Titus1chapter 1

Titus 1:1-2

a servant of God: Paul names himself a servant of God before he names himself an apostle of Jesus Christ, tying both titles to the faith of God's elect and the truth that leads to godliness. In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began, sets the promise earlier than creation itself. The church's historic answer places the promise within the eternal counsel of the Godhead, since no creature existed to receive it before the world began.

Titus 1:3-4

The word once hidden is now manifested in due times through preaching, and Paul names the trust as a commandment, not a suggestion, from God our Saviour. Titus is called mine own son after the common faith, the language of spiritual rather than natural fatherhood, the same figure Paul uses of Timothy. The greeting names both the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour in one breath, the letter's habit of applying Saviour to each without confusion of persons.

Titus 1:5

One verse holds the letter's whole occasion: Paul left Titus in Crete to set in order the things that are wanting and to ordain elders in every city. The plural, elders in every city, shows a local eldership appointed church by church rather than one office set over the whole island. The verb translated set in order carries the sense of putting right what is out of place, the young delegate's charge before any list of qualifications is given.

Titus 1:6-7

The qualifications open with blameless and the husband of one wife, a phrase read across the tradition as a man married once, as a man faithful to one wife at a time, or as a man free of the divorce and remarriage the culture allowed; the readings are named rather than settled here. For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God repeats the standard under a second title, presbuteros in verse five and episkopos in verse seven used of the same office in one breath. The negative list, not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, guards the elder's temper and appetite before any positive virtue is named.

Titus 1:8-9

The list turns positive: a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate, six graces set against the six vices just named. Verse nine adds the office's central task, holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. Hugiaino, sound or healthy teaching, opens here the thread that runs through the whole letter, doctrine judged by whether it builds a healthy church rather than a diseased one.

Titus 1:10-11

The reason for strong elders follows at once: many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers are already at work, specially they of the circumcision, the judaizing wing met before in Galatians and the Corinthian letters. Their mouths must be stopped because they subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake, the charge naming greed rather than mere error as the deceivers' motive. A whole house overturned by one false teacher's visit is exactly the danger a plural, local eldership in verse five is built to prevent.

Titus 1:12-13

Paul quotes Epimenides, a sixth century Cretan poet, calling him a prophet of their own because he cites the Cretans' own witness against themselves: the Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. The line trades on a real ancient reputation, the Greek verb kretizein, to Cretanize, meaning simply to lie, so the quotation is a proverb the culture already told about itself rather than an insult invented for the occasion. This witness is true, Paul adds, and the purpose follows at once: wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, correction aimed at restoration, not contempt for a people.

Titus 1:14

The deceivers' content is named directly: Jewish fables, the rabbinic legends and speculative genealogies met already in 1 Timothy, and commandments of men, human rules dressed as law. Both are said to turn from the truth, the same charge leveled at legalistic and speculative error alike, whatever its source. The rebuke targets specific teaching, not the Jewish people as such, and the letter elsewhere calls Paul's own gospel the common faith he shares with Titus, a Gentile, and every believer.

Titus 1:15-16

Unto the pure all things are pure describes the state of a clean conscience, not a license to treat every practice as harmless, and the verse supplies its own guard in the next clause: unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled. Verse sixteen turns the principle on the deceivers themselves: they profess that they know God, but in works they deny him, profession without practice named plainly as a denial. Being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate closes the chapter on the same phrase that opens chapter two's household roster, good works, here as the deceivers' conspicuous absence and there as the mark of sound doctrine.