Today’s Passage: Titus 3
The letter is almost finished, and Paul turns from the household to the street. Titus has been told how to appoint elders in every town, what sound teaching sounds like in the mouths of older men and older women and young wives and young men and slaves, and how the grace of God trains a people while they wait for the appearing of their great God and Savior. Now Paul asks what such a people look like to their neighbors. The answer begins quietly. Remind them to submit, to be ready for every good work, to malign no one, to be peaceable and gentle, to show full consideration to everyone. Then the ground opens under the whole letter. Paul turns and looks at himself and at every believer who will ever read this, and he says: we were once exactly like the people we are told to be gentle with. Foolish. Disobedient. Misled. Enslaved. Hated and hating. And then the sentence that has carried more weary souls home than almost any other in the New Testament: 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. From that height the chapter comes down again into ordinary life. Emphasize these things, Paul says, so that believers will devote themselves to good deeds. Leave the pointless arguments alone. Deal firmly with the man who divides. Send Artemas or Tychicus, meet me at Nicopolis, see that Zenas and Apollos have what they need, and let our people learn to meet the pressing needs of others. Grace, and then good works. In that order, always.
As you read, hold this: God saved us not by the righteous deeds we had done but according to His mercy, and that mercy is the only thing that ever makes a people eager to do good.
Context The world of Titus 3
Crete was an old island with a long memory and a poor reputation. It lay across the southern approach to the Aegean, a hundred and sixty miles of mountain and harbor, and it had been famous in the Greek world for pirates, mercenaries, and men who could not be trusted with the truth. Rome had taken it in the previous century and governed it as one province together with Cyrene across the water in North Africa, so a believer on Crete lived under a Roman proconsul, paid Roman taxes, and answered to local magistrates in whatever town he called home. There were Jewish communities scattered through the island, and men from Crete had been standing in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit fell, which may be how the gospel first came ashore. By the time Paul left Titus there, the churches were young, scattered across many towns, still without appointed elders, and troubled by teachers who traded in Jewish myths and endless genealogies and quarrels about the law. Those are exactly the things Paul tells Titus to walk away from in verse nine.
Two details at the end of the chapter open a window onto how the early church actually worked. Nicopolis was a city on the western coast of Greece, founded by Augustus to commemorate his victory at Actium, and the sea lanes closed for the winter, so a traveler who did not reach port in time was simply stopped where he stood for months. Paul plans to winter there and wants Titus with him. And then there is a small travel party to outfit: Zenas, called a lawyer, which in that world might mean a man trained in the Jewish law or a jurist in the Roman courts, and Apollos, the eloquent Alexandrian Jew whose name the church at Corinth had once turned into a faction banner. These two are almost certainly the men carrying the letter itself. There was no postal service a private citizen could use. A letter traveled in a friend’s satchel, and the congregations along the way were expected to feed him, house him, mend his cloak, and put him back on the road with provisions. That is the ordinary, unglamorous shape of “good works” in verse fourteen, and it is why Paul mentions it in the same breath as the grandest sentence in the letter.
Titus 3:1–4 (BSB)
¹ Remind the believers to submit to rulers and authorities, to be obedient and ready for every good work, ² to malign no one, and to be peaceable and gentle, showing full consideration to everyone. ³ For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. ⁴ But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared,
Notice that Paul says remind. This is not new instruction. It is a matter the churches already knew and had quietly stopped doing, the way a man forgets what he once agreed to. And what is the reminder? Submit to rulers and authorities. Be obedient. Be ready for every good work. Take that as written, soberly and without argument, because Paul does not attach conditions to it here and neither will we. The rulers he had in mind were pagan magistrates in a Roman province, men who knew nothing of Christ and owed the church nothing, and still the believer is to live as a good and orderly neighbor under them, quick to do good in the town where God has placed him. Then the list turns to the tongue and the temper, and here it gets very close to home. Malign no one. Be peaceable, which means not spoiling for a fight. Be gentle, which is the fine old word for a man who does not insist on the last ounce the law would let him take. And then the phrase that gathers it all up: showing full consideration to everyone. Everyone. Not the household of faith only. Sit with that for a moment, because it is easy to read past. A church that had been told in chapter one that Cretans were liars and lazy gluttons is now told to treat every last one of them with courtesy. The gospel does not make a people superior. It makes them gracious.
