Charles Ellicott Commentary Titus 3

Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers.—Very careful and searching have been the Apostle’s charges to Titus regarding the teachers of the Church, their doctrine, and their life; very particular have been his directions, warnings, and exhortations to men and women of different ages on the subject of their home life.

But, with the exception of a slight digression in the case of a slave to a pagan master, his words had been written with a reference generally to Christian life among Christians. However, at that time, there was a significant life outside the small Christian world; how were the people of Christ to regulate their behavior in their dealings with the vast pagan world outside? St. Paul goes to the root of the matter at once when he says, “Put them in mind,” etc. Such a reminder regarding obedience was very necessary in Crete.

When St. Paul wrote to Titus, the island had been under Roman rule for about a century and a quarter. Their previous government had been democratic; and historians, like Polybius, who have written about Crete, have focused particularly on the turbulent and factious spirit that animated its people. Furthermore, the many Jews who, as we know, formed a very large part of the Christian Church there, always impatient with a foreign yoke, would, in such an atmosphere of excitement, be especially eager to assert their right to be free from the hated rule of Rome.

The Greek words translated “principalities and powers” are better translated here as “rulers and authorities,” since the word “principalities” is occasionally used in the English version of the Bible for an “order of angels.” These terms include all constituted governors and officials, Roman and otherwise, in the island.

To obey magistrates.—Taken absolutely, this means to obey the temporal power. Our Lord’s words were the model for all teaching in this division of Christian ethics. One great teacher after another, in the same spirit and in varied language, urges the people of Christ to show reverence and submission to all legally constituted authority in the state. No bitter opposition to their tenets in later years could chill this devoted Christian loyalty, nor could any cruel persecution of individuals diminish it.

Augustine, writes Professor Reynolds, could boast that when Julian asked Christians to sacrifice and offer incense to the gods, they, at all risks, sternly refused; but when he summoned them to fight for the empire, they rushed to the front. “They distinguished between their Eternal Lord and their earthly ruler, and yet they yielded obedience to their earthly ruler for the sake of their Eternal Lord.”

Least of all should we expect St. Paul to write such words, so loyal and faithful to Rome. He had found, indeed, little cause in his checkered, troubled life to be personally grateful to the Empire; Rome had always listened too readily to the cruel “informations” laid against him by his implacable Jewish enemies. She had imprisoned him, fettered him, hindered his work, and threatened his life; and when he was writing these deathless words of his, urging his devoted flock to a loyalty changeless and true, the supreme vengeance of Rome was close at hand for him.

To be ready to every good work.—This means being ready to cheerfully aid all lawful authority, municipal and otherwise, in public works undertaken for the city or state. Titus’s flock must remember that the true Christian should be known as a good citizen and a devoted patriot.

To speak evil of no man.—These commands of St. Paul to the Church of Crete permeate the spirit of Christ, who when He was reviled, reviled not again; who said, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

The Christian in the days of St. Paul, and for many days after St. Paul had borne that gallant witness of his outside the gates of Rome, would indeed often be called in sad earnestness to put into practice these charges of the Apostle. In days of persecution, in times of suspicion, when the Christian profession exposed people to hatred and to severe danger, when all people spoke evil of them, these words of St. Paul were remembered and acted upon, and not only in Crete.

To be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men.—Or better, not contentious, but, and so on. These characteristics were not common virtues in Crete, then the resort and trading center of so many different nationalities. Its unique situation in the Mediterranean, midway between Europe, Africa, and Asia, has been noticed, as have been the dispositions and vices of the inhabitants.

Surely, St. Paul urges, the professed followers of the Crucified among the Cretans should aim at a nobler standard of life than was common among these rough and often selfish traders. These things charged here by St. Paul were new virtues to humanity. They are held up to admiration by no pagan moralists.

Meekness signifies kindly forbearance. This Christian feeling, which looks lovingly on all sorts and conditions of people—on the stranger and the outcast, even on the vilest sinner—is especially urged here. It is the same sweet spirit of love that desires, in 1 Timothy 2:1, that prayer and supplication be made in the public Christian assembly for all men.

For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived.—Better rendered, For we were once ourselves foolish, disobedient, going astray. Surely, the Apostle argues, Christians can never refuse obedience to one in authority, or decline to be meek, courteous, kind, and forbearing to their neighbors, because, supposedly, they deem the magistrate in authority or their neighbors idolaters, and therefore outside the boundary of God’s mercy and their courtesy; for remember, writes St. Paul, we were once (not so long ago) ourselves in their condition. We once needed mercy ourselves.

This strong appeal to Christians, by the memory of their past, by the memory of what they once were, must have resonated with someone like Titus, himself of a Gentile family and most probably nurtured in idolatry. This argument of St. Paul would, no doubt, be repeated by Titus with strange, touching earnestness when he spoke to the assembly of the Cretan Christians. We were once ourselves “foolish,” that is, without understanding what was true; and “disobedient,” that is, unwilling, indisposed, to do what was right; “deceived,” or rather going astray (errantes), wandering away from the narrow road which leads to life.

