Forbidden Bible Verses — Titus 2:15

The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Titus 2:15

¹⁵ Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

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Last week’s post was about the duties of slaves to their masters. In today’s interpretation, we may consider Paul’s instructions to Titus as being about our duties as employees to our employers.

Last week’s verses came at the end of a series of duties that Christians have, beginning with Paul’s exhortation to Titus to teach sound doctrine, followed by verses on how the following groups should behave: older men and women, younger women and younger men, ending with slaves.

The next verses in Titus 2 explain why believers’ behaviour must be godly. These are in the Lectionary and are read on Christmas Day (emphases mine):

¹¹ For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, ¹² training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, ¹³ waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, ¹⁴ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Then Paul instructs Titus that he must declare these things to the Christians of Crete and rebuke with all authority; he also tells his protégé not to allow anyone to disregard him (verse 15) because of his youth. Titus was likely to have been in his early to mid-30s at this time.

Matthew Henry’s commentary discusses ‘these things’:

These things, namely, those before mentioned: not Jewish fables and traditions, but the truths and duties of the gospel, of avoiding sin, and living soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world. Observe, Ministers in their preaching must keep close to the word of God. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God, 1 Pet 4 11, and not the figments and inventions of his own brain.

John MacArthur has more on that point:

What Jesus said was very simple.  “My authority is this: I speak the words of God.  My teaching is not Mine; it is His who sent Me.”  Dear friends, I submit to you that if that was Jesus’ pattern, and He was deity, how could any man assume to teach anything of his own?  If I speak, it must be the Word of God …

Let me say it even stronger.  The preacher has no authority outside the Bible – none.  I have no authority beyond Scripture; no preacher does.  The only authority I have is the Word of God.  To preach, then, is to preach the Word of God.  To preach the Word of God is to preach with authority.  To preach with authority is to command.  Therefore, to preach is to command.  And that’s what preachers are supposed to do …

That is a very, very central and essential matter in preaching.  We are not story tellers.  We are not just counselors.  We are not just purveyors of fact.  We are commanders who stand in the place of God, reiterating His own commands.  This is our authority and our only authority.  I’ll say that again: our only authority; I have no authority beyond Scripture.  I may have some practical insight. I might have some good ideas, nothing more.  I have no authority.  I can only speak for God when I speak His Word.

Henry’s commentary says that preachers must speak not only with authority but with earnestness:

Here is what will furnish for all parts of his duty, and the right discharge of them. “These things speak, or teach; shun not to declare the whole counsel of God.” The great and necessary truths and duties of the gospel, especially, these speak and exhort, parakalei, press with much earnestness. Ministers must not be cold and lifeless in delivering heavenly doctrine and precepts, as if they were indifferent things or of little concern; but they must urge them with earnestness suitable to their nature and importance; they must call upon persons to mind and heed, and not be hearers only, deceiving themselves; but doers of the word, that they may be blessed therein. And rebuke; convince and reprove such as contradict or gainsay, or neglect and do not receive the truth as they should, or retain it in unrighteousness—those who hear it not with such a believing and obedient mind and heart as they ought, but, instead of this (it may be) live in contrary practices, showing themselves stubborn and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate. Rebuke with all authority, as coming in the name of God, and armed with his threatenings and discipline, whoever make light of which will do it at their peril. Ministers are reprovers in the gate.

MacArthur says that preaching the Word of God effectively will change listeners’ lives:

Bruce Shelley, a church historian, wrote … : “If God lives as the followers of Christ assert, then man’s existence is transformed into a destiny not of his own making.  His life and liberty are suddenly circumscribed with the will of God,” end quote.

Men are under the authority of God.  The commands of that authority are given to us in the Bible, and in the Bible alone, and preachers are to proclaim that and only that.  And so, when Paul writes to Titus and says, “These things that I have been giving you, these commands that come authoritatively from God” – in chapter 1, chapter 2, and even more to come in chapter 3 – “these things which fit sound doctrine, all of this revelation from God you are to speak, and you are to exhort and you are to reprove with all authority, and let no one disregard you.”  He is giving the mandate for every preacher.  We preach with authority.  We command men by Scripture to hear, believe, and obey.  That is our authority …

What is the preacher’s task?  Get out of the way so the Word can speak.  That’s it.  Let the Word speak.  Preaching is giving a voice to God so that He can command you.  And only as the preacher is under the Word can he command anything.  And only as he is out of the way does the command come with divine force rather than human personality.