Here is the summit of the letter, and it begins with a word that keeps anybody from climbing it and looking down. For at one time we too were. We. Paul puts himself on the same side of the ledger as the people Titus is being told to be gentle with, and he does it before he says one syllable about mercy. Read the list slowly and do not soften it, because he did not: foolish, disobedient, misled, enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. That is not a description of the worst people in Crete. That is a description of us, written by an apostle about himself and every believer with him. And notice how the last phrase closes the trap. Being hated and hating one another. The old life was not merely private failure; it was a whole society of people cordially despising each other, and every one of us had a seat in it. This is why there is no ledge of superiority anywhere in this passage. If you have ever caught yourself looking at the world’s disorder and feeling a quiet distance from it, verse three is written to take that feeling away from you forever. There is no room in the Christian faith for a saved man who has forgotten what he was. Paul never forgot. And that memory is precisely what makes verse two possible, for a man who remembers his own rescue does not have it in him to malign the drowning.
Then comes the hinge of the whole letter, and it is a single word: But. “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His philanthrōpia, pronounced fil-an-throw-PEE-ah. Strong's G5363, love for mankind, kindness toward human beings. The word behind “His love for mankind” is philanthrōpia, and you can hear our English word philanthropy inside it. In ordinary Greek it was a compliment paid to a good king or a generous host: love of human beings, the quality of a ruler who treated ordinary people as though they mattered. Luke uses the related word for the islanders of Malta who built a fire for shipwrecked strangers on a cold and rainy night, and for a centurion who let Paul visit his friends. So it is a warm and very human word, and Paul takes it and lifts it to God. What appeared in Jesus Christ was the love of God for the human race as such, not for the promising portion of it. Weigh that against verse three. The objects of this love were foolish, disobedient, enslaved, malicious, envious, hating and hated. There was nothing attractive in the field He was looking at. And still, when God our Savior showed Himself, what showed was kindness toward mankind. If you have ever wondered whether God is fond of people, whether His disposition toward sinners is grudging or glad, this word is your answer. He is not reluctant. He is kind. appeared.” Everything turns there. Not when we improved. Not when we came to our senses and cleaned ourselves up enough to be presentable. When He appeared. The verb is the same one Paul used in chapter two, where the grace of God appeared bringing salvation to all men, and it means a dawning, a showing forth of something that was hidden. What had been in the heart of God from eternity stepped into history and could be seen with human eyes, laid in a manger, walking the roads of Galilee, hanging on a cross. And what appeared was kindness. Not merely power, though there was power. Not merely justice, though justice was satisfied. Kindness, the warm and practical goodness of God that actually does something for the person it pities, and alongside it His love for mankind. Praise Him for that. The initiative is entirely His, from beginning to end, and the timing was His too.
Titus 3:5–9 (BSB)
⁵ 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. ⁶ This is the Spirit He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷ so that, having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs with the hope of eternal life. ⁸ This saying is trustworthy. And I want you to emphasize these things, so that those who have believed God will take care to devote themselves to good deeds. These things are excellent and profitable for the people. ⁹ But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, arguments, and quarrels about the law, because these things are pointless and worthless.
And now the sentence itself, and it must be preached at full strength or not at all. “He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy.” Take the two halves one at a time and let neither one be blunted. Not by the righteous deeds we had done. Paul does not say, not by our sins, which would be obvious. He says not by our righteous deeds, our best ones, the ones we would put forward if we were asked to give an account of ourselves. Whatever pile of good you have managed to accumulate in your life, and some of it may be real good that has genuinely helped people, it contributed nothing whatever to your salvation. It was not the reason. It was not part of the reason. God did not weigh it and find it sufficient. He saved us according to His mercy, which is to say, according to what was in Him and not according to what was in us. Understand what an enormous relief that is. If you had been saved on the basis of your righteous deeds, then you could be lost on the basis of your unrighteous ones, and every honest believer knows how that account would end. But a salvation that rested on mercy at the start rests on mercy still. The ground has never moved, because the ground was never you.
