Comments on Titus 1

First, the text: 

Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago, but at the proper time manifested, even His word, in the proclamation with which I was entrusted according to the commandment of God our Savior.
To Titus, my true child in a common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. 

For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you, namely, if any man is above reproach, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion. For the overseer must be above reproach as God’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict. For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain. One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.

There’s a lot to get into here so we’ll start at the very beginning. We know Titus was a great helper to Paul in his ministry. He’s mentioned quite often in the last few chapters of 2 Corinthians as a faithful brother that Paul sent to help gather in the collection for the saints at Jerusalem. But now he had been left on the island of Crete by Paul to handle the churches there. Paul opened this letter to his younger ministry partner by reminding him who they served. He was a servant of God and a “sent one” of Jesus. He was called, as are we, “for the faith.” This refers to the whole of doctrine here as it does in Jude where we are told to, “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 1:3). He also mentions here the “knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness.” If something is true, then it is of God because He is truth. Additionally if we live the truth we see in Scripture our lives will become more godly. 

After acknowledging the faith and truth, Paul next mentions the hope that we have. It is eternal life, getting to spend forever with our Lord and God. This hope is sure because “God, who cannot lie, promised [it] long ages ago.” Here we can look all the way back to Genesis 3:15 where God promised the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” Ironside mentions that, “This is the promise of eternal life. It was not a promise given before the creation of the universe, but before the ages of time had started to run their course. Sin had come in, but man was not to be left under the sentence of death.” The seed of the woman, who we know from the Scriptures to be Jesus, conquered death and gave us this hope that Paul had of eternal life. 

The next verse should remind us of Jesus as well. “manifested, even His word…” John 1:1 reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He was manifested for us. Paul had the privilege of proclaiming that message from God Himself. This was how Paul ended his introduction of who he was. I believe that these verses were put here more for us than Titus as Titus had a personal relationship with Paul and would have known who he was and what his ministry entailed. However, having this introduction might have been necessary for the Cretan believers as well to accept Titus as having any authority over them. 

Paul then tells us who he is writing to, namely Titus. You can see here Paul’s heart for this young man, calling him “my true child in a common faith.” Multiple times in Paul’s letters you can see his father’s heart for the people of God. He loves them dearly and wants God’s very best for them and encourages them to keep on in their faith and grow. He wishes Titus “grace and peace” in the NASB, ESV and Darby translations although the King James Version adds “mercy” in there as well. Regardless, this was a pretty standard greeting in Paul’s letters but it has a lot of depth to it as well. He genuinely wished for those he was writing to to experience the unmerited favor that God bestows on us and the peace that passes understanding in a tumultuous world. I wonder if we were to pray these things for each other if there might be less trouble in our own lives. And in case we think that we can achieve either of these traits by ourselves, Paul reminds Titus and us that these come from “God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.” We must rely on Him wholly and completely. 

Next Paul gets into the actual meat of the letter, stating “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you.” Paul knew that the local assemblies on the island would need help to be firmly rooted in the truth and he trusted Titus to see that it happened. He then goes on to tell Titus what he should look for while setting up these elders as leaders in their churches. The first of these qualifications was that the man be “above reproach.” The Greek word here combines the negative with the verb for accuse, so a man qualified to be an elder should not be able to be accused of any wrong-doing. The next two qualifications listed are “a husband of one wife,” or that could also be translated as “only one wife,” and “having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion.” I believe these are related. An elder of the church ought to love his wife, as we read in Ephesians 5 a couple weeks ago, as Christ loves the church. His children ought to be believers as well, showing that he can lead his own house in the Lord’s things before he is qualified to lead the church.

In verse seven Paul uses a synonymous word : “overseer” or “bishop” to refer to this same office of elder as a leader in the church, and he continues on with the list of qualifications. He again mentions being above reproach, and this time qualifies that statement with the phrase, “as a steward of God.” Wiersbe writes, “A steward does not own but manages all that his master puts into his hands … [so] the elder must never say, ‘This is mine!’ All that he has comes from God (John 3:27) and must be used for God.” Obviously this should be the position of all believers, but Paul specifically calls this out as something to look for in an elder. The next couple qualifications Paul mentions are hyphenated phrases in our English Bibles but single words in the Greek. We have “self-willed,” which in the Greek is a combination of the words for self (“autos”) and the word from which we get Hedonism (which is the pursuit of pleasure above all else). Then we have “quick-tempered.” This is the only time in the New Testament this word is used, but it notes one who is characterized by anger. An elder must also not be addicted to wine. If he is going to lead God’s house well, he needs to have a clear head. Additionally he can’t be one always looking to pick a fight, as the next qualification tells us “not pugnacious.” The last of these “negative qualifications” in verse seven is “not fond of sordid gain.” This is one of several of these qualifications that Paul wrote to both Timothy and Titus and denotes those that chase after money in dishonorable ways. In 1 Timothy 5:18 Pauls quotes Leviticus in writing “The laborer is worthy of his wages,” so we know that being paid for your work is not what Paul had in mind here. Rather, this is “filthy lucre” in the KJV or “sordid gain,” in the NASB, that is, money that is gained from base pursuits or dishonorably. 

