"If your brother sins against you, rebuke him..." the Lord tells us today. To an unbeliever, someone not living in God but reading the Gospel with a certain external interest, these words can appear to contradict other words of the Gospel...
"If your brother sins against you, rebuke him..." the Lord tells us today. To an unbeliever, someone not living in God but reading the Gospel with a certain external interest, these words can appear to contradict other words of the Gospel. "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye?" (Matt 7:4). How can you rebuke someone for anything if you yourself are no better?
In reality, this visible discrepancy reflects a very serious and deep problem of the soul, or a tension of the soul, in every real Christian. It is very rare for someone to offend us consciously and seriously while we are completely innocent. Of course, that happens, but it happens rather rarely. As a rule, we are dealing with ordinary conflicts in which each side is guilty of something. And of course each one considers it his "sacred" duty to call the opposite side to repentance. He rejoices at the thought that now he will forgive. This only leads to an escalation of the conflict.
This is not what the Lord wants from us at all. It appears to us that these words of Jesus contain a very serious warning to people of a very different kind. The point is that among Christians there are very often vulnerable, kind people who are, however, inclined toward depression and excessive self-abasement. If someone offends them, the first thought that arises in their head is, "It is my fault; I did something wrong." In reality, these are people with a huge deficit of love directed toward them, lonely people. If one looks closely, among physically healthy young people who attend churches, they are the overwhelming majority. Because of this kind of self-perception, their sorest spot is often the fear that they will be loved even less. Therefore, if someone around them offends them, they will never "rebuke" him, because they are afraid of bringing that person's displeasure on themselves, of losing some part of his love. That is the essence of it. But in their minds they cover this fear with pious exhortations to themselves about their humility, about their Christian love capable of enduring humiliation, and, in the end, with those words from the Gospel of Matthew that we cited today in an antithetical key. Such people remember small offenses for years. But not because they are vindictive; it is because passing through these offenses was connected for them with the layering of many different fears and pains.
And this is what the Lord does not want. He wants us to understand soberly that we, that I, am not the last and most terrible sinner in the world, and that the people around me can also make mistakes and sin. He wants us to overcome our own egocentrism and remember that our goal, in working together with God, is to lessen evil, and that we must recognize the responsibility of this work together with Him. He wants us to perceive both our own repentance and another person's repentance as the joy of renewed mutual love. It is something like the moment in childhood when we made peace with our parents after punishment. Joy and love are what God wants. He does not want tears and sufferings, and still less does He want tears and sufferings to be covered with piety and placed on a pedestal, as became customary in the great psychological literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a custom that comes from the traditions of eighteenth-century Romanticism. "Suffering ennobles the soul," how often one hears this in half-educated circles... They simply have not seen people whom suffering crushed and twisted so badly that one can barely make out the person's personality. The Lord certainly does not want that.
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1:1 Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ - Titles suitable to the person of Paul, and the office he was assigning to Titus. According to the faith - The propagating of which is the proper business of an apostle. A servant of God - According to the faith of the elect. An apostle of Jesus Christ - According to the knowledge of the truth. We serve God according to the measure of our faith: we fulfil our public office according to the measure of our knowledge. The truth that is after godliness - Which in every point runs parallel with and supports the vital, spiritual worship of God; and, indeed, has no other end or scope. These two verses contain the sum of Christianity, which Titus was always to have in his eye. Of the elect of God - Of all real Christians
1:2 In hope of eternal life - The grand motive and encouragement of every apostle and every servant of God. Which God promised before the world began - To Christ, our Head.
1:3 And he hath in his own times - At sundry times; and his own times are fittest for his own work. What creature dares ask, "Why no sooner?" Manifested his word - Containing that promise, and the whole "truth which is after godliness." Through the preaching wherewith I am intrusted according to the commandment of God our Saviour - And who dares exercise this office on any less authority?
1:4 My own son - Begot in the same image of God, and repaying a paternal with a filial affection. The common faith - Common to me and all my spiritual children.
1:5 The things which are wanting - Which I had not time to settle myself. Ordain elders - Appoint the most faithful, zealous men to watch over the rest. Their character follows, Tit 1:6-9. These were the elders, or bishops, that Paul approved of; - men that had living faith, a pure conscience, a blameless life.
1:6 The husband of one wife - Surely the Holy Ghost, by repeating this so often, designed to leave the Romanists without excuse.
1:7 As the steward of God - To whom he intrusts immortal souls. Not selfwilled - Literally, pleasing himself; but all men "for their good to edification." Not passionate - But mild, yielding, tender.
1:9 As he hath been taught - Perhaps it might be more literally rendered, according to the teaching, or doctrine, of the apostles; alluding to Act 2:42.