Bible Commentaries
Titus 1

Verses 1-16

Analysis and Annotations

CHAPTER 1

1. The salutation (Titus 1:1-4 )

2. Instructions concerning elders (Titus 1:5-9 )

3. Warnings against false teachers (Titus 1:10-16 )

Titus 1:1-4

Paul calls himself in writing to Titus “a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ,” for he speaks in these introductory words of God’s elect, and their faith in Him; and the promise of eternal life, God, who cannot lie, gave before the dispensations began; and that His Word is now manifested through preaching which was committed unto him by our Saviour-God. God’s elect are those who have trusted in Christ. They have personal faith in God and know His love and are in relationship with Him. But such a faith and relationship demands godliness; therefore the statement, “The acknowledgment of the truth which is after godliness.” These two, truth and godliness, belong together. If the truth is given up or not held, then godliness also is given up; the truth must be manifested in godliness. As to statement on the promise of life before the ages began, see annotations on 2 Timothy 1:9 .

Titus 1:5-9

Paul had left Titus in Crete. From Acts 2:11 we learn that the inhabitants of Crete were present on the day of Pentecost and heard Peter preach. These Cretan Jews may have brought the gospel to the island. Titus is commissioned by Paul to set the things in order which were wanting, and to appoint elders in every city. (For discussion that bishops are elders see annotations on 1 Timothy 3:1-16 .) We do not find the same intimacy between him and Titus as that intimacy and confidence which existed between Paul and Timothy. He does not open his heart to him as he did to Timothy. He invests Titus with authority to appoint elders and states the qualifications the elder must possess. These qualifications are also mentioned in the First Epistle to Timothy (1 Timothy 3:1-7 ). Here is added that their children must be faithful and not accused of riot or of being unruly. The bishop must also be blameless as God’s steward, not self-willed (headstrong), not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, no seeker of filthy lucre. What he is to be is given in Titus 1:8-9 . “But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good, sober-minded, just, holy, temperate; holding fast the faithful word according to the doctrine taught, that he may be able to exhort with sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers.” Thus we have again that godliness and sound doctrine belong together.

Titus 1:10-16

He states that there were many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers especially they of the circumcision. The Judaizing teachers were at work among the Cretans. Titus must have been especially distasteful to them, for he was an uncircumcised Greek. These Cretan Jews who claimed to have accepted Christianity worked evil in the assembly. The apostle demands that their mouths must be stopped, for they subverted whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for the sake of base gain. The national traits of the Cretans are then described. One of their own prophets had said, “The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons.” This is a quotation from Epimenides, who lived six hundred years before Christ. The Cretans were classed with the Cappadocians and Cilicians (all beginning in the Greek with a “K”) as the most evil and corrupt in the Greek world. And Paul testifies to the truth of it, “This witness is true.” They must be rebuked sharply, so that they may be sound in the faith, “not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.” These Judaizing teachers were ascetics, forbidding certain things, making rules for the outward conduct. Certain things were forbidden by their ordinances and commandments; yet though they were fasting and continent, they were, because unregenerated, inwardly defiled and unbelieving. Paul brands these Judaizers in this Epistle as “defiled and unbelieving,” with a confession that they know God, but in works they denied Him. He speaks of them as abominable, disobedient, and to every good work reprobate.