The book of James has the reputation of being the most practical book of the New Testament, but Paul’s epistle to Titus surely must be considered in the same light.  Titus is only three chapters long, but all three chapters are light on abstraction and heavy on concrete application.  Especially in the second chapter, Paul aims these applications at specific groups, but often they apply equally well to all of us.

This is true of Paul’s words to Titus himself in Titus 2:7-8.  Paul is aware that when Titus travels to Crete, he’s going to run into all sorts of opponents of the gospel.  If these people can discredit Titus’ preaching through criticism of the preacher, that’s exactly what they’ll do. 

As a result, Paul counsels Titus on how to deprive these critics of the personal attacks they love.  Today, all Christians need to listen to his advice because there are plenty of people who want to attack us for the same reason.  According to Paul, if we want to put these opponents to shame, we must excel in these four areas:

1. Good Deeds.  Christ-haters rejoice whenever they find religious hypocrites.  If they can prove that we don’t obey the truth we proclaim, they don’t have to obey it either.  We defeat this attack by living godly, blameless lives.  When everybody knows that we practice what we preach, charges of hypocrisy have no force.  What’s more, our example often proves to be as powerfully influential as our words.
    
2. Purity of Doctrine.  It’s easy to dismiss somebody who doesn’t know why he believes what he believes.  Christians claim to be the people of the Book; if five minutes of religious conversation with us reveals that the Bible is unknown territory to us, that makes us another kind of religious hypocrite.  If we clearly don’t study the Scriptures, why should anyone else?  By contrast, when the time we have spent with the Bible is evident in the way we talk about it, we show that we deserve to be taken seriously.
    
3. Dignity.  Sad to say, dignity is out of fashion these days.  Politicians, celebrities, and talking heads behave deplorably far too often, and far too many Christians take their cue from them, especially on social media.  They gleefully share demeaning memes, sneer at anyone who disagrees with them, and engage in endless slanging matches with their opponents.  Anyone with a good and honest heart will be repelled by such behavior.  On the other hand, when we refuse to engage in such behavior, we will stand out, and God-seekers will be drawn to us.
    
4. Soundness of Speech.  This is the opposite of the unwholesome speech of Ephesians 4:29:  speech that undermines, speech that tears down, speech that leaves its hearers worse off than they were.  When we see a patron dress down a fast-food worker for getting their order wrong, that’s unwholesome speech on display.  We, however, should use our words to make days brighter, lives better, and to lead others toward Christ.  Just like we would only use sound timbers to build a house, we should only use sound words to build God’s temple.

Obviously, conduct like this guarantees nothing.  If people could reject Jesus despite His sinless perfection, we cannot expect to overcome a hard heart no matter how we behave.  However, when our behavior leaves others with nothing to object to, we make it as likely as possible that they will listen to us.

In the end of Romans 3 and the beginning of Romans 4, we encounter the most famous of Paul’s teachings:  justification by faith in Jesus.  Throughout the context, he contrasts it with justification by works.  Abraham was not justified by works, nor was David, nor can we be.

From this magnificent spiritual truth a host of false doctrines have sprung.  In particular, many have argued that justification by works means doing anything, but justification by faith means doing nothing.  Thus, the argument continues, baptism cannot save us because it’s a work.  Instead, we should seek salvation by praying to Jesus and acknowledging our need to Him.

There are several Scriptural problems with this claim, but one of the most prominent is its misunderstanding of works in the context of Romans.  Paul doesn’t use “works” to mean doing anything right.  He uses it to mean doing everything right. 

This, indeed, is the point of the first three chapters of Romans.  The Gentiles can’t justify themselves by works because they are sinners.  The Jews, even though they have the Law and seek to follow it, are sinners too.  They can’t justify themselves by works either.  Thus, Paul concludes in Romans 3:20 that no one can be justified in God’s sight by the works of the Law. 

In all of human history, there only has been one man who was baptized as part of justifying himself by works.  That one was Jesus.  In Matthew 3:13-15, John at first refuses to baptize Jesus because he recognizes that the Holy One is more righteous than he is.  Jesus replies, however, “Allow it for now, because this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness.”  God’s prophet commanded baptism, so Jesus obeyed the command even though He had no need of forgiveness.

Jesus was justified by His obedience, but this only happened because He lived a life of unbroken obedience.  Should anyone have the temerity to call Him to account, He could assert His right to spend eternity with God because of His moral perfection.  That’s justification by works.

