Titus 2:12

Ver. 12. In this verse we have the main point presented to us of the apostle's testimony respecting God's grace the particular aspect under which he here presses it on our regard; and this, it must be remembered, takes quite naturally its hue from the preceding context, in which the Christian life, in its habitual resistance to sin and diligent practising of all moral excellencies, was the great theme. Hence, the saving grace of God comes into consideration as the paedagogic or moulding power, by means of which our naturally wayward and corrupt souls are formed to that higher scheme of life: disciplining us to the end that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we might live soberly, justly, and godlily in this present world. We have no word that exactly corresponds to the παιδεύουσα of the apostle. With classical writers it bore the sense simply of instructing or educating; in which sense, as elsewhere noted (1 Timothy 1:20), the word occurs, once at least, in the New Testament (Acts 7:22). But a deeper meaning came to be infused into the verb and the cognate noun (παιδεία) by the more profound and earnest spirit of the gospel; for, as Trench well remarks, the sacred writers “felt and understood that all effectual instruction for the sinful children of men includes and implies chastening, or, as we are accustomed to say, out of a sense of the same truth, correction.” The expression here, therefore, bears respect to the native tendency of the human heart, as requiring to be chastened and subdued, that it may be delivered from its inherent superfluity of naughtiness, and formed to the pure, upright, and benignant character which becomes the gospel of Christ. And this corrective influence, or internal discipline, is what the grace of God in Christ Jesus comes to effect; but does so, of course, according to its proper nature, less by imposing any conscious restraint, than by infusing and nourishing the desires which breathe after conformity to the will of God. Herein lies the difference between the law and the gospel; yet their common end, the moral aim of the disciplining in question, is expressed first in the negative, then in the positive form: in the former respect it shows itself in a denial of ungodliness and worldly (κοσμικὰς, only occurring once again in New Testament Scripture, Hebrews 9:1) lusts; that is, in a disrelishing and avoiding of those things which tend to dishonour God, and pamper desires and appetites which are of a merely terrene nature. It is impossible, of course, in such things to draw on every side a sharp boundary line between what is allowable and forbidden, for the one will often seem, in actual life, to approach very near to the other; while still, in every real child of grace, and the more always that grace is living and active in his experience, there will never fail to be such a shrinking from the corruptions, and such a reserve even in regard to the common pleasures of the world, as to render his course easily distinguishable from that of those whose “portion is in this life.” We have the same thought as to the renunciation of worldly lusts expressed, and somewhat more strongly, in 1 John 2:15-17.

A positive, however, must go along with this negative; for an active following after the good is the necessary counterpart and complement to a renunciation of the evil; and this the apostle describes as a life marked by three prominent characteristics: that we might live soberly, justly, and godlily, in this present world. We may not say, perhaps, that in these words the apostle intended to mark a threefold distinction of moral duty; but commentators have not unnaturally observed, that they do in fact admit of special application to oneself, one's neighbour, and God. Soberly expresses the self-command and restraint which the Christian should always exercise over his thoughts and actions; justly, the integrity that should regulate all his dealings towards his fellow-men; while godlily or piously indicates the state of mind and conduct he should maintain in his relation toward God. And all these are given as distinctive features of the life he should lead, he should be ever living (for the aorist ζήσωμεν sums it up into one ideal whole), in this present world, notwithstanding that there is so much in it to tempt to a contrary course. Through grace the believer must triumph over all; as the apostle says of himself elsewhere, “I can do all things through Christ strengthening me” (Philippians 4:13).