Titus 1:6

A little over a week ago, I wrote a post (My Deepest Desire) that referred to the devotional book Night Light for Parents and some impacting things I had read in it about our desire for Godly children and the anxiety we can carry as we strive to point our sons and daughters toward God. Recently I read another devotional in that book that gave me additional food for thought. Here, in part, is what it said...

A pastor sat in his study, utterly devastated. He'd just learned that his twenty-one-year-old son had impregnated his girlfriend at the Christian college campus he attended...The pastor felt guilty..."What did I do wrong? How could it have happened?" Remembering the words of Scripture--"An elder must be...a man whose children...are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient" (Titus 1:6), the pastor saw no choice...he would resign immediately.

Was this anguished servant overreacting in his decision to resign? We think so. We believe the Scripture above refers to younger children. In Paul's day, males and females were considered grown much earlier, marrying at fourteen or sixteen years of age. The Lord appears to settle the matter in the book of Ezekiel: "The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him" (18:20). Remember, too, that the father of the Prodigal Son was not blamed for the young man's wickedness (Luke 15:11-32).

For mothers and fathers of grown children, it may be a comfort to realize that each adult is responsible only for his own behavior. Instead of taking on the sins of our grown kids, let's respond by bathing them in continual, loving prayer.

The portion of this that stood out to me was how children were considered grown at a much earlier age in biblical times than now...and how that would imply that the Titus 1:6 passage refers to younger children. I remember some years ago in San Diego when the leadership of the church was looking for candidates for elders and was, unfortunately, having a difficult time finding any based on a strict interpretation of Titus 1:6 that the children of an elder should be old enough to have made a decision about whether to make Jesus the lord of their life...and should, obviously, have made that decision affirmatively. I certainly don't have all the issues relating to eldership and parental responsibility figured out, but I do appreciate this devotional and the additional light it shines on the subject.

The other intriguing comment to me was about how the prodigal son's father didn't take the blame for his son's actions--and no one else put any blame on him either. Interesting!