After the Message - On Adornment

There's something powerful about the difference between knowing the right thing and actually doing it. We've all experienced that gap—the space between understanding what's good and living it out in our daily choices. The apostle Paul understood this tension deeply when he wrote to Titus about life in the early church.

From Right Belief to Right Action

The early Christians on the island of Crete were struggling. False teaching had infiltrated their communities, causing disruption and confusion in families and congregations. They needed leaders who could straighten out the crooked doctrine—what we might call "orthodoxy," or right teaching about God.

But Paul doesn't stop there. After establishing the foundation of sound doctrine, he pivots to something equally crucial: orthopraxy, or right practice. It's not enough to simply know the truth about God; we must learn to walk in obedience to Him. Our beliefs must transform our behavior. This isn't about legalism or earning God's favor through good works. Rather, it's about allowing the truth we profess to reshape every aspect of how we live.

A Call to Every Generation

What's remarkable about Paul's instructions is their comprehensiveness. He addresses older men and women, younger men and women, leaders, and workers—essentially every adult in the community. No one gets a pass. No one is exempt from the call to godly living.

The older men are called to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, and sound in faith, love, and steadfastness. Older women are to be reverent, teaching what is good and training younger women. Younger women are called to love their families and show purity and kindness. Younger men receive perhaps the most focused instruction: be self-controlled.

This isn't about creating rigid categories or age-based hierarchies. It's about recognizing that spiritual maturity should flow through the generations like a river, nourishing everyone it touches.

The Golden Thread of Self-Control

One virtue appears repeatedly across all these instructions: self-control. But this isn't the white-knuckled willpower we often associate with the term. The Greek word here speaks of having a "sound mind"—being mentally and spiritually healthy, not given over to chaos or compulsion.

Consider the dramatic example of Legion, the demon-possessed man who lived among the tombs. He was naked, wild, bleeding from self-inflicted wounds, breaking chains, and crying out day and night. He had completely lost himself. But after encountering Jesus, witnesses found him "clothed and in his right mind." The restoration of his sound mind was so striking that people were actually afraid of the transformation.

Most of us won't face demon possession, but we can still lose our minds to other things. We can lose ourselves to substances, to endless scrolling on our phones, to rage over sports or politics, to obsessive behaviors that numb us rather than fulfill us. And here's the truth: losing self-control kills joy. Those moments when we lose our sound mind—if we're honest and brave enough to look back on them—were rarely as fun or satisfying as we thought they'd be. Often, they were harmful to ourselves or others.

God calls us to something better: to be people who are clothed and in our right minds, exhibiting the beautiful fruit of self-control.

The Power of Mentorship

Here's where Paul's vision becomes truly compelling: this transformation isn't meant to happen in isolation. The older are to teach the younger. The mature are to model godliness for those still growing.

Our young people are starving for spiritual mothers and fathers—not bossy authorities who judge every misstep, but genuine models of godliness who show what it looks like to walk faithfully with God over decades. They need to see what sober-mindedness, dignity, purity, and steadfast love actually look like in real life.

To the older believers: you might feel inadequate for this task. You might think, "I still struggle with sin. I still wrestle with self-control. How can I mentor anyone?" This humility is actually wisdom. The older we grow as Christians, the more we recognize our own failures and our desperate need for God's grace.

But don't let that awareness become an excuse. The point of mentorship isn't to say, "Look at me, I've got it all figured out." It's to model how God's power works through our weakness. It's to show how grace saves us and then trains us in holiness. What better purpose could you devote your life to than passing on the wisdom God has given you?

To the younger believers: don't wait passively for someone to adopt you. Take initiative. Find someone whose life reflects godliness and ask to spend time with them. If they're busy, persist. This is too important to give up after one attempt. That white hair around you represents decades of walking with God—don't miss the opportunity to learn from it.

Making God's Teaching Attractive
But why does all this matter? Why pursue right living with such intentionality? Paul gives several reasons: so that Scripture won't be mocked, so that opponents will have nothing evil to say about Christians, and ultimately, so that we might "adorn the doctrine of God our Savior."

That phrase—adorn the doctrine—is breathtaking. It doesn't mean the Bible is ugly and needs dressing up. It means highlighting the existing beauty of God's truth through how we live. Like a bride adorned on her wedding day, where the dress and flowers and styling all serve to frame and showcase her beauty and love, our lives are meant to frame and showcase the beauty of God's truth.

This is missional. Our self-control, our love, our integrity—these aren't just for our own benefit or even just for the good of the church. They're for the world to see. When we live with godly wisdom, goodness, and love, we become walking advertisements for the beauty of knowing God. We adorn ourselves not with mere braids, gold, and pearls, but with the imperishable beauty of godly character and good works.

The Grace That Trains Us
None of this happens by our own strength. The foundation of everything is God's grace—the grace that saves us through Jesus and then trains us in holiness. We're not working off a debt; Jesus paid it all. We're learning to walk in the freedom and beauty of new life.
So pursue self-control and godliness, not through gritted teeth, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let the older teach the younger. Let the younger seek wisdom from the older. And together, let's adorn the doctrine of our God, making His truth beautiful for all to see.