Theopedia

Epistle to Titus

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

— Titus 2:11-12

Overview

The Epistle to Titus is one of Paul’s three Pastoral Epistles, alongside 1 and 2 Timothy, so named because each is addressed to a younger colleague Paul had entrusted with pastoral oversight of a local church rather than to a congregation directly.1 Paul had left Titus behind in Crete “to set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city” (Titus 1:5), and the letter’s three chapters follow that assignment: qualifications for elders alongside warnings against false teachers, instructions in sound doctrine for the different groups making up the church, and the good works that grace produces in those it saves.2

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Author and Date

The letter names Paul as its author (Titus 1:1), and its close verbal and thematic agreement with 1 Timothy, in subject matter and in style, places it in the same period of Paul’s ministry.3 Titus was a Gentile companion of Paul whom the apostle refused to have circumcised, unlike the half-Jewish Timothy, precisely because Titus was of unmixed Gentile birth (Gal. 2:3).4 The letter itself supplies no direct notice of when Paul evangelized Crete; Luke’s only mention of the island in Acts records Paul touching there as a prisoner on the voyage to Rome, with neither time nor liberty to preach (Acts 27:8).5 The visit to Crete this epistle presupposes is best placed, then, in the interval between Paul’s first Roman imprisonment and his final one, a period in which the Pastoral Epistles as a group were written.1

Historical and Literary Context

Crete had a reputation, even among its own writers, for untrustworthiness: Paul cites “one of the Cretans, a prophet of their own,” who said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons,” and adds his own verdict, “this testimony is true” (Titus 1:12-13). Into a young, loosely organized church set in that culture, Paul had placed Titus with instructions to “appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5), work Crete’s churches had not yet received.2

The letter’s urgency comes from a specific threat already active in those churches: “many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party,” who were “upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach” (Titus 1:10-11). These false teachers were Jewish in background and pressed a version of the gospel bound up with “Jewish myths” and disputes over the law (Titus 1:14), the same circumcision-party pressure Paul confronted elsewhere in his ministry.6 Paul’s answer is structural as much as doctrinal: multiply elders able to “rebuke those who contradict” this teaching (Titus 1:9), rather than leave the churches to face it without settled leadership.6

Structure

  1. Qualifications for elders and warnings against false teachers (Titus 1). Paul explains why he left Titus in Crete, sets out the character required of an elder (Titus 1:6-9), and names the false teachers already at work among the churches (Titus 1:10-16).
  2. Sound doctrine for different groups within the church (Titus 2). Older men, older women, younger women, younger men, and slaves each receive instruction fitted to their place in the household and congregation (Titus 2:1-10), grounded in the appearing of God’s grace (Titus 2:11-14).
  3. Good works flowing from grace (Titus 3). Paul instructs believers toward submission, gentleness, and good works toward all people (Titus 3:1-2, 8, 14), grounding that instruction in a summary statement of salvation by grace rather than works (Titus 3:3-7) and closing with personal directions and greetings (Titus 3:9-15).

Major Themes

Qualifications for elders. An elder must be “above reproach,” not “arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined” (Titus 1:6-8), and able to “give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). The last qualification is not incidental: because Crete’s churches already faced organized false teaching, Paul’s remedy for error was to multiply qualified elders equipped to refute it, not merely to silence this one instance of it.6

Grace training believers toward godliness. Grace is not only what saves; Paul describes it as itself a teacher: it appears “bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:11-13). The same grace that saves a sinner also actively shapes how that sinner lives while waiting for Christ’s return, “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).7

Salvation by grace, not works, with good works as its fruit. Paul states plainly that God “saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). Calvin appeals to this verse to argue that no human willing or striving contributes anything to salvation, since Paul “says nothing more” here than that God “saved us” by mercy alone, “not by works of righteousness which we have done.”8 Having grounded salvation entirely outside human works, the same passage immediately turns to works as salvation’s fruit rather than its cause: those who have believed are to be “careful to devote themselves to good works,” which Paul calls “excellent and profitable for people” (Titus 3:8).

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), chap. 30, “The Epistles of Paul,” sec. 39, 479. ↩ ↩2

  2. Barrows, 480-481. ↩ ↩2

  3. Barrows, 480. ↩

  4. Barrows, 480. ↩

  5. Barrows, 481. ↩

  6. Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), chap. 23, “Titus 1:9-13-Able to Exhort in Sound Doctrine and Rebuke False Teachers,” 233-234. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Strauch, chap. 22, “Titus 1:7-8-The Biblical Qualifications for God’s Steward,” 230. ↩

  8. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 2, chap. 5, sec. 17, 290: “He indeed says nothing more than he says to Titus, when he writes, ‘After that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us’ (Titus 3:4, 5).” ↩