Alright, so we're 2 blogs in and still in verse one of Titus. Yes that is par for course with me. That is why I titiled it Inch By Inch. You really need to have your Bible open for these Blogs unless you have Titus memorized.
So in verse 1 it says,"...For the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth..." I know, you think I will be starting with the word "faith", but then we would miss the words "for the". Now this may seem like nit picking (does that phrase actually come from picking nits when treating for lice? That's a real head scratcher!) but no, this is kind of important to help understand why he uses the rest of the phrase. "For the" is Kata in Greek, which translates a little closer to "according to". What's the dif? Well, Paul isn't writing for the purpose of, or the cause of the faith, but according to the faith. In other words, He is using faith as a measuring stick, and not just any ole stick, but ("of God's elect") the same stick used in the Old Testament. 
You see some of the churches were teaching things that were different than what Paul had taught and the people didn't know who to trust. So paul is saying don't believe anything that doesn't measure up to the standard God has set.
You see some of the churches were teaching things that were different than what Paul had taught and the people didn't know who to trust. So paul is saying don't believe anything that doesn't measure up to the standard God has set. Well, I guess I sorta already explained "faith", but one more thing would be that in this case the word is used in the sense of what one believes or the standard of belief (and that isn't even a nutshell of the 4 week study that we did of that word). Imagine building a house with several other people; each with his own idea of how many inches are in a foot. That is not a house I would ever live in. Well, that is exactly what the people of Crete were living in. No wonder they didn't trust anyone. I think that is part of why people today don't trust the church. They hear so many different things; that they don't know who to believe. That's why Paul doesn't stop with just establishing a measuring stick, but also sticks some of that knowledge stuff in there to make it all stick. Did I use the word stick enough yet?
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