October 12, 2022
Daily Devotion
"Scrupulous Integrity"
Titus 1:15
New Living Translation (NLT)
15 Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are corrupted.
Would you prefer to be around a person with stringent scruples or someone who is notoriously unscrupulous? Given the connotation of unscrupulous, most of us would choose the person with scruples, wouldn't we? But the fact that a person has scruples doesn't guarantee he isn't unscrupulous. In today's text Paul is warning Titus about Jewish believers who continued to have scruples about eating food that was ceremonially "unclean" under the Law and were strictly enforcing those dietary scruples on Gentile converts. For Paul it was more than just a matter of doctrinal ignorance. The Greater problem was the attitude behind their scruples -an attitude as "unclean" and impure as they claimed the food to be. What made it impure was a frame of mind lacking room for grace. "In the hands of those who don't Understand God's grace," Paul seems to say, “even the well-intended insistence on scruples cannot help but become unscrupulous." A conscience uninformed by grace is powerless to distinguish between “clean" and "unclean" or pure and impure. Few of us worry much about “clean" and “unclean" food. Yet we have many personal scruples that, directly or indirectly, we insist that others follow. Per-haps they are legitimate scruples dictated by doctrine or morals. However, the danger is either being so “grace-filled" that we relegate all scruples to the realm of personal opinion or-like these Jewish legalists-being so lacking in grace that we call "unclean" what God has made clean. The ability to maintain godly scruples without becoming unscrupulous in their application is itself a precious gift of grace.
The question of scrupulous integrity is: Are my high standards of virtue matched by an equally high sense of God's grace?
