The sins of the sect and the sins of the tribe.
"For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision," etc. In the preceding verses Paul stated one purpose for which he left Titus in Crete, viz. to set in order "the things that are wanting," and to ordain elders in every city. He recognized at once, not only the importance of order in the new community, but also the importance of appointing men who, intellectually and morally, were qualified for its establishment and continuance., In these verses he gives Titus directions as to his aggressive work in Crete. He was to do battle with sin. "For there are many unruly [men] and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert [overthrow] whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake." The great work of the gospel minister is to do battle with sin. In the text, sin is referred to as appearing in two aspects, in religious sect and in national character.
I. IN RELIGIOUS SECT. "Specially they of the circumcision." These, undoubtedly, are Judaizing Christians, men who pretended to be converted to Christianity, men who sought not only to mingle Judaic elements with the new religion, but to inculcate and disseminate it in that form. Observe the description of sin as it appeared in this religious sect—these men of the circumcision. Here is:
1. Factiousness. "Unruly." Not only would they not bow to the established order of the Church, but not to the spirit and principles of the new religion. They would not yield to the masterhood of Christ, the Author and Substance of the gospel; they were stir-willed. They would have a sect of their own.
2. Ostentation. "Vain talkers." Vain, not merely in the sense of proud, but in the sense of emptiness. In truth, as a rule, the emptiest men, intellectually, are at once the most conceited and loquacious. They talk, not for the edification of others, but for the gratification of themselves. Their fluency, whilst it wins the admiration of fools, deludes the ignorant, and disgusts the thoughtful.
3. Falsehood. "Deceivers." All merely nominal Christians are deceivers. They practically misrepresent the doctrines they profess to hold.
4. Mischievousness. "Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert [overthrow] whole houses." "The translation should ran, 'seeing they subvert,' etc. There was, indeed, grave cause why these men should be put to silence: the mischief they were doing in Crete to the Christian cause was incalculable. It was no longer individuals that their poisonous teaching affected, but they were undermining the faith of whole families. For an example how Titus and his presbyters were to stop the mouths of these teachers of what was false, comp. Matthew 22:34-46, where the Lord, by his wise, powerful, yet gentle words, first put the Sadducees to silence, and then so answered the Pharisees ' that neither durst any man from that day ask him any more questions'" (Dr. Ellicott).
5. Greed. "Teaching things which they ought not, ton filthy lucre's sake." All the speeches they made, all the influence they exerted, sprang from sordid motives. Sin has a thousand branches and but one root, and that root is selfishness. How many, in what we call the religious world, are found teaching things which they ought not, for "filthy lucre's sake"—things that gratify popular taste, that agree with popular prejudice, chime in with the popular thought! All this to fill their pews and to enrich their coffers. Now, these sins which are discovered, in the religious sect are prevalent outside of all religions; but they receive a peculiar color, shape, enormity, and mischievousness when we find them in the religious realm. The devil is less hideous amongst his fellows in hell than he is amongst the sons of God. Hence, to do battle with sin in these religious forms is the grand work of a true preacher; and truly, in this age, and here in England, he will find these sins on every hand. He will see factiousness building up sects, and little sects within sects; ostentation—vain speaking, braggardism, sometimes cooing and sometimes bawling, everywhere; falsehood—rogues robing themselves in the garb of sainthood, wolves in sheep's clothing; mischievousness—by their empty words and pernicious example subverting "whole houses," filling the domestic air with poisonous cant; greed—the gospel itself made a trade, and vested interests created in connection with doctrines and doings antagonistic to the life and spirit of him whom they call Master. Ah me! conventional religion is a calumny on the religion of Christ. Never was a Luther wanted in Christendom more than now. He is wanted to substitute the pure gospel of Christ for the denominationalized gospel.
II. IN NATIONAL CHARACTER. "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies [idle gluttons]." There are three sins mentioned here which seem to have prevailed amongst the Cretans as a race.
1. Lying. "The Cretans are always liars." Who made this charge against the Cretans? Paul says, "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own." The quotation is from a poem on 'Oracles,' by Epimenides, of Phoestus, who flourished b.c. 600, lived to the age of a hundred and fifty, and was supposed to have been a sleeper in a cave for fifty-seven years. He appears to have deserved the title prophet in the fullest sense. Plato speaks of him as a Divine man. The Cretans were characterized by the sin of lying—"always liars." This expression was quoted by Callimachus in his ' Hymn to Zeus,' and well known in antiquity. "The very word 'to Cretize' (Kretizein), or to play the part of a Cretan, was invented as a word synonymous with 'to deceive,' 'to utter a lie; 'just as Corinthiazein, 'to play the part of a Corinthian,' signified 'to commit a still darker moral offence.' Some writers suggest that this despicable vice of lying was received as a bequest from the early Phoenician colonists."