Look at how He did it: “through the washing of palingenesia, pronounced pal-ing-ghen-es-EE-ah. Strong's G3824, regeneration, the renewal of all things. Palingenesia is a compound of two plain words, palin, meaning again, and genesis, meaning birth or origin. Being born all over again. It appears only twice in the whole New Testament, and the other place is startling: Jesus uses it for the renewal of all things, the day when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne. That is the company this word keeps. What happens in a single soul when God saves it is of the same order as what will happen to the whole creation on the last day, the same power, the same Spirit, the same God making new what was ruined. It also tells you how far gone we were. God’s remedy for the human condition was not education, not reform, not a better set of rules. Nothing short of a new birth would do, because the problem was not in our circumstances but in our nature. And a birth is the one thing in all the world that nobody contributes to. You did not assist at your own. You had no say in the family, the century, or the hour. So it is here. If you are in Christ this morning, you did not manage it. You were born, a second time, by the Spirit of the living God, and that birth cannot be undone. and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” Two words for one great work. There is a washing, a cleansing that deals with the defilement of everything in verse three, and there is a renewal, an inward making-new by the Holy Spirit that turns a hater into a lover. Faithful readers have long differed over how much this washing points to baptism as its outward sign, and it is worth naming that honestly and then leaving it, because Paul does not stop to settle it and neither will we. What is unmistakable, and what no reading can take away, is the grammar of the sentence. He saved us. The washing is God’s work and not ours. Nobody washes himself into new birth any more than a child arranges his own conception. It is done to us, and it is done thoroughly.
Verse six adds a word that ought not to be hurried: “This is the Spirit He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” Poured out. It is Pentecost language, and it is the language of a vessel emptied without measuring. And abundantly, richly, lavishly. God did not dole out the Spirit in careful portions according to the worth of the recipient. He poured. And notice the channel: through Jesus Christ our Savior. Everything that reaches us from God reaches us through Him. The kindness appeared in Him, the mercy is applied by His Spirit, and the Spirit Himself comes through Him. Mark also, as you read verses four through six, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all three at work in a single act of saving. Our salvation is the united work of the triune God, and that is why it stands and cannot be shaken by anything left in us.
Then verse seven gives the purpose, and it lands in two great words. “So that, having been dikaioō, pronounced dee-kai-OH-oh. Strong's G1344, to declare righteous, to justify, acquit. Dikaioō belongs to the law court, not the workshop. It does not mean to make a man righteous by improving him over time; it means to declare him righteous, to pronounce the verdict in his favor and enter it in the record. The Greek Old Testament uses it exactly that way for a judge who acquits the innocent, and it is why Paul can say elsewhere that God justifies the ungodly, a phrase that would be an outrage if the righteousness in question were our own. The whole scandal and the whole comfort of the gospel sit in that one word. God pronounces guilty people righteous, not by pretending they are better than they are, but because Christ bore their guilt and His righteousness is credited to them. And here Paul tells us the manner of it: justified by His grace, freely, as a gift, with nothing owing. Now feel what that does to a troubled conscience. A verdict is not a mood, and it does not fluctuate with how you feel on a Tuesday. Once the judge has spoken, no later accusation can reopen a case that the highest court has closed. You may fail tomorrow and grieve over it and repent of it, and you should. But you will not be tried again. by His grace, we would become heirs with the hope of eternal life.” Justified. It is a courtroom word, and it does not mean that God made us good enough to pass inspection. It means that the verdict has been handed down, righteous, and the case is closed. And it was done by His grace, which is the same note struck three times now in four verses: not by our righteous deeds, according to His mercy, by His grace. Paul will not let the reader out of this room until the point is inescapable.
