Ministry in Christ's church was never easy, even from the start. As we open Paul's letter to Pastor Titus, missionary church-planter to Crete—we look at the description of the cultural background of the congregation Titus served two thousand years ago.
Titus 1:12-13Â One of them, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith (NKJV)
Wow! Just think of what a miracle it was to find a group of believers saved out of such a godless society. They came from centuries of culture dominated by total ('always") untrustworthiness('liars'), total out-of-control living ('evil beasts'), and the total undisciplined pursuit of personal lust-filled appetites ('lazy gluttons').
Again we see from these two verses that when the Gospel of Jesus Christ entered the Roman world of the New Testament the landscape was very bleak. Christ's church was born into a sin-warped, sin-darkened world of mixed-up marriages, sin-scarred lives, and confused families.
Paul here quoted a line from a poem by Epimenides, a poet and philosopher who had lived inCrete 600 years earlier. The quotation reveals basic character flaws in the Cretans, giving them a bad reputation for lying, violence, and laziness The reputation of the Cretans was so bad that the verb form of their name (kretizo) was used by the Greeks to indicate lying. Paul applied this familiar phrase to the false teachers.
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Pastor John Barnett has been devouring the Word of God for over 30 years. John, now the teaching pastor of Calvary Bible Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan has served congregations in Oklahoma, New England, Georgia and California. He also served on the Faculty of the Master's College...
