The Practicability of the Christian Life

Extract

The unknown apostle who wrote the wholesome letter to Titus, “his own son after the common faith,” re-enforces his general doctrine of Christian ethics by a special application to the circumstances in which Titus finds himself at Crete. The Christian life, the apostle writes, is practicable even there. The Cretans, where Titus had been left “to set in order the things that are wanting,” were, as one of themselves had said, “liars, beasts, and gluttoners.” “This witness,” the writer agrees, “is true”; but this truth is precisely what gives an opportunity for Titus to teach the Cretans a “sound” or “healthful” doctrine of chastity, discretion, and gravity. “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men.” Crete was a good place for a Christian “to adorn the doctrine of God.” The problem of the Christian life was not to run away from a bad place, but to serve it and save it. We should live “soberly, righteously, and godly,” not in a world of our own choosing, but “in this present world.” Soberly as concerns one's self, righteously as concerns one's neighbor, piously in one's relation to God,—these three laws made, according to the Apostle, a practicable rule of conduct for a young man of the first century in a vicious and pleasure-loving world.