.
And of course the tragedy of all of this is that lawlessness characterizes not just the little nitty gritty bits of our life.
It's what we do with the people that we love the most and are closest to us and most precious, we want them to obey the rules, but we don't want to.
And of course, most awfully of all, there is a God who has made real laws that are good for us that I don't want to have in control.
Just think about what we say.
I don't want someone in control who is greater and kinder.
More faithful, yet more fierce, more holy, and yet more gracious than I am.
I don't want them in control because I think it would be better for me to be in control.
And the Scriptures say that the ugliness of our rebellion and rejection, which completely screws
up all of our relationships, is a truth that God is gonna bring to judgment on the last day.
Jesus when he died, died to redeem us from our lawlessness, to redeem us from a way of life that breaks us and breaks
others and redeem us from a way of life that will end in our judgment before the Lord who made heaven and earth.
We have been freed from our bondage and created to be something new and something other, and something rich and wonderful and good because we have
been made to be his treasured and precious position as people who have been renewed and remade in order to do good in God's world for his glory.
That idea of leading us to Zeal for Good works six times in three chapters in the Book of Titus.
It's not incidental or accidental.
It's the very purpose of Christ's death for us.
And so do you see in verse 11, why the grace of God, which has appeared and brought salvation, has trained
us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.
It's because the very purpose for which Christ died was to free you to pay the price, to get rid of that old life,
which was so awful and destructive, and to grant you a new way of life, which was so good under the Lordship of God.
But here what the passage is saying to you, he appeared and he will appear again.
You are going to meet face to face, the one who died to redeem you from lawlessness and to purify you to be zealous for good.
So I actually need to ask you, as I ask me, what do you want to say to him when you meet him?
Who do you want to be when you meet him?
How do you want to speak to him when you meet him?
We will need to speak to him as those who have been freed and cleansed and washed by him.
Deeply thankful for that, but also as people who are zealous to be those whom he has called and acted to become, won't we?
Paul's explanation of the gospel is directly connected to the central theme of his letter.
Paul is an apostle for the sake of God's people knowing the truth that accords with godliness.
And so he says to Titus, tell the people to live like this.
'cause living like this is actually what flows out of the nature of the God who has died and risen again to save them is like.
And of course when you get into chapter three, you again get the same pattern, a set of instructions surrounded by another clear section of
doctrine in verses four to seven, in which we're told that God has redeemed every one of us who is Christian, and that he's applied the work
that God has done in Christ through the washing and rebirth of renewal by the Holy Spirit to us that we might be made new and eager and zealous.
And the letter finishes in chapter three in verse 14, let our people learn to devote themselves to.
Good works so as to help cases of urgent need and not be unfruitful and all.
Who with me send greetings to you?
Greet those who love us in the faith, grace be with you all.
The reason that we read chapter two and go those are instructions for us is actually, 'cause that's what it looks like in
terms of the whole way that the letter is constructed and all of the, what I'm gonna call intrinsic skews in the letter.
You read this book and everything about it says to you, these are things that you're supposed to do.
There is another motivation, by the way, which he repeats three times, chapter two and verse five, that the word
of God may not be reviled, chapter two and verse eight, that an opponent may be put to shame having nothing evil
to say about us in chapter two and verse 10, so that in everything you may adorn the doctrine of God our savior.
You see as people who have been redeemed from lawlessness and purified to be zealous for good actually, as you live in the way
that Christ has remade you to live, you automatically make the truth about who he is, attractive to the world around about you.
You adorn the gospel, which is a totally ridiculous thing to say at one level, theologically, isn't it?
That by God's grace, the way that you get to live as a follower of the Lord Jesus adorns the gospel,
the teaching about God, our savior, the truth, the doctrine, and it keeps people from reviling.
That word, the connection between truth and godliness means that Godly living naturally commends the truth.
And the whole structure of the letter reads you just naturally to read those commandments as things that
apply to you so that you should reflect on them and engage with them and think about what to do with them
and how they impact your loves and your desires and what you do in your life and all of those things.
But I wanna point out, and you kind of knew that there were gonna be a but didn't you?
But anyway, it is interesting to note that as much as the whole intrinsic nature of the letter points you to applying these things to yourself.
You are actually doing something else.
As you read these commandments, and I'll illustrate it for you by giving you a
slightly different, this is the Paul Grimm and edited version of the New Testament.
None of these words are from God, by the way.
If you had read, because the grace of God has appeared and teaches us to say no to ungodliness and to live self-controlled ungodly lives, tell them to
brush their teeth, deposit some savings in a safe place so that they've got a nest egg for the future, and do something nice for yourself once a week.
How would you feel about those words with the person beside you?
