Titus: sound teaching and good works

About the book

Titus was a Greek, a co-worker who went up with Paul to Jerusalem and was not made to be circumcised (Galatians 2:3). Paul left him on Crete to "set in order what was unfinished and appoint elders in every town" (Titus 1:5).

Who wrote it, and when, is the question of the Pastoral Letters set out in the lesson on 1 Timothy. The church has traditionally held that Paul wrote it in the mid-60s, after his release from the imprisonment that closes Acts; many scholars think a disciple of Paul wrote it later in his name. The events it tells of lie in the era the map under the Jesus tab calls the church (c. AD 30–90).

How it unfolds

Key passages

In Titus sound teaching is never apart from life. The false teachers "profess to know God, but by their actions they deny Him" (Titus 1:16). Titus is to teach older men and older women, young women and young men, and slaves the life that fits sound doctrine, "so that in every respect they will adorn the teaching about God our Savior" (Titus 2:10). The power for it is grace:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone. It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age, as we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Titus 2:11-13

Grace saves us, and it also teaches and trains us. And the salvation is God's mercy from first to last:

But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit … so that, having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs with the hope of eternal life.

Titus 3:4-7

In Matthew Henry's words, "Works must be in the saved, but are not among the causes of their salvation" Matthew Henry. Many churches hear baptism in ‘the washing of new birth’, and the Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed churches of continental Europe says that the Holy Spirit so names baptism Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 73; how the water and the Spirit's work belong together the churches teach in different ways, as New birth and the indwelling Spirit, in the doctrine course, sets out.

The book and Christ

Titus shows a church living between two appearings of Christ. Grace "has appeared" already in his coming (Titus 2:11); the church waits for the "glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13).

He gave himself "to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds" (Titus 2:14). At Sinai God told Israel, newly brought out of Egypt, "you will be My treasured possession out of all the nations" (Exodus 19:5); those Christ has redeemed are now that people. And Ezekiel's promise of clean water and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:25-26) is answered in the Spirit God "poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior" (Titus 3:6).

Reading it

Titus takes less than ten minutes; read it at one sitting from Titus 1. As you read, mark the words good works and good deeds: they come again and again in so short a letter (2:14, 3:8, 3:14). Then go on to Philemon.

Practice