Now listen carefully.  This kind of preaching not only brings God’s authority, but it brings God’s presence and His power.  Look at 1 Corinthians 14 – I’ll give you an illustration of this. There could be many, but I’ll give you this one.  First Corinthians 14, verse 23; verse 22 he says how important prophecy or preaching is – proclaiming.  It’s very important.  He says, “If everybody speaks in tongues, unbelievers will come in and think you’re mad.”  But look at verse 24, “But if you’re preaching” – and the assumption here in the preaching is that you’re preaching the Word of God. I mean, that’s the given.  “If you’re preaching the truth of God, and an unbeliever, an ungifted man, enters, he is convicted by all, he’s called to account by all; the secrets of his heart are disclosed…he’ll fall on his face and worship God and declare God is certainly among you.”

Henry’s commentary offers this interpretation of the second half of the verse:

“Let no man despise thee; that is, give no occasion to do so, nor suffer it without reproof, considering that he who despiseth despiseth not man, but God.” Or thus, “Speak and exhort these things, press them upon all, as they may respectively be concerned; with boldness and faithfulness reprove sin, and carefully look to thyself and thy own conduct, and then none will despise thee.” The most effectual way for ministers to secure themselves from contempt is to keep close to the doctrine of Christ, and imitate his example—to preach and live well, and do their duty with prudence and courage; this will best preserve both their reputation and their comfort.

Henry’s commentary also posits that the Cretans were likely to hear the letter read to them and, as such, should support his ministry among them:

Perhaps too an admonition might be here intended to the people—that Titus, though young, and but a substitute of the apostle, yet should not be condemned by them, but considered and respected as a faithful minister of Christ, and encouraged and supported in his work and office. “Know those that labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake, 1 Thess 5 12, 13. Mind their teaching, respect their persons, support them in their function, and, what in you lies, further their endeavours for the honour of God and the salvation of souls.”

MacArthur’s sermon, delivered in 1993, has many excellent points about where churches are failing people.

He begins by discussing preachers’ false authority:

There are many today, frankly, who go beyond the bounds of biblical authority.  And they imagine themselves to have another kind of authority beyond Scripture, which is an illusion if not a blasphemy.  Such mistaken authority, I suppose, could fall into four categories, okay?  And I’ll give you these four, and you could probably think of some other sub-categories to these, but I think these would maybe sum up the four general categories of mistaken authority that you see in the framework of Christianity.

First of all, the false authority from personal power, personal power.  Some men think that they have in themselves, because they are preachers, some messianic or some apostolic power, and that they can do what Jesus did, and they can do what the apostles did.  You see this particularly in the “name it and claim it” group of the charismatic movement, or in the “signs and wonders” segment of it, or in the spiritual warfare dimension.  These people who believe they have a messianic and apostolic authority over Satan, demons – and even holy angels can be called to their bidding, and even God can be cornered and things demanded out of Him, so that they assume themselves to have some great, personal, supernatural power – certainly beyond Scripture … They are commanding where they have no authority. They are commanding where they have no jurisdiction whatsoever.

That should have been readily apparent by a very cursory reading of the New Testament.  In Matthew chapter 10, obviously Jesus had this power. But He, of course, was God.  It says that He gave this power to the twelve disciples.  In Matthew chapter 10 He summoned His twelve disciples, gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, to heal every kind of disease, and every kind of sickness.  So He gave to the disciples the authority or the power to heal disease and to cast out demons.  In Mark’s gospel, chapter 3, we have the similar record in verse 15 that He gave to them the responsibility to preach and to have authority to cast out demons.  And you find again in Luke’s gospel, chapter 9 and verse 1, the very same thing. He called the Twelve together, gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases, and sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing.