Talk for 30 seconds.
Now, actually, if you're serious about reading the Bible, you should have a little bit of a conundrum at that point.
Because God could tell you just once.
Right?
And that would be enough for those commands to be worth obeying.
And yet you are not expecting those commands to occur in Scripture.
Why?
Because they don't actually fit with your experience of the reading of the rest of God's
word, or what he's revealed about himself or the nature of everything else that he said.
I think that that's really important for us to realize that actually part of what informs
us and shapes us as Christians is the reading of the whole of Scripture, isn't it?
And it's actually one of the reasons that we keep encouraging each other to keep reading the Bible for ourselves.
Because you think about it, a new believer often finds fascinating, a new insight every time
they turn the page because they're reading things that they haven't seen or heard before.
The way that you know what is true and faithful and wise and right is actually by God's grace.
If you have been reading and hearing the Scriptures read and taught and engaged with over many, many
years, you have an entire framework into which each of the command fits and you do something with.
Now that's actually at one level, really positive and helpful, right?
Because that's part of how your worldview and you are reshaped to love and understand all the goodness of God.
Um, but it's also dangerous.
That then becomes your personal filter through which you bring things close and hold things at a distance.
And so you've gotta actually work out for yourself as you are reading, what am I
bringing close and what am I holding at a distance, and why are those external filters?
Is my theological system is my broader reading of Scripture helping me or hindering me at this point as I engage with this text and these truths?
Now, of course we know that it's important and real.
The reason that we read acts and don't bless handkerchiefs and hand them out on street corners in order to
heal people is that we think that there are certain things that the apostles were doing that we shouldn't do.
But when the Sanhedrin calls them up and says, you must stop preaching about Jesus, and they say,
well, we have to obey God rather than you, we all go, yes, of course that is true for us as well.
You are actually bringing Scripture close or distant according to your broader theological understanding as you read and engage.
Now, I know I've said this over and over again, but I'm just wanting you to feel the weight of what you are
doing with the Bible all the time that you are reading with it, but how often that happens unconsciously.
Yeah.
Whereas God calls on us to become more and more conscious about these things.
So what do we do with the extrinsic cues of Scripture, the broader reading of
Scripture and these instructions that are given to us here in Titus Chapter two?
Well, first thing that I wanna point out to you is that a number of them are instructions that
don't just occur here, but they do occur regularly in all sorts of parts of the New Testament.
That is even some of the ones that we find uncomfortable.
This is not the only place in which they occur.
Um, wives are called on to submit to their own husbands in Ephesians five, in Colossians three in one.
Peter three, I think probably in one Corinthians 11, and they're mirrored in church life in one Timothy two.
Slaves are called on to submit to their masters in Ephesians six, Colossians three and one Peter two, as well as the passage in front of us.
That is, these instructions are not kind of out of the blue once off kind of in Scripture, but they're
things that follow the pattern of Scripture as it's taught in many places throughout the Bible.
What is actually weird here is that there are two instructions that don't occur anywhere else.
One of them, you didn't blink an eye at.
Nowhere in Scripture.
Apart from here, are younger women told to love their husbands and children?
Is that not weird that you haven't been told somewhere else that you should love your husband and
children, but none of you go, well, this is a one-off instruction and therefore I shouldn't obey this one.
Why?
Because actually the loving your husband and children fits with the whole
shape and tenor of Scripture, and there's nothing surprising about it at all.
At one level, you think about how Scripture speaks about motherhood and about the, the way that it works and the goodness of life.
The positivity about mothers.
God is like a nursing mother.
Paul is like a mother.
As he ministers to people.
The Scriptures encourage children to obey their parents.
There's a deep and nurturing relationship that occurs between husband and wife.
All of Scripture paints a picture that means you read those words, even though they're the only time that those words occur in the whole of the Bible.
And you go, sure.
And then you read.
Work at home and you go, Hmm.
Now actually working at home is a slightly more complicated thing to deal with for a couple of reasons.
The word in the original ogo is made up of two component parts, OCOS to do with the domestic sphere, the house, the home, and Ergon to work.
Work Orgo, literally workers at home.
You know that etymology doesn't tell you exactly how to use a word, right?
The parts that make it up, or exactly how you know words mean what they mean
as they're used, not just what their bits mean when they're whacked together.
The problem is in terms of working out how to use it, there's not actually a
lot of context here that tells you exactly what he means by workers at home.
It's one little word in a string of things.
There are no other biblical uses of the word.
Actually, there are very few uses of the word outside of the New Testament in the extent literature that we have.
What do you do at that point?
Therefore, we can know nothing about it.
Therefore, we can have a bit of a stab.
