William Loader
Christmas Day 1: 25 December Titus 2:11-14
Respecting Paul and so writing in his name, probably in the early 2nd century, the author of Titus has been addressing the need for Titus to teach good behaviour. We see this in the verses which come immediately before our reading. The concern appears to be to ensure that the Christian community can claim to reflect the best household morals of the day. It addresses older men and older women and, fitting the assumptions of the day, asserts that women shoukd be ruled by their husbands and be good household managers. Young men are to to be self-controlled and slaves to be obedient, an ornament of perfect fidelity and submission. In our passage the author grounds these exhortations beginning with reference to the appearance of the grace of God in Jesus. That grace would eventually win through to go far beyond what this author sees as a model society and will come to affirm equal partnership between men and women and to abolish slavery.
The author interprets Christ's coming and salvation
primarily in terms of what he sees as the ideal. Impiety, not
respecting gods or in this case God, was widely seen as human arrogance
and sin. Worldly passions were also a major theme of moral philosophy
of the world in which the author wrote. Indeed, all passions were
dangerous when taken to excess and some even argued that they should be
abandoned altogether, models which inspired the stiff upper lip
suppression of emotion especially among men for many centuries until
recent times when we realised how psychologically unhealthy such
suppression has been.
Faith, claims the author, is to live a life that is "self-controlled, upright, and godly". Interpreted within the rich framework of Paul's own thought and the New Testament as a whole, this means living and walking in oneness with the Spirit and allowing love to come into us and flow through us producing its fruit, making us good news for our world. "Upright" then means much more than respectable in the community's eyes. It means embracing God's dynamic goodness which does good, reaches out in love to people in need. "Godly" has less to do with looking pious and more to do with sharing God's love and creativity in the world.
"The blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ" is on the horizon. In some contexts this was far from an abstract appendix to faith. It represented relief and escape from situations of extreme danger or of destitution. That does not appear to be the author's situation, but the future matters and it is rooted in the past: Christ who came to liberate us from iniquity and "purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds". Purity here has to do with being free from the contaminations which self-indulgence and being ruled by whims and passions produce. Impurity is to resent and repress love and goodness. Purity is to embrace them, both for oneself and for others.
For Christmas this identifies its theme, its gift, a goodness to share.