Adorning the Doctrine of God

I love the fall season, the weather, the colors associated with it, the decorations, the pumpkin coffee.  I put out my fall decorations last week.  Two scarecrows sit in chairs on the front porch, fall leaf garlands stretch across the front of the porch and around the door.  A squashed-looking pumpkin sits on a wire crate next to the front door. 

When you get inside the house, you can smell the pumpkin candle. Bowls overflow with pinecones and cinnamon sticks.  There are even tiny leaves and acorns and squirrels made from applesauce and cinnamon, hanging from the hackberry tree and above the kitchen sink.  My two favorites are the dried okra pods I spray-painted copper and the pumpkins I made last year from old sweaters and real pumpkin stems.

So I’m finally getting around to why I tell you all this.  As a retired teacher, I have not left my habit of looking things up, even when I think the dictionary may not tell me anything I don’t already know.  This time I looked up "decorate.”  The dictionary said “to furnish or adorn with something ornamental or becoming.”  This led to “adorn”:  “to decorate or add beauty to make more pleasing, attractive impressive.”  Eventually I got to “ornament—a person or thing that adds to the credit or glory of a society.”  I kept going, but I will have mercy on you and not insist that you go as far as I did.

That led me to a phrase of scripture.  Titus 2:10 says that we are to “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.”  Look at the context.  Verses 7-10 say, “In all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach. In order that the opponent may be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us. . .showing all good faith that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.” So how do we adorn the doctrine of God? Our actions and character are our adornment. Just as you know what season it is by looking at my decorations, others should know our profession as Christians.  We are living in a period of history where actions or even alleged actions can cover the sound of our words. Ralph Waldo Emerson is quoted as saying, “Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.”  We must be above reproach in order to be an adornment.

Charles G. Finney, an evangelist of the early eighteenth century said in discussing this passage:  “A holy life will command the attention of the world, and they will inquire what this doctrine may be.  They are forced to exclaim—How beautiful their lives are! And how sweet their temper!  Who is this Savior whom they profess to follow, and to whose influence they attribute their peculiar spirit and life?  If this doctrine begets such a spirit and such a life, we ought to know it and ought to have it!”   

May we adorn the doctrine of God!  May we be His ornaments bringing glory to Him.

                                                                 ~~Faith Himes Lamb