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This whole chapter deals with what might be called The Christian Character in Action. It takes people by their various ages and stations and lays down what they ought to be within the world. It begins with the senior men. (Barclay)
2:1
The gospel and its implications must be articulated. (Utley)
2:2
The point is that when a man has reached years of seniority, he ought to have teamed what are, and what are not, true pleasures. The senior men should have teamed that the pleasures of self-indulgence cost far more than they are worth. (Barclay)
The three words taken together mean that the senior man must have learned what can only be called the gravity of life. A certain amount of recklessness and of unthinkingness may be pardonable in youth, but the years should bring their wisdom. One of the most tragic sights in life is a man who has learned nothing from them. (Barclay)
He must be healthy in love. It may well be that the greatest danger of age is that it should drift into censoriousness and fault-finding. Sometimes the years take kindly sympathy away. It is fatally possible for a man to become so settled in his ways that he comes unconsciously to resent all new thoughts and ways. But the years ought to bring, not increasing intolerance but increasing sympathy with the views and mistakes of others. (Barclay)
2:3-5
In the last analysis there can be no greater career than that of homemaking. Many a man, who has set his mark upon the world, has been enabled to do so simply because someone at home loved him and tended him. It is infinitely more important that a mother should be at home to put her children to bed and hear them say their prayers than that she should attend all the public and Church meetings in the world. (Barclay)
2:6-8
The duty of the younger men is summed up in one sentence, but it is a pregnant one. They are bidden remember the duty of prudence. As we have already seen, the man who is prudent, sophron ( Greek #4998 ), has that quality of mind which keeps life safe. He has the security which comes from having all things under control.
The time of youth is necessarily a time of danger.
(i) In youth the blood runs hotter and the passions speak more commandingly. The tide of life runs strongest in youth and it sometimes threatens to sweep a young person away.
(ii) In youth there are more opportunities for going wrong. Young people are thrown into company where temptation can speak with a most compelling voice. Often they have to study or to work away from home and from the influences which would keep them right. He has not yet taken upon himself the responsibility of a home and a family; he has not yet given hostages to fortune; and he does not yet possess the anchors which hold an older person in the right way through a sheer sense of obligation. In youth there are far more opportunities to make shipwreck of life.
(iii) In youth there is often that confidence which comes from lack of experience. In almost every sphere of life a younger person will be more reckless than his elders, for the simple reason that he has not yet discovered all the things which can go wrong. To take a simple example, he will often drive a motor car much faster simply because he has not yet discovered how easily an accident can take place or on how slender a piece of metal the safety of a car depends. He will often shoulder a responsibility in a much more carefree spirit than an older person, because he has not known the difficulties and has not experienced how easily shipwreck may be made. No one can buy experience; that is something for which only the years can pay. There is a risk, as there is a glory, in being young.
For that very reason, the first thing at which any young person must aim is self-mastery. No one can ever serve others until he has mastered himself. “He who rules his spirit is greater than he who takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32).
Self-discipline is not among the more glamorous of the virtues, but it is the very stuff of life. When the eagerness of youth is buttressed by the solidity of self-mastery, something really great comes into life. (Barclay)
2:9-10
Click here for MacLaren’s full sermon on Titus 2:10.
THAT is a wonderful hope to hold forth before any man, that he may add beauty to the gospel. And it is still more wonderful when we remember that these words were originally addressed to a handful of slaves - the lowest of the population, whose lives were passed in sordid squalor; whose duties Were narrow and often repulsive, and yet they in their limited sphere and lowly lot might make fairer the truth which is already beautiful with all the beauty of God. Let us then think for a moment of this wonderful possibility that is opened out here before every Christian, that he may add beauty to the gospel. (MacLaren)
And so you both damage yourselves in their eyes, and damage the religion you profess, by your inconsistencies and your faults. Our lives ought to be like the mirror of a reflecting telescope. (MacLaren)
There are no worse enemies of the gospel than its inconsistent friends. That is especially true in lands where the Christian Church is a little band amongst heathens, as was the case with the churches of which Titus had charge. Who is it that thwarts missionary work in India? Englishmen. Who is it that, wherever they go with their ships, put a taunt into the lips of the enemy which Christian workers find it hard to meet? English sailors. The notorious dissipation and immorality amongst the representatives of English commerce in the various Eastern centers of trade puts a taunt into the mouth of the abstemious Hindu and of the Chinaman. ‘These are your Christians, are they?’ England, that sends out missionaries in the cabin, and Bibles and rum side by side amongst the cargo, has to listen, and her people have to take to themselves the awful words with which the ancient Jewish inconsistencies were rebuked: ‘Through you the name of God is blasphemed amongst the Gentiles.’ (MacLaren)
Remember, remember, either you beautify or you [cause] blaspheme [to] the gospel by your conduct. (MacLaren)
You will be of very little use if your Christian principle is so buried in your life, embedded beneath a mass of selfishness and worldliness and indifference as that it takes a microscope, and a week’s looking for to find it. And you will be of very little use, either, if your life is by fits and starts under the influence of Christian principle; a minute guided by that and ten minutes guided by the other thing ; - if here and there, sprinkled thinly over the rotting mass, there be a handful of the saving salt. (MacLaren)
NOTE: Please click here to access the web-page for all of the works cited—save those above in “Note(s)” (if any) and those below under the “Other Works Cited” (if any). Most of the works cited on the web-page, correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of background information and other general reference citations, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with.