It was among the worst of times when Paul wrote to Titus around AD 65. Ruling the world during this age was Nero, an equally corrupt successor to the degenerate Caligula. By comparison to these two, every President the United States has ever had has been choir-boy-esque. Among Nero’s many inventive ways to do evil (Rom. 1:29–31), he murdered his mother and two wives to secure his throne. He is also believed to have intentionally started a massive fire in Rome which he then blamed on Christians, leading to significant persecution of the Church. Such were the times.
And Crete was the place. Some early Mediterranean converts who were recently delivered from bondage to lots of ugly sin (Tit. 3:3) had planted several local churches there under Titus’s pastoral oversight (Tit. 1:5). Theirs was a culture infamous for its moral bankruptcy. Cretans were known as inveterate liars who were enslaved to evil, beastly behavior, and lazy self-indulgence (Tit. 1:12). If not the worst of times and places, this certainly was a very bad time and a very hard place to live out the virtues of Christ, quite likely worse and harder than ours.
By Way of Reminder
So in Titus 3:1 Paul tells Titus to remind his flocks of seven important Christian virtues. Their need to be reminded implies a tendency to forget. Apparently, top-to-bottom cultural corruption creates a need for repeated conscience re-calibration. While we might not be in such ugly times now, the message Paul didn’t want the Christians in Crete to forget is one God also doesn’t want local churches today to forget.

In an extraordinary way, the Lord uses the haunting effects of sin to bring his child to the point where we will no longer be able to be haunted by them. By using them to conform us to His image, not only will we avoid sin in the future, but when the accuser rears his head, we will understand that all his work is in vain, and the more he tries to afflict us, the more we will grow. Then, before long, Satan will be looking over his shoulder because greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.

David thought it was over. His sin had been exposed, he had sought the Lord’s forgiveness, and it had been granted. A right spirit had been renewed, and a clean heart had been created. Then came the news that his child was gravely ill. The revelation threw David to the floor in anguish as thoughts of his sin filled his mind. Months had passed, but now his sin had come out of hiding to remind him of his treason against the God of the universe.
Years later, another son rebels, and again David is reminded of the sword that has been driven into his family because of his sin. Another brutal reminder that he, at one point, thought he knew better than the Lord of all creation. In his sinfulness, he desired something that the Lord had forbidden, but David ignored the law because he thought he knew better than his creator what was good for him. Oh, but how that sin has haunted him. How many times he thought he was done with it. He had repented, he had been forgiven, but regardless, it seemed to pursue him. Though it had no hold on his life, and there was no possibility that his sin could exact its wages from him due to the redemptive plan and work of God, it was not going to let him forget.
It seemed to sit in silence for extended periods to make David comfortable. Then as he would be going about his day, there would be those moments when something, whether it was something he saw or something he heard, gave his sin an opportunity to spring up on him and cloak his day with darkness by taunting him of his failures and reminding him of his foolishness.
You see, one or two moments of sin do not simply last for a season. Many times, they have a way of coming back in little reminders which sink your spirits every now and again, and the fact that it comes on when you least expect it is what makes it all the more difficult.
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It is time for moral courage where Christian leaders are what they were commissioned by God to be—spiritual leaders. Leaders who are less worried about  how the world views them and more concerned about how they view the world. Leaders who defend the congregation of the righteous by exposing the lies of the world and teaching the Truth of God.          

Unfortunately, there is a neglected side of Christian apologetics which is leaving the Church exposed to the threat from the world. Generally, apologetics is thought of as defending the Faith against objections from the atheists. Of course, that is right. Sadly, even apologetics of this kind has fallen upon hard times among evangelical ranks, but that is not the point here. The concern here is the role of apologetics with a view to defending the Christian community against the lies of world. This is done by informing the Christian community not only of the truth of God but exposing the diabolical designs of Satan which so often come in the form of a lie. Unfortunately, too many present-day sermons reflect what Christian Smith calls moralistic therapeutic deism, leave Christian mercilessly exposed to the Faith-diluting strategies of the Enemy.  While evangelicals rightly talk much about the winning lost to Christ,  little is done to prevent Christians being lost to the world. This does not suggest necessarily that Christians are not going to church, but they are re-thinking the doctrines of the Faith. Evangelical leadership, for all they do that is right, are failing to prepare Christians to live in a world ruled by ideas subversive to the Christian mind and soul. These are ideas that twist the proper of ordering of proper Christian sentiments. Christians do not have some automatic immunity against such philosophical viruses. Rather immunity must be developed by serious biblical teaching that defines the Truth of God and exposes the lies of the world. This is the work of a true shepherd of the flock of God ( I Peter 5:1-4). A proper pastor not only feeds the sheep on Truth, but also identifies the noxious weeds toxic to the Christian mind and soul.  Contentless moralizing sermons punctuated with culturally crafted language simply will not do the job. Christians cannot escape the poisonous lies of the world.
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