Titus: Boiling yet?

Read Titus 3:8-15

You probably know how to boil a frog, don’t you? You put a frog in a pot of cool water and slowly bring up the temperature. A frog would leap out if placed into a pot of boiling water but will remain in cool water, not noticing as the temperature slowly climbs.

We've been looking at Paul's instructions to Titus as he discipled the church at Crete.

Paul was concerned that the church there was like a frog, accepting gradual changes that would eventually kill them.

The believers had to be different from the world around them, not gradually getting used to the world’s ideas and ways.

Paul wanted the believers to do good because their actions, like ours, show what really mattered to them. Doing good didn't bring them eternal lilfe but revealed their perspective.

We have the same issues today as the Cretans had. Are we drawn to the world around us, which would have us become conformed to a common image, chasing after the same pleasures and goals that they pursue? They make their way look like the good life.

But notice again what Paul said in Titus 3:3. We were deceived and enslaved by the old life, which is the way of the world.

We're in an age where we can't coast anymore. We have to stop adjusting to the water that's about to boil us. We have to evaluate our lives.

What enslaves us? What are we doing or believing or considering that keeps us away from God's best?

Paul asked the believers at Crete to evaluate their actions an decisions. If we follow Jesus, we will be set apart from the world around us.

But when the goodness and love for man appeared from God our Savior, He saved us.

Titus 3:4-5