From chapter 3 of Titus:

1 Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, 2 to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. 3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. 4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 8 The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.

As a pastor there are a couple of challenges that have especially struck me.

1. We are supposed to be motivated to love those who are foolish and disobedient by our confidence that God loves us though we were and often are foolish and disobedient. If we preach for people to doubt there standing before God, to question whether they are among the number of those whom God loves, then we can expect them to be rather half-hearted in their devotion to good works. According to Paul, to say of God that “he saved us” because of “his own mercy” and his “kindness” is to utter a trustworthy saying. We are supposed to “insist” that such things are true because they “are excellent and profitable for people.
2. Notice Paul’s unapologetic basis in the love and redemption we have received in the midst of our horrible behavior and desires for the obligation we have “to be submissive,” and “to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.” These people are not easy to be gentle with but are easy to quarell with. The are “foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to varioius passions and pleasures. they pass their days “in mallice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.” For Paul, we can extrapolate from the way God has treated us to the way all men should be treated. In other words, the free offer of the Gospel is really true. The doctrines of particular grace do not deny the reality of God’s universal love for humanity. We are supposed to reason on the basis of God’s treatment of us how we should represent God’s attitude in our treatment of others irrespective of what has been decreed about their final destination.

   What this means is that, if I so preach and emphasize particularism in a way that leads people to deny or neglect to imitate God’s grace to all men, then I am not teaching trustworthy sayings. I will be guitly of promoting things (not because they are not true but because of the context in how I proclaim them) that are neither excellent nor profitable for people. In fact, even though i suspect Paul has other concerns than those that worry me as I look at various forms Protestant predestinarian thinking can take, I can’t help but wonder if vv. 9-11 show us that the wrong sort of teaching of “the doctrines of grace” will lead us to “foolish controversies” that are “unprofitable and worthless.”