When was the last time you did “good work”? Was it in grade school where you also got the 😃 after the words, “good work”? Has it been a while since you last did anything deemed good work? Perhaps the work that you do is routine; neither bad nor good. We have to ask ourselves why haven’t we been doing “good work”?

To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. (Titus 1:15-16 ESV)

Titus is a first century pastor on the Island of Crete. He was there leading the group of churches that were forming as a result of Paul’s mission on the island. They were both under the impression that “all Cretans were liars…” a statement made famous by Epimenides, a philosopher from 600BC that created this logical paradox because Epimenides was also a Cretan and therefore, by his statement, a liar. Now if this statement is true, then the statement he makes false, which boils down to the simple fact that people are simply unreliable. The gossip was that the people of Crete were like people in America in the 21st century: unreliable. This is the paradox Paul wants Christians not to embody. If we know God because we are saved by Jesus Christ, then we need to do work worthy of our salvation. We should not be unreliable because that is not for the saved, but for the liars. Our salvation is truth, we need to embody the truth of God in everything we do.