However, none of the rest of us seek baptism because we are fulfilling all righteousness.  We seek it because we haven’t fulfilled all righteousness.  We aren’t spiritual successes like Jesus.  We are failures, and we know it.  Our only hope lies in His power to cleanse and redeem, and through baptism, we call on His name, appealing to Him to wash away our sins.

Our baptism isn’t part of justification by works.  It’s not asking for what we deserve.  God forbid that I should ever get what I deserve!  Instead, we seek justification by faith apart from works through baptism. 

Baptism actually does what sinner’s-prayer advocates think the sinner’s prayer does.  In baptism, we don’t proudly stand before God and present our spiritual credentials.  Instead, we humble ourselves before Him and plead for His mercy, the mercy that we so desperately need and that our loving God is so eager to extend.

Most Christians struggle with self-righteousness.  In our heart of hearts, we want to be justified on our own merits instead of relying on the grace of God.  The former would allow us to believe that we are good; the latter forces us to acknowledge that we are not.

Consequently, even as we deplore the sins of others, part of us wants to savor them.  We compare the sinner to the perfection of God’s law and inevitably find them wanting.  However, rather than doing the same for ourselves, we use the sinner for our new standard of comparison. 

They cheated on their spouse.  I’ve always been faithful to mine.  They got drunk.  I’ve spent my life stone-cold sober.  They dress like a tramp.  My attire wins smiles of approval from the church dragons.  And so forth.

Looks like I’m a pretty good person after all, doesn’t it?

This self-righteous perspective is a deadly spiritual problem.  Jesus spent His ministry skewering the Pharisees for trusting in themselves that they were righteous.  However, perhaps the most devastating exposé of self-righteousness in the entire Bible appears in the first two chapters of the book of Romans.  There, Paul baits a trap for the self-righteous and clobbers them when they walk into it.

The trap works so well in part because the bait itself is powerfully reasoned and true.  It is nothing less than Paul’s description of the degradation of the Gentiles in Romans 1:18-32.  Their moral failure began with a refusal to honor the God so evident in creation.  From there it led to sexual immorality, generalized wickedness, and endorsement of the wickedness of others.

This argument would have been red meat to a pious Jew living in the godless city of Rome.  For that matter, it is still red meat to us.  We see the same symptoms of moral decay in the people around us.  They don’t honor God.  They practice sexual sin and lead reprehensible lives.  They praise the lawlessness they practice.  How frequently do we shake our heads at those who call evil good?

Then, in 2:1, Paul springs the trap.  He already has observed in 1:20 that the ungodly are without excuse.  Now, though, he says the same thing to their judges.  All of us are without excuse too.  When we condemn others because of their sin, we condemn ourselves too--because we do the same things that they do.

Maybe I’m not adulterous, drunk, or immodestly dressed, but on my own merits I’m still a sinner.  All of us are.  Just as I can justly condemn them for violating God’s law, so too can someone justly condemn me for violating different parts of the same law.  Do I really want the lies I’ve told to come up on the day of judgment?  How about my outbursts of anger at my spouse?  How about my love of judging others while overlooking my own sin?

Self-righteousness is alluring, but it’s a luxury that none of us can afford.  Puffing ourselves up when we consider the sins of others turns us into a target for the wrath of God.  Only acknowledging our own failures and entrusting ourselves to the mercy of Jesus will lead us to inherit eternal life.

In 1 Timothy 6:17, Paul embarks on a familiar New Testament theme.  Don’t trust money; trust God instead.  However, his reasoning is different here than elsewhere.  Unlike Jesus, he doesn’t warn us that we can’t serve both God and Mammon, nor does he repeat his claim in Colossians 3:5 that greed is a form of idolatry.  Instead, he warns rich Christians away from trusting in riches because riches are. . . uncertain.

Uncertain?  That doesn’t sound so bad!  However, once we recognize how large a problem the uncertainty of wealth truly is, we will be far less inclined to entrust ourselves to it.

First, wealth is uncertain in prospect.  I know Christians who always have some new get-rich-quick scheme every time I talk to them.  So far, none of these schemes have resulted in riches. 

Sometimes, people’s hopes for wealth founder because of foolishness.  At others, they founder because of chance.  In 1993, some of the brightest minds in finance, including a Nobel Prize winner, founded a hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management.  They thought they had discovered a way to get great returns without risk.  However, the wrong combination of financial crises in 1997 and 1998 destroyed LTCM.  It lost billions and was liquidated in 2000.

