God's high calling for grace-energized women is to love their husbands and children. To most of us mature 21st century believers that may sound wonderful. To them it must have sounded impossible.
The Cretans of Paul's day lived in an ego-centered, selfish society that knew and cared little about forgiveness.  Roman society became so decadent that it saw forgiving people as weak and unforgiving ones as strong. Cretans celebrated vengeful gods and exalted as heroes those who took vengeance on others. The result was a society so much like America today--filled with bitterness, vengeance, anger, hate, and hostility.
More and more we see people seeking vengeance either outside or inside the bounds of the law. Just this week a crowd in Austin, Texas, dragged a man from his car and beat him to death for a crime they mistakenly thought he had committed. This pervasive unwillingness to forgive in our society is also the leading cause of the breakups in family relationships. [1]
Bitterness Pervaded the World of the Bible
God wanted the lost pagans living on Crete to see their changed lives and be confronted with living examples of Jesus Christ. Society was to be flooded at every level with the irrefutable proof of changed lives.
Paul sent the details for the invasion of this strategic island in his letter to Titus. We have been studying these admonitions in Titus 2. These life-truths have always deeply impacted any society. When the Gospel, that brings this impossible life into the heart of a newly saved individual, starts to work through Christ's church, the world takes notice.
God has always worked out His plan in this world through individual believers who struggle[2] th
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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...