Every Age in the House

After a chapter about people whose talk is empty, Paul turns to Titus with two words that set him against the whole lot of them. But as for you, he writes, speak the things that are consistent with sound doctrine. Then he does something you would not expect. Instead of listing doctrines, he walks around the house and speaks to each group inside it by name.

The older men come first. They are to be temperate, dignified, self-controlled, and sound in faith and love and perseverance. Sound is the same word he has been using of teaching, so an old man's faith is meant to be healthy the way a body is healthy, and perseverance is on his list because by that age he has had things to persevere through.

The older women are next, and they get more words than the men did. Reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not addicted to much wine, and then a job: teachers of good. What they teach is the young women, and Paul says why it matters.

so that the word of God will not be discredited.

The stakes there are not what anybody would have guessed. Not so that the family will be thought respectable, and not so that the neighbors approve of them. The reputation being protected here belongs to God.

The younger men get one line in verse 6, and the thing they are given is self-controlled. That is the third time it lands on this page. It was asked of the older men in verse 2, of the young women in verse 5, and now of the young men. Whatever else separates these groups by age and by circumstance, they are handed the same thing.

Then Paul turns to Titus. He is to be an example by doing good works, and to show integrity and dignity and wholesome speech in his teaching, so that anyone who opposes them will have nothing bad to say. He teaches, and he is also the exhibit.

Then Paul speaks to the slaves.

Slaves are to submit to their own masters in everything, to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not stealing from them, but showing all good faith, so that in every respect they will adorn the teaching about God our Savior.

This is a hard verse to read at a table and it should be read slowly. What the passage asks of enslaved people is what it has asked of everybody else in the house, which is not to argue, not to steal, and to show good faith. Then it says what that does. They will adorn the teaching about God our Savior. Enslaved members of that household are told that their ordinary honesty is what makes the teaching look like something anybody would want.