One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith
Titus 1:12,13
It’s easy to point to outsiders and hate them. They’re different so what’s not to criticize. My dad was like this. He disliked different groups of people for no reason. When I asked him about this, he said that he just did. They were different. There was no one who’d hurt him or anyone in his family. He just felt that way and that was good enough for him.
Saying cruel things about people who are different than you is one thing. But when it comes from someone within the group, people sit up and take notice. That’s why Paul quotes a Crete poet and prophet[1] about his own people.
He says that there are three things that the people from Crete are known for. I call them the Crete Characteristics. The reason they’re known for these things is that they have practiced. As a matter of fact, they’ve done it so much that they’re always doing and living with these things right in front of them. They’ve built and practiced them to the point that they do them without even thinking about them.
Always liars. They live in a fantasy land. When they spoke, the only thing you could depend on is that their words were false. They didn’t just distort the truth, they wanted to mislead anyone and everyone.
Always evil brutes. It’s one thing to be a brute, to act like a wild beast. But it’s something all together different and worse to be like evil wild beasts. They tear up anyone and anything in their path.
Always lazy gluttons. The reputation of these people wasn’t just that they liked to sit around the buffet table of life all day, but they were lazy on top of that. They were slow in how they made their decisions and lived their lives.
Have you ever run into people like this? They’re just plain good-for-nothings. You’ve seen them in action, and they don’t bring anything to the table. They only take and never give. In the words of a friend, they’re not worth the bullet to put them out of their misery.
If you think like I do, I wonder why Paul would ever waste his time on people like this? They were only a sore, a pain in the neck. Wouldn’t it be a better use of Paul’s valuable time to go and reach a people that weren’t so stubborn? That didn’t have such a terrible reputation.
But Paul knows how to reach people like this. He doesn’t tell Titus to be soft and gentle. To preach a Jesus that’s meek and mild. Just the opposite. Titus needs to be strong and rough. He needs to tell them exactly who God is and that we’re really, really lost without Jesus.
Titus is to rebuke them. To criticize them. To shoot straight with them. But this isn’t a preach and run rebuke. Oh no. This is where Titus is ordered by Paul to be actively rebuking them. Over and over to powerfully yell at them, bringing down the house of God’s truth on top of their heads.
Paul knows that soft words and sparkling conversation aren’t going to do anything with these hardheads. It’s going to take sharp words to cut through all their hardness of heart. Titus is going to have to perform this spiritual surgery over and over again in order to get through to them.
But why? Why not just leave them alone? If they’re that bad and hardheaded, why not just let them rot and go straight to hell. That’s what they deserve. That’s what they’ve earned. That’s what they’ve practiced all the days of their lives.
The reason is that God has a great big and beautiful plan for them. God loves to save hardheads just like the people on Crete. They had absolutely no way of earning their salvation, that’s why God had to send his one and only son to die for them. And Paul could identify with them.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.
1 Timothy 1:15
If God loved Paul enough to die for him, then there’s hope for the hardheaded people of Crete. There’s hope for Jew and Gentile. There’s hope for you and me. There’s hope for our country. There’s hope for our broken world
But it’s going to take hard truth. Truth that modern people may not want to hear. After all, there’s nothing wrong with us today since we each get to figure out what’s good or bad. And then there’s the question if there is such a thing as good or bad.
God’s hard truth is that we’re lost and we can’t find our way back. We’re broken and we can’t fix ourselves. We’re so messed up that God himself had to come and die in our place. He had to pay the high price to bring us back to him. Yes, it’s a hard truth for the hardheaded. But it’s the only way back to God.
Noodling Questions
Which of the Crete Characteristics is the one you hate the most? Explain.
Why is it easy or difficult for you to tell people the truth about Jesus?
Why is there hope for hardheaded people like us?
[1] Epimenides, of Gnossus, Crete, 600 B.C
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