Titus chapter 2

vs 1

So this is what Titus is to teach - not the crazy garbage that the Judaisers are teaching, but sound doctrine, that is, what Paul said.

vs 2

Interesting to see what that means. Look at the following verses and see what "sound doctrine" looks like! It's all down-to-earth, practical attitudes and actions! How the Christian should live is of vital importance to most, if not all, the NT authors.

Now I don't know exactly how older men acted in these times, but to some extent we have to expect that they acted somewhat as they do now, and that people would have had the same expectations from them. Tell me what Paul is describing isn't exactly what you want the old Christian men in your church to act like! These things do not simply come with age though, they are products of a Christian life which is built on healthy teaching. Sound is just literally healthy again - the NIV translators obviously liked to spice it up a little with different words (actually, they use sound because it goes back to the KJV). So old men are to be healthy in the faith, healthy in their love, and healthy in endurance.

vs 3

It's not that older women should be taught in the same way - it is that they should be similar in demeanour. Note the mention of wine addiction (literally enslavement in the greek) - which is mentioned in 1 Timothy as a requirement of elders! And notice the purpose, which is for teaching.

vs 4-5

Culturally, there is a really important reason for this - because it would be entirely culturally inappropriate for the male leaders (most likely not old people - the term elder had long before lost its meaning as "old man") to be hanging around with the younger women. So it was up to the older women (who the young men are probably less likely to carouse with) to learn from the elders, and then to teach the young women. Much of the talk of love and subjection to husbands is against mostly cultural - not because Christian culture demands it, but because the surrounding culture demanded it, and Paul doesn't want the word of God maligned simply because these women want to exercise their freedom. And while I don't think there's anything wrong with a woman being subject to her husband in today's times, I do wonder if the amount of repression of women in churches (in comparison with the world outside) might not cause people to malign the word of God.

But it only just occured to me today that some people may well be afraid of the slippery slope of liberalism - you let women pray out loud one week (TOTALLY backed up by Scripture, by the way), then they'll be preaching (scripturally iffy, but still entirely defensible), and then suddenly we'll have homosexual pastors. Now I've always known that people are afraid of the slippery slope of liberalism - but it's only today that I've thought specifically of the fear of homosexual leadership. I won't get into it here, because it's off-topic. Stay tuned.

vs 6

I've heard women say before "you can only give the young men one command, because it's all they'll hear". As I said earlier, it's far more likely that the young men were the leaders, although I'd be interested to know how quickly old men took over the church. Probably not all that quickly - many of the famous church fathers we know started young, so even if they were hella old when they died (I think Polycarp was like 85 or something) they most usually passed on to young people again.

vs 7

In any case, the punctuation between verse 6 and 7 is questionable, because it could be easily read that they should have self control in all things. And of course Titus has to show the young men a pattern of what is good too. So it's not just one thing for them. In fact, Titus is to show a bunch of things in his teaching, as much for the sake of the young men as anybody.

vs 8

And again one of the main reasons that Paul wants Titus to do these things is so that people won't oppose him, and so that Paul and him (and probably other Christian teachers too) have no reason to be slandered. That's the problem with proteges of course - when they do bad things, the mud sticks to you!