Well, actually, we need to be careful, don't we?
Not to overplay what we know and not to dismiss it.
Paul certainly thought that Titus would know what he was talking about when he used
the word he was conveying something that meant something in its original context.
How do we do the best that we can to approach what that kind of word might mean for us?
Well, you notice some of what it says in its context, but you also look at how this idea, the concept of
working at home perhaps, rather than just the words gets picked up and employed in other parts of Scripture.
And I'm gonna suggest to you that I think that actually one Timothy five brings some crucial
background information that informs and helps us as we try to make sense of the word I.
In one Timothy five, you're uh, at the point where the church is being instructed to put some older women
who have become widows on a list of people who are cared for financially and physically by the church.
And Paul is actually laying down a set of criteria for how you get to be on that list.
Not everybody who is widowed deserves to be on the list.
The church is actually to look after some and not others.
But here he's, he starts to describe the characteristics of the godly faithful woman who should be put on that list.
Read it with me, one Timothy five verse nine.
It's about to appear on the screen, let a widow be enrolled if she's not.
Less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband and having a reputation for good works if she's brought up children,
has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted and has devoted herself to every good work.
But refuse to enroll younger widows for when their passions draw them away from Christ
they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their form of faith.
Besides that, they learn to be IRS going about from house to house, and not only irs, but also gossips and busy bodies saying what they should not.
So I would have younger widows marry their children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander.
For some have already strayed after Satan.
If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them.
Let the church not be burdened so that it may care for those who are truly widows.
Now again, culturally, this passage raises some discomfort for us, doesn't it?
There are some complexities in understanding the passage.
I think following towner that the passions which carry them away from Christ
probably indicate that they've ended up marrying someone who's not Christian.
I suspect that that's what's going on in the text, but will you please notice what it is that's to be honored amongst the household of God's people?
It's good works, bringing up children, hospitality, washing the feet of the saints, caring for the afflicted.
Do you notice that those things have a clear focus in terms of their domestic nature?
Many of them are centered, again on the household, the kinds of things like
loving your husband and children and things that are over in Titus chapter two.
But added to that, we get other kind of phrases and descriptions.
You see that her work is not just within the house.
She's actually a blessing through her household to the entire community in which she lives.
She washes the feet of the saints.
She cares for the afflicted.
Her household becomes a place that actually brings grace and hope and healing, and hopefully
physical and hopefully spiritual nurture to people who are all sorts of places outside of the home.
She's someone who is known as managing her household in a way that I think makes it a blessing, not just for those
who live within it, but makes their household a blessing in the community and the world of which they're apart.
So one aspect of this working at home, I suspect, is realizing that the home is held in very high esteem, scripturally.
And what goes on with the nurturing and raising of children and the care of others and the way that people are welcomed
in, in hospitality and the way that people are loved in and through the life of a household is incredibly significant.
But secondly, it's important for us to realize that again, our cultural misappropriation of these things gets wildly off kilter.
If you read something like Xenophon, which I know you kind of get up to on your day off, right?
But anyway, so writing 400 years before Paul, but in his book, the economics writes at length about
the way that a faithful wife in his world, overseas, basically the entire industry of the household.
She managed the house, she spent all of the money that was spent in the house.
She looked after the welfare of the servants and slaves.
She acted in all sorts of ways, and you put that picture next to something like Proverbs 31, where she's buying
and selling cloth and acting in the marketplace and doing business and owning land and all of that kind of stuff.
And you are painted this picture of.
Actually, they were all oppressed back then and none of them knew what was really true.
They actually lived messy, complex, busy, difficult lives just like you and I live in world where actually what she
was doing as a member of the household wasn't denigrated as some sort of weird private sphere that made her unworthy.
It was actually held up as a place of great, good and honor that was to be praised
and held up by all, even in the community around about them and not just in Scripture.
My point here, brothers and sisters, is not to delineate a specific set of internal and external responsibilities.
It is more to say that when Paul encourages them to be working at home, he's encouraging them to do something that is seen
as deeply honorable and particularly honorable because of the nature of God's household and what happens in the gospel.
I. To act in the light of God's family, in your own family, in ways that reflect who you know
and love, and therefore to love your husband and children, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Those are not a put down or a removal from something significant.
They're actually a way of commending something that's deep and rich and good.
Now, I think it's also important that I think one Timothy E five gives you another little picture, which is that one of the other things that he's
trying to work against, as he says to them, uh, marry and look after your children in your household is not becoming idols or busy bodies or gossips.
Is, what does a fruitfully engaged life look like?
It looks like using who you are and your resources and who you've been made to be and where you've been placed
for the good of the people around, about you and through them for the good of the community that you're a part of.