2. Sensuality. "Evil beasts." Not only liars, but gross and sensual, living in animalism and for it. All men may be called "beasts" who attend to their animal appetites as means of gratification rather than of relief. He who seeks happiness from his senses rather than from his soul is a beast; he who seeks it from without rather than from within is not better than a beast. The happiness of a true man cannot stream into him from without; it must well up from the depths of his own high thinkings and pure affections. Gluttony. "Slow bellies [idle gluttons]." Their gluttony made them dull, heavy, and indolent. Such are what may be called tribal or national sins. They were not confined to the Cretans, but for them the Cretans were notorious. These are national. But are these sins extinct in England? Have we no lying here? Our social air is impregnated with falsehood. Have we no sensuality and gluttony? Yes, alas! tens of thousands are every day pampering themselves with luxuries, whilst millions are being starved to death. Here, then, are common sins with which the preacher has to do battle. He has to "rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith."
CONCLUSION. A true preacher, then, has no easy task. He has to wage fierce battle with the sins that are around him—the sins of the sect and. the sins of the tribe. He is not to pander to men's tastes, nor to battle with mere opinions and theories, but with sins; he must "resist unto blood, striving against sin." "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil."—D.T.
The supreme importance of moral character.
"Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure," etc. We notice, at the outset, two facts suggested by the passage.
1. That there is an essential difference in the moral characters of men. There are some "pure" and some "defiled," some holy and some unholy. What is the underlying inspiring principle that makes this difference? The predominant disposition. Perhaps there is no moral being in the universe who is not under the masterhood of some one sentiment or passion, to which can be traced, as to a mainspring, all the motions of his being. This controlling tendency is the moral monarch of souls, or, in Scripture language, is the moral "heart of the man." This supreme disposition exists in all men in two distinct and opposite forms, either in sympathy with the true, the right, and the spiritual, or in sympathy with the false, the wrong, and the material. That soul alone is pure whose governing sympathy is God and the true. Supreme love for the supremely good is the true life of the soul, and the fountain of all its virtues. He whose controlling sympathies run not thus, is impure and corrupt.
2. Pleat the outward world is to men according to this difference. The whole external universe is to a man according to the moral state of his soul. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he"—so is he in relation to himself, to all without, and to God. This being so, the text teaches the supreme importance of moral character. Let us look at—
I. THE MORALLY PURE IN RELATION TO ALL THINGS. "Unto the pure all things are pure." This is true in relation to three things.
1. In relation to appearance. The proverb goes that the greatest rogues are ever the most suspicious. A thoroughly selfish, ungodly soul will see but little good even in the best men. It is a law that man judges his fellow by himself, and the more corrupt a man is, the more severe his judgment on others. A good man is neither given to suspicion nor censoriousness; he sees some good in all men.
2. In relation to influence. The influence of all outward things upon men is dependent on their moral character. Our Lord says, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth defileth a man." The moral character is an all-transformative power in the center of man's being. It turns the unclean into the clean, and the reverse. A good man, like the bee, can extract honey from the bitterest plant; or, like the AEolian harp, can turn the shrieking wind into music.
3. In relation to appropriation. As the body lives by appropriating the outward, so does the soul; and as the effects of the appropriation, whether universal or otherwise, depend on the condition of the body's health, as the appropriation of a diseased body only increases the physical ailment; so with the soul. A corrupt soul appropriates, even from the most strengthening and refreshing means of spiritual improvement, that which weakens and destroys. Pharaoh and his host got moral mischief out of the ministry of Moses; and the men of Capernaum were pressed into a deeper and darker hell through the elevating and enlightening ministry of Jesus of-Nazareth. Mark, then, the supreme importance of moral character.
II. THE MORALLY DEFILED IN RELATION TO ALL THINGS. "Unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled." Here is the converse. Mark, in passing, three things.