This was for Christ to do and for the apostles to do.  This was not for everyone.  This belonged to them.  These are what Paul in his letter to the Corinthians called “the signs of an apostle.”  And the best proof I know of that is found in a wonderful little vignette in the nineteenth chapter of the book of Acts. And here the apostle Paul is doing miracles.  I mean, they are just amazing in volume in the nineteenth chapter of Acts. Verse 11, Paul is performing extraordinary miracles and by the power of God, of course. Handkerchiefs and aprons are carried from his body to the sick and the disease has left them and evil spirits went out.  So he was doing exactly what apostles had been given the power to do – he being the last of the apostles, sort of out of due season, as he says …

There’s a second mistake in area of authority that is prevalent today, and it has been for centuries, and that is church power – not only personal power but church power.  Many judge the church to be the authority in spiritual matters ... It allows them to command where there is no jurisdiction, to make demands on people that they have no right to make, and to say things in the name of God that God is not saying and not supporting …

True Christianity has always said the Word is not under the church – the church is under the Word.  And there is no authority past the pages of Scripture.  God is the final authority, and God has revealed the commands of His authority through divine revelation by the prophets and the apostles who wrote the Bible and now declares that that is what is to be preached authoritatively.  That’s why Paul says to Timothy, 2 Timothy 4:2, very simple sentence, “Preach the word.”  There isn’t anything else that is authoritative.  The ultimate authority is God ... That was the very error of Israel.  Jesus said, “You have substituted the tradition of men for the commandments of God.”

… No one, no word outside Scripture is authoritative in the realm of the soul.  And God has demanded that His Word be heard and believed and obeyed, and that is the task of the preacher to bring that word to the people so they can hear it, believe it, and obey it. And the Word of God very clearly says if you don’t do that there are fatal, damning consequences. And for the Christian who doesn’t obey, severe chastening.  Frankly, I believe that to deny that Scripture is the only authority is a form of blasphemy.

There’s a third mistaken area of supposed authority. We’ll call it rational power, rational power.  Now I’m for reason; it’s nice to meet people who have it.  And reason is needed, and reason is adequate in some realms of life. But listen carefully: man has exalted reason, of course, ever since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and all of that.  But let me tell you something: reason – as good as it is, as wonderful as it is in figuring things out in the material world – reason makes no contribution to relating to God.  Did you hear that?  Reason makes no contribution to relating to God. And that is man’s most desperate need. That is the issue that has to be resolved if man is going to escape eternal judgment and if he’s going to fulfill the potential for his creation.  Listen, reason can do a lot of things, but it can’t know God.  “The natural man understandeth not the things of God, neither can he know them.”

God is not known through reason.  We can know that He exists, Romans 1, but we cannot know Him.  Reason can’t know God.  Reason is limited, fallen, selfish, protected, ego-centered, self-justifying, sinful. And listen, reason only deals with ideas.  Reason only deals with concepts.  Reason doesn’t deal with relationship.  And God is a living being who must be known and loved and served and worshiped and not just conceived of.  But reason can only conceive, it can’t know.  My reason can’t get me to God. I can know there is a God, but I cannot know God.

And yet there are so many today who imagine they have some great authority in their rational mind, in their great wisdom, in their practical common sense, in their insights into human life, in their psychologizing and philosophizing, and they imagine some great power to change people’s lives.  And maybe they can modify their behavior through psychological technique and human wisdom and great insight, but they cannot relate people to God because God is only known through His – What? – His Word.  And all the human insights, no matter how clever they might be, may conceive God, but God is only known for who He is through the revelation of Himself in His Word.  Furthermore, reason can’t eliminate sin, and sin will always be the barrier in knowing God.

And there’s a fourth and last note. Mistaken areas of authority are also found through what we could call experiential power.  It always drives me a little bit nuts when I hear somebody say, “I know it’s true because I feel it is.”  That is a statement of asininity like few that you hear.  Nothing is true because you feel it is.  I heard a guy on the television the other day say – somebody was talking about statistics – he said, “Well, more than that, it’s true because I feel it’s true.”

Feeling isn’t knowing.  I might feel something towards someone I don’t know at all.  It might be attraction, it might be hatred, animosity.  There is no authority in experience.  I can have all kinds of experiences which have to be basically explained by my fallen reason.  I’m not here to tell you my experiences.  I’m not here to tell you the things in my life that have happened that show me all I need to know about God so you can know Him too.  I’m not here to give you my rational comprehension, my human wisdom, though I might have collected some pretty formidable stuff.

