Trustworthy

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
Titus 1 (click the link)


KEY VERSES:
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ to further the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness—in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, and which now at his appointed season he has brought to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior,

To Titus, my true son in our common faith:

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus 1:1-4, NIV)


REFLECTIONS:
God doesn't lie. He can be trusted absolutely. The Apostle Paul's gospel is founded on the rock-solid basis of the reliability, the trustworthiness, the faithfulness of the one true God. 

To Paul's hearers, this was extraordinary news. To understand the full force of Paul's preaching, we must try to put ourselves in the mindset of those who heard his message. To do so, we must remember that most of Paul's Cretan hearers (Titus was the apostolic emissary to the church in Crete) had come out of the religious system of the Greek world. Try to remember what it was like reading the stories of the Greek gods and goddesses. In the Greek mythologies, the one thing that stands out (besides the number of gods and goddesses) is the character, or lack thereof, of these gods. At any moment, a particular god or goddess might either take a fancy to you and do something really nice, or take a dislike to you and punish you. The gods were unpredictable, potentially dangerous, or even malevolent. They were prone to lie, cheat, deceive, and change their minds on a whim. They were completely untrustworthy.

But part of the Good News of the Christian gospel is that the One True God, the God of Israel, is now making himself known to the whole world as the utterly reliable God, the One who can be trusted. He's not capricious or wishy-washy. He doesn't say one thing and do another. He is faithful, trustworthy, and true.

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Paul introduces himself as a servant of this trustworthy God, and an apostle—an emissary, an ambassador, an appointed herald and spokesman—of Jesus as the true King. The status he has in relation to God and Jesus comes directly from "the faith of God's elect" and their "knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness." Paul claims that in Jesus Christ, the age-old faith of Israel has been vindicated. God had made covenant promises to Abraham, Moses, David, and others throughout the Old Testament. And those promises were fulfilled in and through the ministry of Jesus Christ. So, Paul is testifying that the gospel is rooted in God's faithfulness to his promises. And God's faithfulness leads to a knowledge of the truth—not just guesswork, not just humans groping about in the darkness in an attempt to discover something about God, but a revealed truth that you can stake your life on (Matthew 7:24-27). It's a knowledge that goes hand-in-hand with the kind of devotion Paul calls "godliness." By this, he's means not simply a sincere religious attitude. Instead, the "godliness" he has in mind refers to a person's willingness to allow his or her whole life—from prayer to personal relationships to public action—to be shaped by the calling and will of God.

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Paul and Titus share this faith and it appears from Paul's calling him his "true son" that Titus learned it from Paul himself. We know very little about Titus. We know he was born a Greek and that this caused trouble with the strict Jewish Christians when he accompanied Paul to Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1-5). We know that he accompanied Paul on his final journey to Corinth, Paul speaks of him going on ahead and then returning to bring news from the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 2:13; 7:6-14; 8:16-24; 12:18). We know that at some later stage, while in prison, Paul sent Titus to Dalmatia (2 Timothy 4:10). But apart from that, we are left in the dark. Curiously, Titus is never mentioned in Acts. But, just as Paul wanted to be known simply as a "servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ," so we simply know Titus as a child of Paul in their common faith.

As a blessing from a spiritual father to a son, Paul opens his letter by wishing Titus the two central blessings of the gospel: "grace and peace." Grace speaks of God as the fountainhead, the source of all the blessings we enjoy. Peace summarizes those blessings, indicating the reconciliation and harmony between God and man. For Paul, this was no empty formula; instead, this was a prayer full of meaning and alive with hope.


PRAYER:
We bless you and praise you, Heavenly Father, for you are good! Your love is never-ending, and your faithfulness reaches to the sky. The Scriptures testify to your trustworthy character. By your grace, lead us to a deeper experience of your covenant faithfulness and fill us with the hope of eternal life. May our hearts be firmly established on the solid foundation of Christ Jesus our Savior, and may our lives be flooded with grace and peace as we live out our calling in this land of Babylon.


WHO AM I?
I am Tres Sansom, and I can testify to God's trustworthiness. After my spinal injury, my world was spinning. Though I was surrounded by a tremendous family and a number of faithful friends, what ultimately kept me from being swallowed up in pity and despair was the daily experience of God's faithfulness to his promises. I had been raised on the foundation of God's word, and the stories and passages that highlighted his faithful, generous, and good character filled me with hope to press on. It's one thing to believe with our minds that God is trustworthy; but when we go through dark and trying times and God proves himself faithful, our faith is solidified and we learn to absolutely trust his character. The years I've spent in this wheelchair have proven to me—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that God is trustworthy.