Similar dangers beset our hopes of holding on to the wealth we already have.  Ecclesiastes 5:13-14 comments on the tragedy of holding on carefully to one’s money, only to lose it through a bad investment.  This often is a modern tragedy too.  Con artists, needy relatives, negligent subordinates, and economic shocks all can part us from what we’ve earned.

Worse still, just as we can’t rely on getting wealthy or on keeping our wealth, we can’t rely on wealth to protect us either.  “Money is the answer for everything,” the Preacher scoffs in Ecclesiastes 10:19, and so it seems to the people of the world.  As long as you’re rich, your riches will keep you safe.

That’s not the case.  Many things can separate us from our wealth, and there also are problems that no amount of wealth can solve.  Money might buy the pretense of love, but it can’t purchase the reality.  God is more impressed when we give away our riches than when we accumulate them.  Some diseases remain stubbornly incurable no matter how much money we throw at them, and in the end, “rich dead man” is as much an oxymoron as “jumbo shrimp”. 

Basically, money is good for the little things in life, but it’s worthless for the big ones.  When we’re dying, none of us will look back in satisfaction on the things that money bought.  The people who build their lives around money, though numerous, are foolish. 

God is a much better investment.  Wealth is known for betraying those who love it, but He is known for being faithful to those who love Him.  He will never leave us, and there is no challenge too great for Him to overcome.  Ultimately, the treasure we lay up in heaven is the only treasure that matters.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and its companion text in Titus 1:5-9 described as “the qualifications of the elder”.  With the best of intentions, brethren have combined the two lists and turned them into a checklist.  If a check mark is missing, a man isn’t qualified. 

Not coincidentally, this has led to a focus on the qualifications that appear most objective and binary.  Is the prospective elder the husband of one wife?  Does he have faithful children?  Is he able to teach (by preaching sermons or teaching adult Bible classes)?  The man with a wedding ring, dunked kids on a pew someplace, and a spot on the teaching roster is presumptively qualified.  We say much less about whether a man is sensible or not quarrelsome.

As straightforward as this approach sounds, it isn’t what the Scriptures call for.  This is evident from the fact that the 1 Timothy list and the Titus list aren’t identical, yet Paul wants both Timothy and Titus to appoint elders according to the lists they’ve got. 

Most notably, “faithful children” (THE qualification in the eyes of the American church) does not appear on Timothy’s list.  Its counterpart in 1 Timothy applies only to the control of children who are still under a man’s roof.  Thus, Timothy would have appointed elders in Ephesus without considering at all the qualification we consider most important.

Either the Holy Spirit missed something vital, or we are missing something vital.

It is far better to read these passages not as a list of qualifications but as two portraits of what an elder should look like.  They are not identical, but they paint a picture of the same kind of man—a man who is above reproach.  “Above reproach” isn’t an initial qualification in these texts; it’s a subject heading.  Paul is giving us some things to ponder as we consider whether a man lives up to God’s standard for an elder.

This approach accomplishes two things.  First, it introduces spiritual content into every item on the list.  The mere fact of being married proves nothing about a man’s irreproachability.  However, when we consider his devotion and his commitment to his wife (the literal Greek here is “the man of one woman”), that does speak to whether he is above reproach or not.

Second, it requires us to confront the judgment-call nature of many of Paul’s criteria, which in turn points us to the holistic judgment call that he wants us to make.  Consider the “hospitable” criterion (which, unlike “faithful children”, appears in both lists).  Obviously, a man who isn’t hospitable at all shouldn’t be considered.  However, some elder candidates are moderately hospitable, while others are spectacularly hospitable.  As we are evaluating our men, “How much?” is an even more important question than “Whether?”

This allows us to take into account both strengths and weaknesses in our elder-assessment process.  No man is going to be perfect in everything, but his sparkling conduct in one area may compensate for a less impressive performance in another.  Maybe he doesn’t set the world on fire as a Bible-class teacher, but most Christians in the congregation are so used to being in his home that they come in without knocking.  All in all, he still measures up to the “above reproach” standard.

Portrait versus checklist is a big change in mindset for many brethren, but it’s a change we need to make to follow the Lord’s intent more closely.  When so many congregations suffer under the “leadership” of men’s meetings (which aren’t in the Bible at all), it’s a shame when we reject men whom the Holy Spirit would consider elder material.  However, when we apply the Scriptures rightly, as many congregations as possible will have the oversight God desires.