Then MacArthur discusses the modern disdain for authority and how it is hampering the Church’s efforts today. Remember, he preached this 30 years ago. He begins by saying that few people would want to hear authoritative preaching:

Well, as essential as this is to the salvation of the lost, as essential as it is to the church’s purity and power, this kind of preaching is rare.  Such commanding, frankly, is not what people want to hear.  And I think it’s partly rare because men aren’t trained to do it. They don’t understand it, and it’s partly rare because people don’t like it.  And I think the church has caught the anti-authority mood of the time, don’t you?  I really do.  I mean, if there’s anything our culture hates it’s an authority.  Nobody wants anybody telling them to do anything.  We like preaching in the church that sort of – as we’ve picked up on that – so we like preaching that is entertaining and maybe interesting and sometimes sensational, and preaching that is tolerant and ego-building, preaching that is popular.  But don’t give us strong, authoritative, commanding, demanding pulpits that bring the Word to bear heavily on the heart.  We don’t like that.

Now I tried to think of some reasons why.  Why is it so unpopular today to preach authoritatively?  Why don’t people want to hear that?  Let me give you some reasons that I thought of.

Number one, poor preaching; or as one writer called it, non-preaching.  It’s so common.  Many have never heard the real thing.  And so when they hear it it’s shocking.  And when their mind and their conscience is struck and convicted with the blows of biblical authority, it seems unkind and merciless and strange and foreign.  I mean, people expect to be briefly interested and maybe psychologically boosted.  But anything harsh or judgmental seems insensitive and out of touch and oblique and like something in left field – Who is this guy, and where did he come from?

There’s a second, a second reason, and that would be low expectations. I think people have heard poor preaching for so long they expect it to be poor, and they don’t recognize it when it’s not.  The typical comment if someone sat under some really great preaching would be, “I’m not sure I understood that. It was really over my head.”

A third reason, spontaneity.  I think people for so many years have heard spontaneous preaching – which is the kind you make up as you go – that they don’t have an appetite for well-prepared, profound, challenging, rich, insightful, provocative, deep thinking.

Furthermore, they don’t have any theological frame of reference to put anything in.  So if you gave them a message on doctrine, they wouldn’t know where it went.  They wouldn’t know where to stick it.  It doesn’t fit in their psychological categories.  The bland, amorphous character of most people’s doctrinal frame of reference doesn’t allow anything definitive. It just, it just doesn’t know where to go.  It seems isolated and irrelevant.

A fourth reason that people in the church even don’t like authoritative preaching is they get comfortable with the liturgy.  The preaching is a minor component, and they get into the structure, whether it’s a high-church or a low-church liturgy. Every church has a certain format, and people can flow through the format, and it’s kind of an easy deal, and they hear a little message somewhere along the line – kind of fits in.  But if you blow the format and the liturgy away with a very powerful, biblical message, it seems like it’s out of sync with things and it’s unnatural with them.

But mostly I think the reason people reject authoritative preaching is the church has caught the spirit of the age.  The church wants tolerance and unity and acceptance and not too much definitive and nothing divisive.  And commanding people can be very divisive because you either send them out the door saying, “I will obey,” or “I won’t.” And you’ve split the congregation dead down the middle between the will and the won’t.

Commanding people to hear and understand – commanding people to believe, commanding people to obey – is not popular in the church today because I think it’s caught the attitude of the world.  And our whole society is anti-authority. And I want to say something about this because I think you need to understand this.  The whole culture rejects authority.  I mean, just look at it. Just look at what’s happening around you in our society.  I mean, we’re on the verge all the time of anarchy.  People demanding and demanding. And they don’t care who the authority is, they resist it – whether it’s the schools or the police, the government, the church, whatever it is.

MacArthur then discusses the reasons why we reject authority today:

Let me give you some reasons, and I think you’ll understand these.  We live in a time of rejection of authority.  Why?  Why do we have such an anti-authority mentality?  Why does everyone want to do whatever is right in his own eyes?  Why does no one want anybody telling him what to do?

