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Titus and His Friends
16I am grateful that God made Titus care as much about you as we do. 17When we begged Titus to visit you, he said he would. He wanted to because he cared so much for you. 18With Titus we are also sending one of the Lord's followers who is well known in every church for spreading the good news. 19The churches chose this follower to travel with us while we carry this gift that will bring praise to the Lord and show how much we hope to help. 20We don't want anyone to find fault with the way we handle your generous gift. 21 But we want to do what pleases the Lord and what people think is right.
22We are also sending someone else with Titus and the other follower. We approve of this man. In fact, he has already shown us many times that he wants to help. And now he wants to help even more than ever, because he trusts you so much. 23Titus is my partner, who works with me to serve you. The other two followers are sent by the churches, and they bring honor to Christ. 24Treat them in such a way that the churches will see your love and will know why we bragged about you.
Reflect
This is a tantalizing passage, because we don’t know who some of these people are. We would like to know more about Titus, too.
At this time Paul was collecting money for the Christians in Jerusalem, where there was a famine, and he needed people he could trust to convey the gift.
The first person who came to Paul’s mind was Titus. But to us Titus is a bit of a mystery because although he is mentioned 13 times in the New Testament, his name never appears in Acts. It has been suggested that he may have been the brother of Luke, who wrote Acts and kept his own name out of the narrative. Whether or not that’s true, Titus was an outstanding person. We can see that from the fact that Paul entrusted him with some tricky pastoral situations:
• he went to Jerusalem with Paul and Barnabas when there was a pivotal dispute about Gentile Christians,
• he was sent to set up church governance in Crete (a place known for its lack of moral standards),
• and on this occasion was sent to Corinth, where there were people undermining Paul’s authority.
What’s more, he loved the people in Corinth and had won their respect.
But the other two people are not named, and we can only speculate about who they were. One suggestion has been that one of them was Luke.
Maybe you know people like this. They get on well with all sorts of people. They are 100% reliable and honest. Everybody respects them. Maybe you are one of those people yourself.
William Barclay wrote of this passage: “It is most interesting to note that this same Paul, who could write like a lyric poet and think like a theologian, could, when it was necessary, act with the meticulous accuracy of a chartered accountant. He was a big enough man to do the little things and the practical things supremely well.”
Respond
Lord Jesus, Thank you for people like those described here, who do “the little things and the practical things supremely well” even if they don’t get any recognition for it. I pray that I too may be a person of integrity. Help me to get along with people I find difficult to relate to, and to earn their respect. In your name, Amen.
Annabel Robinson
Annabel was born in Kew, near London, England. She committed her life to Jesus Christ at a Scripture Union camp when she was 16, and immediately found joy and peace. At Oxford she was active in the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, where she met her husband, Reid. They emigrated to Canada in 1965, where she taught Classics at the University of Regina until 2007. She has two children, Heather in Oslo and Alasdair in Calgary.