And the last word of the sentence is the sweetest: “we would become klēronomos, pronounced klay-ron-OM-oss. Strong's G2818, heir, one who receives an inheritance. A klēronomos was one who received a klēros, a lot, and behind that word lies the whole story of Israel receiving the land by lot from the hand of God, tribe by tribe, land nobody had earned and everybody was given. An heir in the ancient world was not a man who had worked his way into an estate. He was a man born into a family, or adopted into one, who stood to receive what his father had entirely on the strength of the relationship. That is precisely the picture Paul wants. The new birth of verse five and the inheritance of verse seven belong together: because God gave us birth, He gives us an heir’s portion, and the portion is eternal life with Him. Notice too that Paul says we became heirs, past tense, while the inheritance itself is still called a hope. The standing is already settled and the estate is not yet in hand, and both are true at once, which is the ordinary condition of every believer walking around this world. So if the day is long and there is little to show for it, remember what you are. Not a hired man working toward a wage. An heir, waiting for a Father who keeps His word. with the hope of eternal life.” God did not stop at acquittal. An acquitted man walks out of the courtroom free, and that would have been mercy enough to sing about forever. But God took the acquitted and made them family, and gave them the standing of sons and daughters with a share in everything that belongs to the Father. And the hope of eternal life is not a wish. In Scripture hope is a settled expectation of a certain thing not yet in hand, the way a child waits for a promised inheritance from a father he knows will not fail. That is the confidence Paul hands to a scattering of young churches on a hard island, and it is the confidence he hands to you.
“This saying is trustworthy.” Paul uses that formula a handful of times in these last letters, and it seems to have functioned as a marker the churches recognized, the way we might say, you may build your life on this. He stamps it on what he has just written, and then tells Titus what to do with it: emphasize these things. Keep saying them. Do not assume the congregation has heard the gospel enough. And now watch the sentence carefully, because it holds together the two things people habitually pull apart. He wants these things emphasized so that those who have believed God will take care to devote themselves to good deeds. The same short chapter says both. Saved not by righteous deeds, verse five. Devoted to good deeds, verse eight. And Paul sees no tension whatever, because the second is the fruit of the first and never its price. Nobody buys mercy with good works. Understand the order and you will be safe in both directions: grace first, always, as the ground you stand on; then good works, as what a standing man does with his hands. And notice the reason Paul gives for the works, which is not a lofty one at all: “these things are excellent and profitable for the people.” Useful. Good works are not decorations on a Christian life; they are goods delivered to actual neighbors who needed them.
Then, immediately, the other side. Avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, arguments, and quarrels about the law. Some men in Crete were spending themselves on exactly this, tracing family lines and disputing fine points, and it produced nothing but heat. Paul’s verdict is blunt: pointless and worthless. Hold that beside verse eight and the contrast is deliberate. There the works were excellent and profitable; here the arguments are pointless and worthless, and it is the same pen drawing the line between what builds a church and what merely occupies it. A man can be a great deal more interested in winning a discussion than in helping anyone, and he will usually find a text to argue about while the widow down the road goes without bread. Paul is not telling Titus to be indifferent to truth; he has just spent three chapters insisting on sound doctrine. He is telling him to know the difference between the truth that saves and the quarrel that only wounds, and to give his life to the first.
Titus 3:10–15 (BSB)
¹⁰ Reject a divisive man after a first and second admonition, ¹¹ knowing that such a man is corrupt and sinful; he is self-condemned. ¹² As soon as I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, make every effort to come to me at Nicopolis, because I have decided to winter there. ¹³ Do your best to equip Zenas the lawyer and Apollos, so that they will have everything they need. ¹⁴ And our people must also learn to devote themselves to good works in order to meet the pressing needs of others, so that they will not be unfruitful. ¹⁵ All who are with me send you greetings. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with all of you.
Verses ten and eleven are sharp, and they must stay sharp. Reject a divisive man after a first and second admonition. Not after the first offense, mark you. There is patience built into the command, two warnings before any separation, which is a mercy in itself and worth remembering when we are tempted to cut somebody off in a week. But if a man is still bent on dividing the church after being warned twice, Titus is not to keep negotiating. He is to have done with it. Why is Paul so firm? Because a factious man does not merely hold an odd opinion; he takes a congregation Christ bought with His blood and pulls it apart for the pleasure of leading a piece of it. And Paul says that such a man is corrupt and sinful, and adds a phrase that should be read exactly as it stands: he is self-condemned. Nobody has condemned him. He has done it himself, by his own persistence, in the face of two plain warnings. Be careful here, and do not make this verse say what it does not say. This is not a text about a child of God being dropped by his Father. Everything in verses four through seven forbids that reading, for the man who was saved by mercy and justified by grace and made an heir is held by hands that do not slip. This is a text about a man whose settled course has revealed what he actually is, and the church’s part is not to pronounce on his soul but simply to stop letting him tear.
