In describing the qualifications of a pastor (Tit. 1:6-8), the Apostle Paul saved the most important one for last, saying that a pastor should always be

“Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (Titus 1:9).

Pastors should always hold fast the faithful word, the Word of God!  The apostle calls it “the faithful word” because God is faithful to every promise in His Book.

But here’s the thing about that: He didn’t make all those promises to you!  You can pray “give us this day our daily bread” all you want (Mt. 6:11), but God will not be faithful to His promise to rain manna down on you as He did for Israel in the wilderness, and as He will do for them again in the Tribulation (Micah 7:14,15 cf. Rev. 12:14).  God also promised them that “all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Mt. 21:22), but He will not faithfully deliver on that promise in the dispensation of grace either.

And there are still other promises in the Bible that God is not honoring today.  If the people of Israel were obedient to God’s Word, He promised to save them out of all their tribulations (Deut. 4:30), and He faithfully delivered on that promise (I Sam. 10:19).  But God has not made that promise to you!  Today, in the dispensation of grace, God allows us to go through tribulation, and then is faithful to the promise He gives us through the Apostle Paul that “tribulation worketh patience” (Rom. 5:3).  Paul is the apostle of the present dispensation, so you know God will be faithful to the promises He makes us through him.

And Paul gives us other promises to which God will be faithful.  When he says, “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13), he means that in executing the sinful works of your flesh you can live, really live—live it up, spiritually speaking!  If you want to live life on the highest plane imaginable, mortify the sinful deeds of your body and see if God isn’t faithful to that promise.

Finally, God will be faithful to His promise to us through Paul that “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4).  That’s a promise that will come to fruition at the Rapture, the “salvation” (Rom. 13:11) that God promises through Paul to give us before the “wrath” of the Tribulation is poured out (I Thes. 1:10; 5:9).  When that day comes, God will also be faithful to the promise He gave us through Paul to “reward” us for our labor for Him (I Cor. 3:14).  In that day, you will see that He will be just as faithful to His promise to us through Paul that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

It is this faithful word—the faithful word given to us through Paul—that pastors must hold fast if they want to obey Paul’s command to “exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (Tit. 1:9), gainsayers like the ones who insist that God is still honoring the promises He made to the people of Israel.

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.

Two Minutes with the Bible is now available on Alexa devices. Full instructions here.

What do Winnie the Pooh and Attila the Hun have in common?  Give up?  They both have the same middle name!

What did the Apostle Paul and Titus have in common?  Give up?  Faith!  At least that’s what Paul told the young man as he opened his epistle to him, addressing his letter…

“To Titus, mine own son after the common faith…” (Titus 1:4).

What an astounding thing for Paul to say!  If you’re not sure why I’d say that, it is because Paul was a Jew, “a Hebrew of the Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5), while Titus was an uncircumcised Gentile (Gal. 2:3).  Jews and Gentiles didn’t have anything in common before Paul came along!

They certainly didn’t eat the same foods as the Gentiles.  God told the Jews under the Law that certain foods were unclean (Leviticus 11).  This was to remind them that certain people were unclean—the Gentiles (Lev. 20:24-26).  And God gave them more reminders that they shouldn’t mingle with Gentiles when He instructed His people not to wear clothing that was mingled with different materials (Deut. 22:11).

God even told them not to plow their field in the same way the Gentiles plowed, with two different kinds of animal pulling the plow (Deut. 22:10).  That was to teach the Jews not to work together with Gentiles, not to harness their strength together with members of those unclean nations.  God further instructed them not to plant their crops as the Gentiles did, “lest the fruit of thy seed…be defiled” (Deut. 22:9).  That was to teach them not to marry the heathen, lest the “seed” of their children be defiled.

Does that give you an idea of what a pariah you would have been as a Gentile in Old Testament times?  If you’re not sure what a pariah is, have you ever heard the expression, “Things that make you go hmmmm?”  Well, a pariah is something that makes you go eewww!  Jews had nothing in common with Gentiles—least of all a common faith.  But beginning with the ministry of the Apostle Paul, a Jew like Paul could write to a Gentile like Titus about their common faith, and to Gentiles like the Romans (Rom. 1:13) about their “mutual faith” (v. 12).  What a revolutionary change was brought about with the ministry of the Apostle Paul!