Starting in verse eight Paul goes through eight “positive qualifications” for eldership. The first being a man given to hospitality. This is one that I personally struggle with as I like to have my own space, but the Greek word here literally would translate to “lover of strangers” (philosxenos). Elders are to be those that use their position and means to welcome strangers in. Next he is to be a “lover of good” (philagathon). The elder here specifically is called to love that which is good. If it is upright, honorable or excellent, the elder should love it. Wiersbe comments, “It is difficult to believe that a dedicated servant of God would deliberately associate with things that are bad for him and his family.” The elder is also required to be one who is wise or sensible. This word also has with it the idea of self-control or having the ability to curb one’s own desires. Additionally the elder is to be just or upright. That is one who is keeping God’s commands. The next word means free from wickedness, holy, or devout. The last word in verse eight is almost synonymous with the word translated sensible, but has more of the meaning of mastery over self with strength. Paul uses verses seven and eight to describe the negative and positive characteristics that an elder ought to hold. Beginning in verse nine he writes on what the elder ought to do. He is to “hold fast the faithful word.” There are several interpretations that one can reach that are within the truth for we know that God’s Word is “exceeding broad.” But the elder should not be one who teaches outside of the truth. Paul is reminding Titus that these men who will be leading their local assemblies need to not be off-base on their understanding of what had been taught to them. 

When an elder has this firm understanding “he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine,” that is to admonish wrong-doing, and encourage what is right, “and to refute those who contradict.” In his commentary on 2 Corinthians MacArthur wrote: "Those who do not understand the truth are incapable of discerning error. The absence of discernment is a logical consequence of ignorance of Scripture, because discernment involves the application of biblical knowledge. Ignorance of doctrine results in spiritual immaturity, which leads to a lack of discernment and opens the door wide to Satan's deceptive schemes." In order for an elder to properly defend his congregation from falsehood he must have a firm understanding of what is true. 

Paul goes on to tell Titus that “there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain.” Part of the job of an elder is to silence false teachers. Paul seems to have dealt with these Judaizers, that is, those who wanted to mix Law into Grace and require more of these Gentile believers than Christ had, everywhere he went. To the Corinthians Paul wrote: “For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.” There were those in the Corinthian assembly, and apparently here in the assemblies of Crete that were only preaching so that they could be paid. Not only that, but these false teachers were also teaching false doctrine and upsetting whole families. This word “upsetting” is used in boating, when water starts coming over the sides. These teachers were, whether intentionally or not, causing households to “drown” as it were because of the evil things they were saying. Paul then quotes a worldly source, Epimenides, and writes “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” Ironside points out in his commentary on Titus that, “The old nature is not changed by conversion, though a new nature is given. But the motions of the flesh must be put to death if there would be a life of victory and piety.” Yet these Judaizers seem to have been encouraging this worldliness in their preaching rather than calling the people to godliness. So Paul tells Titus to silence these men and to “reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith.” This wasn't vindictiveness towards these false teachers, but rather Paul’s desire was that they be taught better so that their own teaching could be true. 

He then reminds Titus to “not [pay] attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth.” The Jews, while initially receiving God’s law directly from God Himself had added traditions to what made Judaism for almost three thousand years by the time Paul was writing to Titus. Both Wiersbe and Ironside quoted Dr. David Cooper in their commentaries as saying, “When the plain sense of Scripture makes good sense, seek no other sense.” Wiersbe went on to say, “There is no need to find ‘deeper meanings’ to the plain teachings of the Word of God. Such an approach to the Bible enables a ‘student’ to find anything he is looking for!”  Or to put it another way, my hermeneutics professor at Emmaus, Dr. Van Dyne would always tell us, “When common sense makes sense, seek no other sense, lest you produce nonsense.” We don’t need anything apart from the Holy Spirit to guide our study of the Word, although there is also good in finding faithful men who have interpreted it according to their Spirit-guided thoughts as well. 

Verse fifteen could very easily be taken out of context and so we’re going to slow down and look at it closely. “To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.” This could be taken to mean that we could continue in sin as long as we are “pure.” This is obviously not what is in view here, as the Scripture never condones sin. Ironside writes, “This does not mean that things which to others are unholy become themselves pure when done by those of superior mind. It means that the pure delight in purity, even as the unholy delight in that which is impure.” Paul just before was mentioning that these false teachers were attempting to add Jewish rites to the Christian walk and this likely included dietary laws as well. Paul is arguing here that those whose eyes have already been defiled see pure things as impure rather than saying that pure people can purify things that are decidedly evil. 

Paul then goes on to call out the double lives led by these false teachers. “They profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works.” This is the very opposite of being “above reproach” that Paul uses as a qualifier for an elder in the church. These men’s lives were obviously not matching up with what their words were saying. They were “detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.” There was nothing in them that was redeemed and so their actions bore that out. In other words, these teachers were wholly unqualified to the position they were trying to take in the assembly. So Titus was to warn the believers of these men and lead them back into the truth and stop these men from spreading their lies. There are those who have said, “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe something,” but we know from Scripture how wrong that statement is. We must believe the truth and the elders in the church must meet certain qualifications in order to lead God’s people. I read a book as a teenager that had a huge impact on my life. It was called “The Measure of a Man” by Gene Getz and argued that every Christian man should live his life in such a way as to not disqualify himself from the position of elder. He argued that even though not every man would be called to be an elder, a Christian man ought to remain qualified for that position. So these qualifications Paul wrote to Titus, and you can find a few different ones to Timothy as well, are really for all of us to live godly lives.