“In all things showing yourself a pattern of good works: in doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity (serious), 8. Sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he, that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.”
A modern translation of “pattern of good works” is “in everything set them an example by doing what is good.” For the record, this was addressed to young men, who were encouraged to be self-controlled. Like Timothy, Titus was a young man, and, evidently, there were other young men serving with him. But I think that the command fits every person who does the Lord’s work – young, old, male and female. It behooves all of us as Christ’s representatives on earth to “set an example by doing what is good.” I like the word “pattern” in the KJV, because when we have a pattern of behavior, it means that this is the way be behave all of the time. For example, a pattern of bad works would reveal incessant bad behavior. The first thing that I want to deal with is the latter part of verse 8: “that he, that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.” This makes sense. If we want people to think well of our Christian faith, we should live it before them, and that would certainly mean that we are setting a “pattern of good works.” We should live so that when people do not speak well of us, they will be ashamed of what they have said. This does not mean that we are to live to please everybody, it means that our behavior should be above reproach. None of us will do this perfectly, but we need to be careful about how we live before people. The second thing that I want to deal with is the statement that “in doctrine (they were to show) uncorruptness.” The NIV translates it: “In your teaching show integrity.” This means that we cannot teach just anything that we want to teach. We will be careful to base our teaching on plain scriptural truth. For example, we cannot teach what we want to teach about Christ. Some preaching today makes Christ into some kind of “hail fellow well met” who doesn’t care how people live. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus Himself lived a perfect life. We need to propound the teaching that Jesus came from heaven, was virgin born, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins, rose from the grave and ascended back to the Father. That is what the New Testament teaches and we can’t teach Jesus as less than our perfect Savior who has a call on our lives and who makes moral demands of us. There are many other doctrinal things that we could discuss, but, while we can disagree about a lot of things, we cannot disagree about who and what Jesus was/is. The third thing that I want to deal with is that we are to be serious and sincere about our faith. This does not mean that we are always supposed to be somber about our faith. I think Jesus was serious, but His demeanor was such that people were attracted to Him. For example, children loved Jesus. I have heard that if children and dogs love you, you are a good person. I don’t know about dogs, but I know that children loved Jesus. But Jesus was certainly serious about His mission here on earth. All you have to do is go to the Garden of Gethsemane and hear His prayer of submission to the will of the Father to see the seriousness with which Jesus approached His mission. We should be serious about what we believe. This does not mean that we cannot approach life with humor, but we are not to approach it with silliness and shallowness. Our sincerity will make a mark on the work that we do for Jesus in His church and in the community. This seriousness and sincerity will be revealed by “sound speech that cannot be condemned.” We do not need to spend all of our time worrying about what people think of us, but we should care what they think about our faith. If we set a “pattern of good works” they will think well of our faith and of our Savior. Bro. J
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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