And so the letter comes down out of the heights and lands, as these letters always do, in travel plans and names and small kindnesses. Paul will send Artemas or Tychicus to take up the work on the island, because Titus is not to leave the churches without a shepherd. Then Titus is to come to Nicopolis, where Paul has decided to spend the winter. Zenas and Apollos are on the road, probably with this very letter in hand, and the instruction about them is beautifully ordinary: do your best to equip them, so that they will have everything they need. Provisions, money for the passage, a bed. That is what devotion to good works looked like on a Tuesday in Crete. And then verse fourteen, which is the whole letter compressed into one line and aimed at the entire congregation, not just the leaders: “And our people must also learn to devote themselves to good works in order to meet the pressing needs of others, so that they will not be unfruitful.” Learn, he says. It does not come automatically, even to people who have been born again. It has to be taught and practiced until it becomes the shape of a life. And notice what the works are for: the pressing needs of others. Real need, the urgent kind, the sort a neighbor has this week. The alternative Paul names is being unfruitful, and think what a sad word that is for a tree that was planted, watered, and given every advantage, and that produced nothing anybody could eat. God saved us by mercy alone, and He did it, among other reasons, so that hungry people would be fed by our hands.
Then the last line, and it is short. Greetings from everyone with Paul, greetings to be carried to “those who love us in the faith,” which is a lovely way to describe a church, and then four words to close a letter that has argued about elders and Cretan liars and sound teaching and mercy and heirs: “Grace be with all of you.” He began the letter with grace and he ends it with grace, and everything in between is held between those two hands. All of you. The elders and the young wives and the slaves and the old men, the strong and the struggling, the ones who have learned to devote themselves to good works and the ones who are only beginning. Grace, all the way down.
Study notes Going deeper
Stand back now and look at the whole letter, because these three short chapters were built as one argument and this is where it closes. Chapter one gave us a young island church with no elders and too many talkers, and Paul insisted that the men who lead must be blameless in the home before they are trusted with the household of God, and that they must hold firmly to the trustworthy message so they can teach it and correct those who oppose it. Truth first, and truth in the hands of men whose lives do not contradict it. Chapter two came down into the ordinary rooms of a congregation, older and younger, men and women, servants under masters, and taught each of them what sound doctrine looks like when it is wearing clothes. And in the middle of it stood the reason for all of it: the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, and it trains us to renounce ungodliness and to live sensibly and righteously and godly in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope. Grace that appeared, and grace that trains. Then chapter three tells us where that grace found us, in the mud of verse three, and what it did there, and it will not let one particle of the credit come back to us. Not by the righteous deeds we had done. According to His mercy. Justified by His grace. Made heirs. And out of that, and only out of that, a people who devote themselves to good works. Three chapters, one movement: God saves by mercy, and the people He saves are eager to do good. Paul said the same thing to Ephesus.
"For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life." Ephesians 2:8–10 (BSB)
Read those three verses beside Titus 3 and you have the whole matter. Saved by grace through faith, not from ourselves, not by works, so that no one can boast, and that is verse five of our chapter word for word in another key. And then, immediately, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, works God Himself prepared in advance, which is verses eight and fourteen. The good works were never the price of the gift. They are the purpose of the gift. God did not save you and then hand you a bill; He saved you and then handed you a life. So if you have been carrying the tired suspicion that God’s kindness toward you depends on how your week has gone, put it down. He saved you when you were foolish, disobedient, enslaved, and hating, and He did it according to His mercy, and the verdict has been entered and the inheritance is in His keeping. And if you have been coasting on that mercy with idle hands, look at verse fourteen once more and go find somebody with a pressing need this week, because the tree that God planted was meant to bear fruit that people can actually eat. Learn the Word, rest your whole weight on His mercy alone, spend yourself on the good works He prepared for you, and give thanks.