Biblical Message

Striking Faith and Charity

by Pastor Ricky Kurth

In Paul’s epistle to Titus, he gives some instructions for “aged men” that contain good advice for believers of all ages, saying, “That the aged men be… sound in faith, in charity…” (Titus 2:2).

The word “sound” means strong, healthy and wholesome (cf. Isa. 1:5,6), and all of God’s people should aspire to be sound in the virtues Paul mentions here. But that can be difficult when things in life arise that test our faith and challenge our charity. That’s why it interests me that another definition of the word “sound” is to strike something to see if it is whole, based on the sound it makes when you strike it.

When I worked in my dad’s tool and die shop as a young man, I worked with surface grinding machines that had a grinding wheel of two feet in diameter that spun at several thousand revolutions per minute. If the wheel was cracked and unsound it could fly apart at that speed and take out your eye, or even your life. The problem is, you can’t tell if a grinding wheel is unsound just by looking at it. So my dad taught me to check the wheel before mounting it on the machine by putting my fingers in the hole in the middle of the wheel, balancing it in my