Wednesday Bible Study: The End of all things- Titus

 

Chapter 3 of Titus is essentially the sane as the last chapters of both letters to Timothy, and why wouldn't it be, since they were all encouragements to young pastors?  So we have to take a different angle to glean the new here, and that means looking deeper into one particular passage:

Tit 3:8  The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.
Tit 3:9  But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.

Just like now, Paul and his pastors were fighting a battle between faith and philosophy.  This is the core of what is going on in today's Church- we are fighting over how much of the world to let in, instead of barring the door to a watered down Gospel and getting back to the essentials.  And what are those essentials?  Paul spells it out- belief in God, which includes the deity, death, and resurrection of Christ, and doing good for others.  And in these two verses, he uses two pairs of words to contrast the difference between that and philosophy, where the controversies, etc, take center stage.

Here, they are translated "excellent", "profitable", "unprofitable", and "worthless".  Some Bibles, including my paper version, change out the first and last for "good" and "vain".  Excellent/good are meant to suggest a value or virtue; worthless/vain indicate empty.  Without faith, the good works are worthless and empty- maybe not in this world, but certainly in the next.

The difference in the 'profits' are the difference between helpful and useless.  I want to look at the actions that are deemed useless and have acquired a certain coin in society.

"Foolish controversies": For example, some Catholic FB acquaintances have posted time and again about proper music, the position of hands in prayer (folded or upraised), and other such things that I generally scroll on past.  I was a bit shocked to find that the literal translation of this one was "blockheaded searching".

"Genealogies": This actually reference back to 1 Timothy:

1Ti 1:4  nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

Genealogies was more a blow to the Judaizers who haunted every church, it seems; but it applies to the legalists in every age, and when you break it down, the translation is calling this a slightly less blockheaded version of the first one.

"Dissensions": I note that the word translated here is actually Eris- the name of the Greek goddess of discord.  Perhaps if he lived now, Paul would have used the phrase, "everyone gets an opinion on social media".

"Quarrels about the law": The word for quarrels literally means "to go to war".  I give you today's politics, which is why I have said time and again we need to remove the subjects of worth from the realm of politics to see what Jesus wants of us.  Debates of COVID, mask/no mask, meet/no meet, Trump's a Nazi/ Biden's an idiot work their way right back around to "blockheaded searching".

All of which, Paul tells us are empty and useless.  Faith in Christ, and bringing good to others- THAT'S what has value.