What do you believe?

From Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. I’m sent to bring about the faith of God’s chosen people and a knowledge of the truth that agrees with godliness. Their faith and this knowledge are based on the hope of eternal life that God, who doesn’t lie, promised before time began. God revealed his message at the appropriate time through preaching, and I was trusted with preaching this message by the command of God our savior. To Titus, my true child in a common faith. Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our savior. The reason I left you behind in Crete was to organize whatever needs to be done and to appoint elders in each city, as I told you. Elders should be without fault. They should be faithful to their spouse, and have faithful children who can’t be accused of self-indulgence or rebelliousness. This is because supervisors should be without fault as God’s managers: they shouldn’t be stubborn, irritable, addicted to alcohol, a bully, or greedy. Instead, they should show hospitality, love what is good, and be reasonable, ethical, godly, and self-controlled. They must pay attention to the reliable message as it has been taught to them so that they can encourage people with healthy instruction and refute those who speak against it. (Titus 1:1-9, CEB)

This epistle starts off with “From Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.” So one would think this is from Paul, but does Paul start any of his epistles this way?

Plus this epistle was written well after Paul is thought to have died. So did Paul write this?

Does the fact that this epistle probably wasn’t written by Paul make it unuseful to us?

It is still a good tool, it helps us focus on showing hospitality, to be loving, to be reliable, ethical, godly, and show control. This is still a good endeavor to undertake, but we need to realize it wasn’t Paul who wrote this, but someone who wanted to use Paul’s authority to help people live in a way to show their connection to God.

Scripture helps point us to God and to show the love we have received from God.

We should read scripture through the lens of God’s love.

Loving People. Loving God.