Whatever being a worker at home is, it's contrasted with idling, with being a busy body, with finding the latest morsel of gossip to share.
I. That's what he's actually denouncing, and so I think.
Actually these instructions, which in one ways are one-off the individual words, the instruction itself doesn't occur anywhere else in Scripture.
I wanna suggest to you that I just think a rich reading of the fullness of the witness of Scripture actually brings evidence that lines up
completely alongside the evidence of Titus two, that Paul thought that all the things that he was commanding to the people in Titus two.
Verses two to 10 were just things that are a real and rich outworking of
following Jesus and acknowledging him as people have been saved by the gospel.
But having said that, I do think that the extrinsic evidence is a little more complex than the intrinsic evidence.
And so as we come to the end of this first talk, there are two things that I wanna raise that I want us to wrestle with a bit in the second half.
You see Paul instructs Titus to instruct the older women to teach the younger 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, as I've already said to you, the ancient literature from before and even during the time.
So from Xenophon and then down to someone like Philo.
All tells you that perhaps these things that he's encouraging 'em to, were seen as virtues more broadly in the society around about them.
And so it's easy to think that the logical connection between the kind of way that they lived and the word of
God being attractive and not reviled was just that what Christians were doing lined up with the world outside.
And actually that's the kind of thing that that brought this to pass.
But what do we do?
When teaching these things or seeking to live these things out seems to bring the
exact opposite response to God's word that Paul seems to tell you that it should.
Speaking these things and living this way will cause people to adorn and not revile the truth about God.
What happens when you speak them or live this way?
And it feels like this is what actually causes the reviling of the word of God, and that doesn't lead to any kind of adornment.
How do we hold that together and is there a biblical principle on what sense do we make of it?
The second problem that we have in this passage is that while we engage with all of these things, the stuff about bond
servants and their masters, we kind of skip over because it doesn't actually exist in our experience, in our part of the world.
I mean, apart from perhaps workers in the gig economy and other people who actually are in some sort of economic semis, slavery, I would suggest,
but I don't think it's analogous.
But here's the thing that's quite complex for us, evangelicals on the basis of
gospel conviction, argued against slavery in their world and saw it eradicated.
So why don't we who follow an apostle who said, in Christ there is no male and female.
Do the same thing with these instructions that occur about men and women when they too have been abused.
Should they not be overturned and removed in the same way that we have removed slavery?
How can we celebrate the evangelicals who eradicated slavery while saying, these are still instructions that we ought to obey.
I actually think we need to have a good answer to that question if we're gonna actually live faithfully and do these things.
Uh, given the amount of time we spent so far, they, they're questions for the second talk, and I planned it that way.
Um, let me just conclude and remind you of where we've come.
We're engaged with a section of Scripture which calls us to a particular way of
living as those who know the grace of God that has appeared in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And our great and glorious savior will appear again, and he has given himself to redeem us
from lawlessness and to make us a people of his own possession who are zealous for good.
We've noted that we should expect as we read Scripture because of our commitment
to it as the word of God, that some of it's gonna be pokey and uncomfortable.
We should be aware of the fact that this discomfort that we feel affects the way that we read the Bible.
We should be aware that there's not an absolute blanket rule for what we do with Scripture.
The way that we engage with it is a thoughtful reading of it.
In its immediate context, read wisely in light of the fullness of the theological
revelation of the character of God and his work in the gospel displayed in the whole Bible.
That actually is the task that you ought to be doing every time you go to Bible study.
Could I encourage you, but it becomes particularly relevant here.
I suggested to you that the intrinsic evidence, the structure, character, and argument
of Titus pushes very strongly to the fact that all of these instructions are for us.
I think that much of the extrinsic evidence points us in that direction, but
there are some complexities in that evidence that we need to deal well with.
So in the second talk, I want to deal with those two questions.
But then I wanna return to this issue of, and you'll say at long last, what does it mean to say something like, I think Godliness is complimentarian.
We will get there.
Thank you for listening to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College.
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Including this one from the Priscilla & Aquila Centre.
The term "Complementarian" was coined in 1988 to describe the view that God created men and women equally in his
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However, in marriage and in leadership of the church, some roles and responsibilities for men and women are not identical or interchangeable.
There is ordered complementarity of equals.
Even though the term "Complementarian" was new, this view reflects 20 centuries of biblical interpretation and church practice.
Join us for the next Priscilla & Aquila evening seminar on Wednesday the 13th of August, 2025, when writer
and theologian Claire Smith will examine the history of Complementarianism, not just for its own sake,
but to help us gain a greater understanding of our current context and to identify areas of future focus.
To find out more and register, visit the Priscilla & Aquila website.
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