This dispensational change made it so that Paul could even speak of a Gentile like Titus as “mine own son,” as well as a Jew like Timothy (I Tim. 1:2).  And when he wrote to Titus about “Christ our Saviour” (Tit. 1:4), that was new too!  You see, in Old Testament times, God was the Savior of the people of Israel only.  He told them, “I the LORD am thy Saviour…the mighty One of Jacob” (Isa. 49:26; 60:16).  The adjective “thy” is singular, indicating that God was Israel’s Savior to the exclusion of the Gentile nations.  And while many people think that this changed in the New Testament, Paul declared that “God…raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus” (Acts 13:23).

But beginning with the ministry of the Apostle Paul, Christ became “the Saviour of all men” (I Tim. 4:10)—especially “the Saviour of the body” (Eph. 5:23), the Body of Christ, made up of Jews and Gentiles!  This was all part of “the great mystery” revealed to Paul “concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32).  To learn more about this great mystery, why not sign up to receive our weekly feature, More Minutes With the Bible.  You’ll be eternally glad you did!

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.

Two Minutes with the Bible is now available on Alexa devices. Full instructions here.

Did you ever wonder how the figure of speech found in our title came to be used for the revealing of a secret?  Some say it goes back to a time when piglets were sold in bags in open-air markets.  In those days, an unscrupulous merchant might sell an unsuspecting patron a bag containing a cat instead of a piglet, and it wasn’t until the hapless patron got home that the cat was out of the bag, and the merchant’s dishonest secret was revealed.  And since cats have always been far less valuable than pigs, the patron was always less than thrilled to learn that the pork he thought he had purchased was only pork substitute!

Well, beginning with the ministry of the Apostle Paul, an infinitely more pleasing secret was revealed!

“Paul… an apostle… in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began… But hath in due times manifested His word through preaching, which is committed unto me…” (Titus 1:1-3).

If you’re not sure what that word “manifested” means, it is well defined in something the Lord said:

“…nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest, neither any thing hid, that shall not be known…” (Luke 8:17).

So to make something manifest means to make known something that was secret or hidden. 

That certainly applies to the promise of eternal life that God made to a Gentile like Titus!  God promised the Jews eternal life throughout the pages of the Old Testament, and Gentiles who wanted to get saved in those days had to get in on that promise by becoming “proselytes” (Acts 2:10).  But Paul was raised up to reveal that Gentiles no longer had to become Jews to get the eternal life that God promised the Jews.  Paul revealed that Gentiles had their own promise of eternal life, one that God made before the world began, but didn’t let the cat out of the bag until Paul came along.

Humorist Will Rogers is said to have quipped, “Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back in.”  If you’ve ever released a cat that somehow managed to get trapped in a bag, you know he’s right!  But there are many who are trying to put Paul’s cat back in the bag.  That is, there are many who hold that Gentiles who want to be saved today must still try to get in on Israel’s promise of eternal life by keeping the Law that God gave them through Moses. Others insist that Gentiles who want to be saved must submit to water baptism “for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38), as Peter told “the men of Israel” (v.22) at Pentecost.

If you’re an unsaved Gentile, don’t you fall for it!  God promised you eternal life long before the Law was given, and the apostle who revealed this promise says that eternal life can’t be obtained by the “works of righteousness” of the Law (Tit. 3:5).  He further declares that it is “by the washing of regeneration” (Tit. 3:5) that we are saved, and not the washing of water baptism.  The “regeneration” or new birth of which he speaks is yours “by grace…through faith” (Eph. 2:8), faith in the fact that Christ died for your sins, and rose again (I Cor. 15:1-4).

And if you’re an unsaved Jew, things have changed for you too!  Just as Gentiles who wanted to be saved in time past had to look to Moses, the spiritual leader of the Jews, and be saved through the Law, so Jews who want to be saved today must look to Paul, “the apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13), and be saved by grace through faith.  That’s how the Body of Christ came to be made up of Jews and Gentiles (I Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:28)!

So whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31).

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.

Two Minutes with the Bible is now available on Alexa devices. Full instructions here.