The Letter to Titus

by: Keith Slater
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Paul writes to Titus working in Crete.
Crete is a large island in the Mediterranean Sea and is about 270 miles long by 50 miles wide at its broadest. The Cretans had a poor reputation in the eyes of many who wrote about them. One of their own people, a man called Epimenides, said, “The Cretans are always liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons.” Paul confirms that this testimony is true, Titus 1:13. We do not know exactly how Christianity first came to the island but we know that there were people from Crete present when Peter preached his first sermon in Jerusalem at Pentecost, in Acts 2:11. It is quite probable that some of these people heard the sermon, were converted and then took the gospel back to Crete. (The brief stay at Crete in bad weather during Paul’s last visit to Rome, recorded in Acts 27, did not seem to have provided any opportunity for Paul to preach on the island.)

Paul is writing to Titus who had been left in charge of the new churches on the island of Crete. Titus was a gentile convert of Paul. He had been a companion of Paul and Barnabas on the trip to Jerusalem at the end of the first missionary journey. His assignment in Crete would not have been an easy one for him as the Cretans were a troublesome and unreliable people. The young church in Crete seems to have been somewhat uninformed and disorganised…….