Serving divers lusts and pleasures.—This is the service we rendered in the former days of our sin and shame, while we were “disobedient” to what was right and pure. We were obedient too, we were “serving” as slaves, many an impure lust, many a wrongful pleasure—for the lusts and pleasures to which St. Paul referred were those of the people with whom, for the moment, the Apostle was classing himself. The pleasures of these partly Greek, partly Asiatic peoples consisted, indeed, in the wanton satisfaction of the lusts of the flesh; their shameless revelings were scarcely covered with their thin and flimsy veil of beauty and false refinement.

Living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.—These pleasure-loving, lust-indulging people envied each one his neighbor for the good things he possessed. And thus we—for we, remember, were once of this number—once spent our lives in this atmosphere of hate, hating others with a jealous dislike, and hated ourselves for the same reasons. Shall we then—once like them—now refuse all sympathy to these poor souls still left in ignorance and sin?

But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared.—Another thought now wells up in the Apostle’s mind. We ourselves would never have become changed people, had not the kindness of God and His divine love for humankind shown itself. We, indeed, have no ground for self-exaltation, no excuse for haughty treatment of others, either in thought or action; for if we now live other and purer lives than they live, our change to better and higher things was owing to no desert or merit of ours, but solely to the mercy and the love of God.

The changed life is here solely attributed to the manifestation to humankind of the kindness and love of God our Saviour. Here God our Saviour, as in 1 Timothy 1:1, and in several other passages in the Pastoral Epistles, must be understood as “God the Father”; the “kindness” differs from the “love towards man.”

The first signifies generally that divine, measureless, all-comprehensive love which we know is the glorious attribute of God. The second expression tells of the special love which the Almighty has for humankind, and which has been so marvellously shown in the sacrifice and death of the Son of God for us.

The two words—the measureless, divine love which embraces all creation, and the special love of God for humankind—taken together, make up the one idea expressed by the grace that bringeth salvation, of Titus 2:11 of this Epistle. In the rare word philanthropia, the “love of God toward man,” a quiet but very solemn reminder is given to those “Christians” who would have no dealings with their less pure heathen neighbours.

The word applied here to God tells them to love people, even the enemies of their holy religion; they are to obey the heathen magistrate, and to think kindly of and to act courteously towards their heathen neighbour, because God has loved humankind—all humankind. Here, they are to be imitators of the divine pity, copyists of the divine love.

Not by works of righteousness.—This by no means asserts that such works ever had been done, and then produced, as it were, before the bar of God, and weighed and found insufficient; but it simply maintains that to win salvation such must be done. Sad experience, more forcibly than any theological assertion, has demonstrated to us all the utter impossibility of any of us, even the holiest, ever, even for one day, doing the works of a purely righteous man.

But according to his mercy.—As there was nothing in us which called for such a salvation, as there were no acts of ours which deserved reward, His gift of salvation, which includes (Titus 3:7) eternal life, was owing entirely to His divine love which saw and pitied our misery, our endless suffering. Out of this hopeless state the eternal pity lifted us, and put us into a state of salvation. The next clause specifies the outward and visible sign of the salvation our loving God was pleased to ordain in His Church, namely, “baptism;” but here great care must be taken properly to understand what St. Paul meant by this baptism, to which he attributed so great power.

In St. Paul’s mind it was no mere observance, but was a sacrament, in which all that was inward properly and completely accompanied all that was outward. In another place the Apostle has grandly paraphrased his words here. In the Galatian Letter (Galatians 3:27) he writes how that as many as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ, that is, have entered into vital union with Him—a blessed state, which most surely leads to life eternal, if the baptised only remain faithful.

By the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.—Seeing, then, that God has saved us by His own act, independently of any work of ours, we ask, How has He effected this? The words we are here considering give the answer to the question. The Greek should be rendered, “by the laver of regeneration,” and so on. Then, by means of the laver of regeneration, and so on, has God put us into a state of salvation.

In other words, He has effected this by means of “baptism” (for the laver here can only signify the baptismal font, and is called the laver of regeneration because it is the vessel consecrated to the use of that sacrament), by which, in its completeness as a sacrament, the new life in Christ is conveyed. Baptism, then, is the means through which we receive the saving grace of Christ; in its laver we are born again to a new life, in it we receive strength through the Holy Ghost constantly to renew and to develop this new life, for it is not only the laver of regeneration but also of renovation by the Holy Spirit.

But baptism is here understood in all its completion—the outward visible sign accompanied with the inward spiritual grace. In the case of one who has come to years of understanding seeking baptism, repentance and faith in the promises of God are absolutely required.

In the case of infants, who have also from the very earliest times been, through this same laver, enrolled in the communion of Christians, the same profession is required, only they make it by their sureties, and once they have come to years of discretion they solemnly and publicly assent to what had already been affirmed in their name.

Thus, by means of the laver of regeneration, and so on, or, in other words, by baptism in all its completion—the outward act being accompanied with the inward faith—He saved us, that is, put us into a state of salvation.

Regarding the difference between “regeneration” and “renovation,” the first, “regeneration,” is well explained in the words of the collect for Christmas Day, which speaks of the “regenerated” as “made God’s children by adoption and grace.” The second, “renovation,” the same collect goes on to speak of, when it prays that the “regenerated” “may daily be renewed by the Holy Spirit.” The first, “regeneration,” is spoken of by St. John in his words, Ye must be born again (John 3:7); the second is alluded to by St. Paul when he wrote, the inward man is renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16).