May 3, 2010 issue
Three epistles practical today
By Mennonite Publishing Network staffSCOTTDALE, Pa. — Immoral behavior, competing religious and ideological beliefs, church members and leaders who fail to live up to the high standards of the gospel.
It sounds like what’s happening today, but it was also the world that faced the first-century church.
“Like us, they faced the challenge of applying the gospel in their culture, dealing with other religious beliefs and philosophies and living ethically and morally,” says Paul M. Zehr, author of 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, the 22nd and newest volume of the Believers Church Bible Commentary Series, published by Herald Press.
1 and 2 Timothy were written to a church in Ephesus that needed to “clarify its faith in God and in the gospel of Jesus Christ over against other competing religions,” Zehr said.
Titus was written to the church on the island of Crete, a place where citizens were “known for drinking too much wine, pursuing sexual pleasures and other morally suspect behaviors,” Zehr notes. “Paul gives guidance to the young mission church, and to its leader, Titus, calling attention to the centrality of the gospel and the need for strong Christian character.”
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