Charles Ellicott Commentary Titus 3:14

"And let our [people] also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful." — Titus 3:14 (ASV)

And let ours also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses.—“Ours,” that is, those who with St. Paul and Titus in Crete called upon the name of Jesus. A last reminder to the brothers, whom with a loving thought he calls “ours,” constantly to practice good and beneficent works. In the expression “let ours also learn,” it would seem as though St. Paul would have Christians trained to the wise and thoughtful performance of works of mercy and charity.

It was with such commands as these that men like St. Paul and St. James laid the foundations of those great Christian works of charity—all undreamed of before the Resurrection morning—but which have been for eighteen centuries in all lands the glory of the religion of Jesus. This is one grand result of the Master’s presence with us on earth, which even His bitterest enemies admire with a grudging admiration.

In the brief scope of these Pastoral Epistles, in all only thirteen chapters, we have no less than eight special reminders to be earnest and zealous in good works.

There was evidently a dread in St. Paul’s mind that some of those who professed a love of Jesus, and said that they longed for the great salvation, would content themselves with a dreamy acquiescence in the great truths, while their lives remained unaltered. It is noteworthy that these Epistles, containing so many urgent exhortations to work for Christ, were St. Paul’s last inspired utterances. The passages in question are Titus 1:16; Titus 2:7; Titus 2:14; Titus 3:14; 1 Timothy 2:10; 1 Timothy 5:10; 1 Timothy 6:18; and 2 Timothy 2:21.