Titus 3:5

Titus 3:5. Saved is the main word: what precedes describes its source, negative and positive; what follows, its manner, in outer rite and inward influence. ‘Not in consequence of works,' ‘which we (emphatic) did.' The undeserved sovereignty of grace frequent in Paul; see Romans 3:20; Romans 4:2; Galatians 2:16; Galatians 3:2; Philippians 3:9. The means by which individuals realize the salvation which was once for all effected in Christ's cross is regeneration expressed and sealed by baptism.

For ‘washing' read ‘layer,' as in Ephesians 5:26; or the vessel in which the washing took place. This phrase is the great text urged in support of baptismal regeneration. To a convert from heathenism, the bath of baptism marked his formal transition from the old to the new state the second birth by water (John 3:5) of which Jesus spake. None the less the real and spiritual transition which preceded and was only objectively on formally expressed in baptism was the renewal wrought by the Holy Ghost. ‘That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'

Renewing is added to further define ‘regeneration.' The word occurs in Romans 12:2. It describes the moral change which passes on a man when he becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus. Clearly this must with adult heathen have preceded the confession of their faith in baptism. It is only infant baptism which could ever have suggested regeneration in or by the sacrament. Hence, writing to men who had been mostly baptized after their conscious conversion to the Gospel, Paul feared no misapprehension of his language, here or in Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12. ‘It is not the mere outward act or fact of baptism to which we attach such high and glorious epithets, but that complete baptism by water and the Holy Ghost, whereof the first cleansing by water is indeed the ordinary sign and seal, but whereof the glorious indwelling Spirit of God is the only efficient cause and continuous agent' (Alford).