I was reading the book of Titus where Paul is giving Titus instructions about the qualifications for the elders that he is to “ordain” “in every city.” I wondered why this was even included in Scripture as I began to see how many doctrines have come from Paul’s words (both here and in many of his other letters containing instructions), doctrines that have come from reading these scriptures by the “letter” rather than the “Spirit,” doctrines which have put people under the law and in bondage, the very thing Paul warned us against in so many of his writings.
As I was pondering this in my heart, I understood that Paul was given the unique task of bringing to the world the teachings of Jesus which Jesus Himself summed up in these words:
Matthew 22:37 . . . Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Paul was commissioned by God to set up “churches” wherever he was sent—assemblies of “believers” who ascribed to this “gospel of Christ” who would, by word and example, take this message to the world around them. This meant that these “believers” would need to be “in” their culture, but not “of” it. They would need to live in such a way that whatever they did would demonstrate their love for God and for one another, would demonstrate their understanding of being one with God and with their neighbor—the one thing that would (according to Jesus’ prayer in John 17) convince those around them of God’s love for them (see Perfect in One).
Paul gave instructions in behavior, not to make laws and put people in bondage, but rather to demonstrate to unbelievers in a very concrete way the reality of God’s love for them. Believers were to put limitations and restrictions upon themselves, not to obey a law of God, but rather to demonstrate the law of love. Paul was asking of them no more than he demanded of himself:
1 Corinthians 9:19 For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. 20 And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; 21 To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. 22 To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. 23 And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.
If believers down through the centuries had understood what Paul was doing and saying, we wouldn’t have all the doctrines that have given rise to a multitude of denominations, caused countless divisions amongst believers, caused the “world” to want no part of Christianity and have made Christians’ attempts to evangelize of none effect.
Paul knew well that
1 Samuel 16:7. . . the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.
He knew well that God wasn’t concerned about what people ate, if their heads were covered, whether or not they wore jewelry, whether or not women worked out of the home or spoke up in the assembly. Paul never implied that God thought slavery to be a good thing either.
Why, it was Paul himself who told us that God’s grace is a free gift, not to be earned by anything we do (Ephesians 2:8-9), that trying to live by the “letter” (the written rules) “kills” (2Corinthians 3:6) and that we are “cursed” when we try to do “all things which are written in the book of the law”—so Jesus was “made a curse for us” to redeem us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:10-14).
I wish to emphasize two things here, the first being that we are not to ever read scripture as a set of laws that we put upon ourselves or others. That is the “letter” that “kills” (2Corinthians 3:6).
Secondly, if we want to share with others what we have received from God, we must do it in such as way that we are not offensive. We don’t judge, criticize and condemn them for not being “spiritual.” We are to take for ourselves the instructions Paul told Titus to give to the elders he was about to ordain: “to speak evil of no man” and be “gentle, showing all meekness to all men,” always remembering that “we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” and that it is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us” (Titus 3:2-5).
We will enter their lives and their culture, observing their “laws” (customs) regarding food, clothes and religious practices, though we ourselves are free from those laws. We, like Paul, become “all things to all men” that we “might by all means save some.” And we can say with Paul, “This I do for the gospel’s sake” (1Corinthians 9:22-23).