The Epistle to Titus
CONTENTS
INSTRUCTIONS FOR CHURCH LEADERSHIP (TITUS 1:1-16)
Responsible leaders are, like Paul, servants of God and followers of Christ Jesus. Elders are to be “blameless, the husband of but one wife,” which actually reads in the Greek, a one-woman man, or a man committed to his wife. Leaders should have “children [who] believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.”
INSTRUCTIONS TO VARIOUS GROUPS CONCERNING GODLINESS (TITUS 2:1 10)
This second section gives challenges to different people and different age groups, showing the impact and influence each can have within the church.
GOD’S UNIVERSAL PLAN OF SALVATION (TITUS 2:11-15)
Paul gives here one of the most beautiful salvation passages in all
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Paul, on his late visit, had left Titus in Crete to establish Church government, and ordain presbyters (deacons are not mentioned). Titus had been several times employed by Paul on a mission to the Corinthian Churches, and had probably thence visited Crete, which was within easy reach of Corinth. Hence the suitableness of his selection by the apostle for the superintendence of the Cretan Church. Paul now follows up with instructions by letter those he had already given to Titus in person on the qualifications of elders, and the graces becoming the old, the young, and females, and warns him against the unprofitable speculations so rife in Crete. The national character of the Cretans was low in the extreme, as Epimenides, quoted in Tit_1:12, paints it. Livy [History, 44.45], stigmatizes their avarice; Polybius [Histories, 6.46.9], their ferocity and fraud; and [Histories, 6.47.5], their mendacity, so much so, that “to Cretanize” is another name for to lie: they were included in the proverbial three infamous initials “K” or “C,” “Cappadocia, Crete,