Reason number one: that’s the nature of sin.  That is the nature of sin.  Sin is rebellion.  It is very natural for man to rebel. It is natural for him to hate every authority, including the authority of God Himself. That’s where sin started. It was Satan who rebelled against the authority of God in heaven. It was Eve and Adam who rebelled against the authority of God on earth.  And humanity has been rebelling ever since. Read Romans 1 – that’s what that’s all about. It’s all about rebellion. Sin is lawlessness.  It is rebellion.  There is no respect in the human heart for God’s holiness. There’s no respect for His law.  And there’s no respect for His sovereignty.

Secondly – so what we’ve got basically is a whole world full of rebels, and all the society has to do is pour a little gas on their rebellious fire and they’re going to have a conflagration, and that’s what we’re having. Secondly, the lack of moral absolutes.  How can we exercise authority when we don’t know what the rules are?  You see, we’ve rejected the Bible.  So what is the standard of authority?  If I’m going to say I command you to do this, somebody is going to say – “On the basis of what?  What rules?  What law?  What authority?”  We don’t have a standard anymore, so how can we be authoritative?  How can we command when we don’t have any authority? We just have opinions, viewpoints.  If we want to know what’s right or wrong, we’ll take a vote – either a vote of the populace of America, a vote of the Congress or the Senate, or a vote of the Supreme Court.  How can there be any authority when there is no agreed-upon standard?

And our society, the only authorities that are recognized today as authorities in the area of the soul of man are the psychologists and the psychiatrists. They’re the new authorities, and they don’t have an opinion on anything.  They have no rules.  They make no moral judgments.  They engage in self-help assistance.

A third contributor to the anti-authority mindset in our society is the failure of parents to discipline their children.  We have an entire generation of young people who have grown up with no sense of what it means to respond to authority.  And because both parents are working outside the home, when they are in the home they want to minimize conflict so they just give in to the kid.  They give in to him all the time, and so he never learns authority.  Then you have the breakup of the household; the divorces; the immorality; the sexual deviation; the failure, of course, of the children to respect parents, who live like that; the failure of the parents to teach respect for authority to their children; a generation of youth growing up who are angry, who are hostile, who are vitriolic, who want their own way, who are going to get their own way no matter what. And that’s starting to tell in our society.

There’s a fourth contributor, the media. The media has a campaign to destroy all authority, whether it’s the authority of government, whether it’s the authority of the police, whatever authority. All authority is continually suspect. All authority is accused and abused, dragged through the mud.  We have seen that in our own city with those in authority and the police and so forth.  You see it in the movies and the films. They exalt personal vengeance; they exalt the Rambo mentality; the Dirty Harry – “Go ahead, make my day. I’ll blow your brains out.”  The ability to go around the law, take personal vengeance – you’re the real hero if you do that.  Injustice supposedly is claimed everywhere, and that gives a right to anybody to do whatever they want.  The criminals are all victims.  They’re all victims because they were abused somewhere along the line, and people aren’t treating them the way they deserve to be treated, etc., etc.

I was listening to Chief Gates the other day on a radio program [this must have been about the Rodney King riots of 1992], and he had some guy on there who was the editor of a very leftist newspaper in Los Angeles called The Sentinel.  And Chief Gates said to him, “Why do the riots in South Los Angeles occur?  What caused those riots?”  And he said, “Injustice, oppression against those people down there.”  He said, “The failure of the courts to render a proper justice on their behalf, the whole system is breaking down and they’re reacting.”  And he said, “That’s why it happened.  It happened because people are tired of injustice and oppression, and so forth.”

And his [Gates’s] response to him was that he didn’t believe that at all.  In fact he said, “Let me ask you another question then, Why were 700 people arrested, two people killed, and multi-million dollars’ worth of damage done in Chicago when the Bulls won a basketball game?”  There’s no answer to that.  The reason people act like that is because they have been taught to break the rules and the laws and grab whatever you can grab. And when there’s any reason at all to make war against authority, you make war.  It’s young people.  It’s a generation of young people who have been raised by an anti-authority media.

