In Titus 2, Paul talks about how God showed his grace though Jesus by cleansing us of our sins and now wants us to be “eager to do good works”.

He writes (CSB):

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession, eager to do good works.

He starts off the chapter by majoring on the behaviours Christians should show. He picks out different groups of people – older men, older women, younger men, younger women, even slaves. The gist of what he’s saying to all of them is avoid acts that will cause God’s message to be discredited.

In that brilliant 1980s song by Graham Kendrick, Shine Jesus Shine, we see some of that sentiment. Kendrick writes:

As we gaze on your kingly brightness
So our faces display your likeness
Ever changing from glory to glory
Mirrored here may our lives tell your story

That, to me, is what this passage is about. It’s about mirroring Jesus through our lives. Indeed, Paul says:

Make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching. Your message is to be sound beyond reproach, so that any opponent will be ashamed, because he doesn’t have anything bad to say about us.

There is, of course, an elephant in the room in the passage – Paul refers to slavery and says slaves should “submit to their masters”. He writes (CSB):

Slaves are to submit to their masters in everything, and to be well-pleasing, not talking back or stealing, but demonstrating utter faithfulness, so that they may adorn the teaching of God our Saviour in everything.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Paul is, in fact, anti-slavery, as we saw in his letter to Philemon. But Crete is part of the Roman Empire. According to the British Museum:

Scholars estimate about 10% (but possibly up to 20%) of the Roman empire’s population were enslaved. This would mean, for an estimated Roman empire population of 50 million (in the first century AD) between five and ten million were enslaved. This number would have been unequally distributed across the empire, with a higher concentration of enslaved people in urban areas and in Italy.

Rebellious slaves in Roman society could be punished very severely so presumably Paul thought it would be irresponsible to send a letter telling people to go on strike or attempt to run away. They would be likely to get savagely beaten – and then what would be achieved?

Instead, Paul writes immediately after referring to slavery with the fact that God is “bringing salvation for all people”. Slavery, Paul indicates, is not going to last because it is part of the fallen world, rather than God’s healed world.

Elsewhere, such as in Galatians 5 (CSB), Paul uses slavery as a synonym for sin.

Paul is writing in a broken world where there equality of rights is sorely missing, but points to God’s plan where God’s love and grace is freely offered to everyone.