Albert Barnes Commentary Titus 2:13

"looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;" — Titus 2:13 (ASV)

Looking for. Expecting; waiting for. That is, in the faithful performance of our duties to ourselves, to our fellow human beings, and to God, we are patiently to wait for the coming of our Lord.

1. We are to believe that He will return;
2. We are to be in a posture of expectation, not knowing when He will come; and
3. We are to be ready for Him whenever He shall come. See Barnes on Matthew 24:42 and following, 1 Thessalonians 5:4, and Philippians 3:20.

That blessed hope. The fulfillment of that hope so full of blessedness to us.

The glorious appearing. See Barnes on 2 Thessalonians 2:8.

Compare to 1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 1:10; 2 Timothy 4:1, 8.

Of the great God. There can be little doubt, if any, that by "the great God" here, the apostle referred to the Lord Jesus. This is because it is not a doctrine of the New Testament that God Himself, as such, or as distinct from His incarnate Son, will appear at the last day.

It is said, indeed, that the Saviour will come in the glory of his Father with his angels (Matthew 16:27), but that God as such will appear is not taught in the Bible. The doctrine there is that God will be manifest in His Son. The divine approach to our world will be through Him to judge the human race; and although He will be accompanied with the appropriate symbols of the Divinity, it will be the Son of God who will be visible.

No one accustomed to Paul's views can reasonably doubt that when he used this language, he had his eye throughout on the Son of God, and that he expected no other manifestation than what would be made through Him. In no place in the New Testament is the phrase epiphaneian tou Theou—"the manifestation or appearing of God"—applied to anyone other than Christ.

It is true that this is spoken of here as the "appearing of the glory—tēs doxēs—of the great God"; but the idea is that of a manifestation that befitted God, or would appropriately display His glory. It is known to most people who have followed religious controversies that this passage has given rise to much discussion.

The ancients, in general, interpreted it as meaning, "The glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ." This interpretation has been vindicated by the labors of Beza, Whitby, Bull, Matthaei, and Middleton (on the Greek article), and is the common interpretation of those who claim to be orthodox.

See Bloomfield, Recensio Synoptica, and Notes, in loc. He contends that the meaning is, "the glorious appearance of that GREAT BEING who is our GOD AND SAVIOUR." The arguments for this opinion are well summed up by Bloomfield. Without going into a critical examination of this passage, which would not be in accordance with the design of these Notes, it may be remarked in general:

1. That no plain reader of the New Testament, accustomed to the common language there, would have any doubt that the apostle referred here to the coming of the Lord Jesus.
2. That the "coming" of God, as such, is not spoken of in this manner in the New Testament.
3. That the expectation of Christians was directed to the advent of the ascended Saviour, not to the appearing of God as such.
4. That this is just such language as one would use who believed that the Lord Jesus is Divine, or that the name God might properly be applied to Him.
5. That it would naturally and obviously convey the idea that He was Divine to one who had no theory to defend.
6. That if the apostle did not mean this, he used language that was likely to lead people into error.
7. That the fair construction of the Greek here, according to the application of the most rigid rules, abundantly sustains the interpretation which the plain reader of the New Testament would affix to it. The names mentioned above are abundant proof that this interpretation does not violate the rules of the Greek language; rather, the fair construction of the original demands it. If this is so, then this furnishes an important proof of the divinity of Christ.