A fifth reason for this anti-authority mentality is the failure of leaders to be models of virtue.  You might be able to say, “Well, at least you can see a good and a noble man whose life is filled with character and virtue, and he can be some kind of a moral standard, but where do you find that kind of a person?”  Whether it’s the president and the Congress and the senators and the governors and the mayors and the local leaders in all the areas of leadership, including even in the police department, and whether it’s school teachers, or whether it’s pastors in a church – Aren’t we all exposed to the unbelievable moral scandals that are behind all these people in leadership?

And then, sixthly – and this is the last one I’ll give you – and I want to say some things about it.  I believe another contributor, and a major contributor to all our thinking, is an overestimation of personal rights, an overestimation of personal rights.  Humanism – our society frankly is engulfed in a sea of personal freedoms.  We’ve gone crazy with equal rights, personal rights, human rights.  Everybody’s got rights.  Everybody’s got equal rights.  Our constitution says that “God created all men equal.”  Wrong.  He did not.  They may have equal humanity. That is, they’re all equally human, but they’re not all equal.  They aren’t equal intellectually.  They aren’t equal skillfully.  They aren’t equal physically.  They aren’t equal environmentally.  They aren’t equal economically.  They aren’t equal socially.  They’re all different.  Not to say whether better or not – they’re not equal …

… what democracy said basically was: we’re all equal. That doesn’t mean we all should get the same things. What it means is we should all have the same choices.  We should all have our own choice.  That leads to democracy, where everybody gets an equal vote …

Ultimately, this is what most people today think:

… the Bible may be a nice, old, interesting book with beautiful prose and poetry and some historical records about the Jews and a few ethical teachings, but don’t tell me it has authority.  Nothing has authority over me. I have authority over me and nobody else.  Even the word authority isn’t popular. It represents institutions to people.  It sounds like structure.  It sounds like laws.  It sounds like morals.  It sounds like power. And it sounds like limits, restraints, control.  It even sounds a little like fear and punishment.  People don’t want that. They want freedom, autonomy, self-determination.

Paul made such a point of teaching, preaching and writing with authority for this reason, which still applies today:

… if men are going to live under the authority of God, then who’s going to dispense the authority of God to them?  That’s the preacher’s role; that’s what we’re all about.  We have to speak to this culture. They may not like it, but that doesn’t change the mandate, does it?  That doesn’t alter what we do. That only makes it more necessary.  So we are always crying, “Where are the men who are preaching the Word?  Where are the preachers that you can’t remember their personality that much, and you sure can’t remember the outline, but you have this heavy load of shame in your life because you heard him preach?  Or you have this sense of joy because you heard them promise you the blessings of God if you would obey?”  I mean, you walked away and you felt like you had an encounter with God and His Word, not that you watched an actor.

We’re called to preach an authoritative Word.  We’re called to command people to hear, believe, and obey.  “Speak,” he says in verse 15, “and then exhort.”  What does that mean?  Drive it into their life with urgency so that they grab it and hold to it and it becomes conviction.  And reproof, what does that mean?  Speak against disobedience so that you compel them to obey it.  And do that with all the authority you have, because it’s the voice of God through His revealed Word, and don’t let anybody try to circumvent that process.  That’s our task – the preacher’s authority.

William Barclay wrote this, “The eyes of the sinner must be open to his sin.  The mind of the misguided must be led to realize its mistake.  The heart of the heedless must be stabbed broad awake.  The Christian message is no opiate to send men to sleep. It is no comfortable assurance that everything will be all right.  It is rather the blinding light which shows men themselves as they are and God as He is,” end quote.

MacArthur concludes:

Preaching has authority when both its substance and its style proclaim in a transparent way the preacher’s own docile humility before the Bible itself and before the triune God, whose Word the Bible is.  It is as the preacher himself is truly under, and is clearly seen to be under, the authority of God and the Bible that he will have authority and be felt to carry authority as God’s spokesman.  It is those under authority who have authority.  It is those whose demeanor models submission to the Scriptures and dependence on the Lord of the Word who mediate the experience of God’s authority in their preaching.  And certainly that is a high, sacred calling.  It leads me to say, “Pray for the preacher.”

Indeed.

Thirty years on, and MacArthur’s perspectives are more relevant than ever — sadly.

Next week, Paul reminds Titus and the Cretans of their previous fallen state in sin.

Next time — Titus 3:1-3