_What Titus is to teach on the duties of family life_, _in five particulars:_ (_a_) _old men,_ (_b_) _old women,_ (_c_) _young women,_ (_d_) _young men, and_ (_e_) _slaves,_ 1-10. Titus 2:1. True Christian doctrine is ‘healthy' for the soul, because it is accompanied by practical goodness.... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:2. SOBER is best taken literally; parallel to ‘not given to much wine' in Titus 2:3. Drunkenness was a Cretan failing, and the old were especially liable to it GRAVE, ‘reverend or worshipful' (Wordsworth), misrendered ‘honest' in Philippians 4:8. TEMPERATE, same word as ‘sober' of Titus... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:3. LIKEWISE, for the same moral propriety applies here, modified only by sex. BEHAVIOUR, or deportment, a wide term, covering ‘walk, gesture, countenance, speech, silence' (Jerome). BECOMETH HOLINESS (cf. 1 Timothy 2:10; Ephesians 5:3), befitting the solemnity of a consecrated person. Wo... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:4. To avoid reproach, Titus' exhortations to younger females are to pass through the elder women. TEACH, better ‘school,' so to discipline as to bring one to practical wisdom. The virtues in which young married women need to be schooled follow: the virtues of home life. When first the Gosp... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:6 sums up in the same comprehensive term the peculiar duty of the Christian young man the opposite being the defect of character conspicuous in his class. Also, the special sin of heathenism lay in the excessive indulgence of natural desires, on which heathen philosophy had striven in vain... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:7. To this class Titus belonged; therefore he was to be its model as well as preceptor. ‘The teacher of others should be like a basin which ere it can overflow must first be itself filled from the fountain' (St. Bernard). Specially in his public teaching, which is to exhibit a character sinc... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:8. The substance of public Christian teaching should be so plainly of a ‘healthy' moral tendency as not to lie open to the animadversion of the unbelievers. But by the true reading ‘us' for you at the close, Paul includes all Christians as affording no handle to the enemies of the faith, if... [ Continue Reading ]
_Basis in Christian doctrine for the foregoing admonitions,_ 11-15. Titus 2:11. Christ's work is the APPEARANCE, or literally, epiphany, of that Divine GRACE or ‘favour' to man (cf. Titus 3:4) which had previously been concealed. Grace is the ground of redemption; redemption the manifestation of gr... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:12. The design of the Gospel epiphany of grace was to tutor or discipline men into virtue. The word TEACHING comprehends all methods of training as applied to a child, correction not excluded. God's grace in Christ is pædagogic, disciplinary, practical. Hence the false teachers of Crete were... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:13. The Christian's duty during this present life (world in Titus 2:12 = age or epoch of the world), does not exclude but include a reference to that which is to come. The Christian's hope is another or second ‘epiphany' still future. The first is an epiphany of grace (Titus 2:11) as the sou... [ Continue Reading ]
Titus 2:14. FOR US, on our behalf. The design of Christ's self-offering to death was a moral one to set us free by payment of a ransom-price (see the root text in Matthew 20:28) from iniquity (or sin viewed as lawlessness, comp. 1 John 1:3-4). The principle of lawless living is thought of as a tyran... [ Continue Reading ]