“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:11-12). What does it mean for you to live a “self-controlled” life? It’s the difference between you living with others, and forcing others to live among you. The latter suggests that you are indifferent as to how much your behavior affects those around you, the former suggests that you are mindful of how you share life’s space. It’s clear from Paul’s letter that we are not to live as those who have to be managed or endured. Rather, our living should enhance the living of others. Additionally, and most importantly, our learning to live self-controlled lives keeps us from bringing disrepute on the faith and the God we confess.
The expectation for older men in the “household code” of Titus 2 is instructive for all of us: “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness” (v. 2). There is a certain decorum expected of older men, a decorum that comes from having lived longer and learned from that living. The closing triplet, however, offers a clue as to how a Christian of any age can live in a self-controlled manner: “sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.” If our faith is sound, that is, based upon sound teaching (2:1), we will understand who God is, and why the world is the way it is, and why we act as we do, and why we need the grace of God in our lives, and how Jesus Christ expressed that grace by giving “himself for us to redeem us.” Secure in this knowledge we are released to be sound in love. No longer thinking we must win God’s favor by doing good, we can do good out of true love. Lastly, secure in the knowledge of God’s love, freed from looking at the world as something that is there to gratify our needs, we can exercise a constancy that can be relied upon as we serve the church and our neighbors.
Given the reputation of the island, the newly minted Christians of Crete likely needed Paul’s repeated emphasis on self-control. We could argue, however, that our culture is just as focused on self-gratification as was theirs. The challenge, therefore, is to remember that we are not an island unto ourselves. There are people all around us. We must ask God for the grace to live with them and not force them to live among us, so that “in everything [we] may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.”
