Portion for the day - Titus 1
To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work.
a. To the pure, all things are pure: With their attraction to Jewish legalism, the difficult people Titus had to confront seemed to believe that nothing is pure. They denied Christians basic and godly pleasures that were not sin.
i. Timothy had to deal with the same kind of people. Paul warned Timothy about those forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth (1 Timothy 4:3). Paul knew that if a Christian walked in the purity of the Lord, these things were pure to him. But to those of a legalistic mind (those who are defiled and unbelieving), they seemed to believe nothing is pure. The problem was with their defiled and unbelieving minds and consciences, not with the things themselves.
ii. All things are pure: Of course, Paul does not mean that obviously sinful things (pornography, illicit drugs, and the like) are pure. Paul has in mind those things which are permitted by Scripture, but forbidden by legalists in a mistaken attempt to earn favor with God.
iii. “Paul was refuting the false teaching of these legalists with reference to foods. They were teaching that Jewish dietary laws still applied to Christian believers.” (Wiersbe)
iv. “The ‘all things’ refers to everything which is non-moral; such as appetite and food, desire and marriage, exchange and commerce, weariness and recreation, and so on through all the varied realm of life. To the pure all these things are pure, and they will be maintained in purity. To the impure, every one of them may be made the vehicle and occasion of impurity.” (Morgan)
b. They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him: These difficult people Titus had to deal with were all the more difficult because they talked like Christians. Their profession was all in order, but in works they deny Him. We can’t just go by what a person says. We have to also look at how they live.
i. “They acted as if this Supreme Being was a mere metaphysical abstraction, out of all moral relation to human life, as if He were neither Saviour nor Judge.” (J.H. Bernard, cited in White)
c. Being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work: These are strong words, but Paul means it. These difficult people probably pretended to have a higher spirituality than Titus or other godly leaders. But Paul saw right through their spiritual façade and wanted Titus - and all the Christians on Crete - to see through it also.
i. The word abominable has the idea of polluted by idolatry.
ii. Disqualified: The ancient Greek word is adokimos, and was used in many different ways:
•It was used to describe a counterfeit coin.
•It was used to describe a cowardly soldier who failed in battle.
•It was used of a candidate rejected for elected office.
•It was used of stone rejected by builders. If a stone had a bad enough flaw, it was marked with a capital A (for adokimos) and set aside as unfit.
Activity - Cube Buster
Source: David Guzik Commentary, enduringword.com / picture from : csprinceton . o r g / game: calvary william sport . com
