Sermon Video: "to the pure, all things are pure" - Titus 1:10-16

In addition to appointing elders, Titus also needs to confront a divisive faction within the Cretan churches that has been spreading a legalistic teaching that has already torn families apart by its controversial nature.  The exact nature of what was being taught is less important for us than Paul's instructions as to how Titus should respond.  Paul told Titus to "silence" those spreading these false doctrines and he points out the damaging effect of them as evidence of the need to do so.  It would seem that this was an effort to ADD to the Gospel by melding it with requirements from the Jewish Law, something that Paul had already opposed successfully in Jerusalem when Titus himself was the test case to prove that circumcision was not a requirement for Gentile believers in Jesus.  This same controversy is not around still today, but there have always been those trying to ADD to or SUBTRACT from the Gospel.  Those trying to add something case doubt on the sufficiency of the work of Christ to save by faith alone and thus advocate some new additional step or requirement.  Those trying to subtract cast doubt on the person of Jesus or the historical reality of his miraculous birth or resurrection, or perhaps on Jesus' claims to exclusivity ("I am the way...").
In the end, Paul sees this opposition as evidence that these people within the church do not belong to God because their minds have yet to be regenerated (transformed).  They continue to see external things as the people, nothing to them is pure.  Those saved by grace, in contrast, recognize that purity and impurity comes from within, that external things are not pure or impure on their own, it is the use to which we put them that matters.

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