1. The sphere of the defilement. "The mind and conscience." "The mind," says a modern expositor, "is the willing as well as the thinking part of man, as it has been well defined the human spirit (pneuma) in one of its aspects, not simply quatenus cogitat, et intelligit, but also quatenus vult. Defilement of this mind (nous) means that the thoughts, wishes, purposes, activities, are all stained and debased. The second of these, the conscience (suneidesis), is the moral consciousness within, and that which is ever bringing up the memory of the past, with its omissions and commissions, its errors, its cruel, heartless unkindness, its selfish disregard of others. When this is defiled, then this last safeguard of the soul is broken down. The man and woman of the defiled conscience is self-satisfied, hard, impenitent to the last. Every part and faculty of the soul is stained with sin. The body may be cleansed by ceremonial ablutions, and the external manners and speech kept pure by culture and civilization, but the soul be black; the outside of the "cup and of the platter clean," but inside full of corruption.
2. The cause of the defilement. "They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him." There is nothing, perhaps, so morally defiling to the soul as religious hypocrisy. The man who with the lip professes to know God, and who in the life denies him, gets deeper stains upon his soul than the agnostic who professes that he knows nothing about him. What millions in our churches every Sunday publicly, at each service, avow with their lip their belief in God, but in their week-day life "he is not in all their thoughts"! Thus souls get deeply dyed in corruption in Christian churches.
3. The hideousness of the defilement. "Being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." However fair their conduct in the religious observances, they are "abominable" within, hideous to the eye of God. However rigorous in their observances and religious ordinances, they are "disobedient" in heart, they outrage moral laws; however useful they regard themselves and appear to others, they are "reprobate," they are rejected and worthless. These "defiled" in soul defile everything without; all outward things in their appearance, influences, and appropriation are to them corrupt.
CONCLUSION. Mark:
1. The natural sovereignty of the human son. We are not necessarily the creatures of the outward; we have within the power to bend circumstances to our will, to get good out of evil, to turn outward dissonance into music, deformity into beauty, poison into nourishment. Let us adore our Maker for this wonderful endowment—an endowment which guards us from the coercion of outward forces, secures to us an inward freedom of action, and enables us to put all outward things in subjection to our own spiritual selves.
2. The dependency of the soul's destiny on itself. A man's destiny depends upon his moral character, and his character depends upon himself. As food, however nutritious, cannot administer strength to a man's body without the digestive and appropriative power, so no external influences, however good and useful in themselves, can raise a man's soul without the right action of its faculties. Man cannot be made good. His body may be borne to the summit of a lofty mountain without the use of his limbs, but if his soul is to ascend "the holy hill of the Lord," he must climb it every inch himself. Fortune or patronage may raise him to some eminent social position, but he cannot reach a single stage of moral dignity—the true dignity of man—apart from his own earnest endeavors. The transformative power of the soul is to external circumstances what the builder is to the materials out of which he rears his edifice. The choicest materials may be brought together—gold, marble, and cedar—but unless the builder use them with artistic skill they will never take the form of a beautiful structure. So the providence of God may gather around man all the facilities and elements for the raising of a noble character, but unless he use them with his own spiritual hand, he will never produce such a structure.
3. The grand end of true teaching. What is that? The supreme importance of every man obtaining a true moral character. "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." In moral goodness of soul alone, can we not only find our heaven, but find our way safely and happily through this life. We live in a world of evil. We cannot escape its sinful influence by endeavoring, like the anchorite, to avoid its touch. Whilst no man should put himself in the way of temptation, no man should be afraid to confront evil, to go into its most malarial regions if duty call. In truth, if man's well-being depended upon escaping outward evil, it could never be realized, because to live in the world he is bound to live in its midst, and evil must stream into him every day. How, then, is he to reach a blessed destiny? Not merely by endeavoring to frame his life according to the outward rules of morality and religion, but by a right use of his own spiritual powers. There is a power in the body, when in a healthy state, to appropriate whatever goes into it from external nature that is wholesome and necessary, and to expel that which is noxious and superfluous. The soul has a power analogous to this; a power to appropriate the wholesome and to expel the injurious. This power we call the transformative. Let us use it rightly—use it as Noah used it, who, amidst the blasphemy and ridicule of a corrupt generation, walked with God, and fulfilled a noble destiny; as Paul used it at skeptical Athens, in dissolute Corinth, and in pagan Rome, who from experience left the world this testimony: "All things work together for good to them that love God."—D.T.
2 Timothy 4
Titus
Titus 2
Titus 1 - titus-1 - worlddic.com