This Day in History: 0000-07-06

July 6 – Titus 3:9-11 

Do not get involved in foolish discussions about spiritual pedigree or in quarrels and fights about obedience to Jewish laws. These things are useless and a waste of time. If people are causing divisions among you, give a first and second warning. After that, have nothing more to do with them. For people like that have turned away from the truth, and their own sins condemn them. 

How much time we waste as the body of Christ in foolish discussions and in quarrels and fights! We have to stop friends. Why are we so prone to major on the minors and minor on the majors? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? 

The Bible makes it clear – the thing that identifies us as children of God is love. Specifically, our unifying love for our fellow believers. We’re supposed to be as united in mind and purpose as Jesus Christ was to His Father. That purpose? To be wholly devoted together to the furtherance of the Gospel, and we’re supposed to take very seriously the purity of that Gospel. 

No, we shouldn’t get hung up on foolish things that bear no impact on the Good News about Jesus Christ. But we absolutely should draw a hard line against those who are trying to pervert the Gospel with arguments and divisions about legalistic rules and regulations that suggest our salvation has anything at all to do with us. It doesn’t. It’s not because of who we are, where we were born, or what we’ve done to be “good enough” or earn it. 

Just before these verses in Titus 3, Paul reminds his young student of the grace and mercy of God in freely offering salvation to the world that this salvation is not earned but given, and our response to this gift should not be to waste our time debating genealogies or rules or any other useless waste of time. 

So let’s live in obedience to these verses. Let’s shed from our lives those who are perverting the Gospel. Let’s give them a warning and then a second warning, and then let’s turn from them and place our focus where it belongs. On living for the glory of our Lord! Let’s unite together to make Him known!