To Encourage You

Titus 2:1-2 “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.”

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “the golden years.”  I’m not sure who first coined this phrase or what was meant by it in the beginning, but it has come to mean those years of a person’s life that typically follow retirement. It’s the time of life when the kids have been raised, responsibilities lessen, and there’s more time for relaxation and recreational pursuits – those are some of the benefits. However, along with advanced age, as anyone who’s in the same boat that I’m in right now will know, it’s also a time of declining health and strength. 

I’ve had the opportunity to bowl in a league of older men over the last few years, and one of the things that our conversations typically include during our weekly time together is what the next doctor appointment is, or what the symptoms are that we are experiencing as the result of some health condition or the treatments related to that condition.  In contrast to that, the Scripture above, which is specifically directed to men in their “golden years” uses the word “sound” as a description of how older men (and women) are to be. This word means “sound in health, i.e., to be well.”  However, it isn’t referring to physical health.

The Bible deals in reality. It speaks about how our hair turns grey, our eyesight typically declines, and other physical abilities inevitably slide downhill as the years add up.  It likens our physical body to a fragile “jar of clay” that is slowly but surely “wasting away” (2 Corinthians 4:7-16). Isn’t it interesting, then, that the verse above points to the “soundness” or “health” of older believers? Clearly this “health” is something other than what we typically think of when we hear the word.  What the Lord is telling us is that of all believers, the spiritual health of the elderly believer is to be a trait that they should all share.  Such “soundness” is seen in the faith, love, and steadfastness (i.e., endurance), that should become ever stronger as a believer walks with the Lord.  Older men in the faith are to be examples of those who, though outwardly “wasting away,” are “inwardly being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).  Elsewhere the Bible assures us that Christians who spend their years “beholding the glory of the Lord” will be in a process of “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). And as the verses above tell us, the source of that inner strength, the means of “beholding the glory of the Lord,” is by way of peering into the “sound doctrine” of the Word of God, and living in obedience to it. 

So, how’s your health today, i.e., your spiritual health? Are you spending time in the Word of God? Are you feeding on the bread from heaven (John 6:35), the nourishing pure spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:2), and the soul-strengthening meat  of the Word of God (Hebrews 5:12-14)?  May God help us to feed upon the soul-strengthening resources God has given us, and may we live lives that demonstrate that inner soundness, that daily inner renewal, that strengthens us on the inside as we age, in spite of the physical weakness that we may become subject to at the very same time.