Titus
GOD NEVER LIES
TITUS 1:1-4
Paul focuses on the great privileges and responsibilities of his life.
We have already seen in both the letters to Timothy how Paul delights to take the conventional opening greeting and make that the means of bringing out important Christian teaching. He does it again here, with an emphasis on the reliability of God. God never lies and so we may and must believe him implicitly.
But as the convention demanded, Paul begins with himself. Nowhere else does he describe himself as “a servant of God,” though he does use the phrase “a servant of Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:1; see also Philippians 1:1). The following expression is far from straightforward. Literally it means something like “according to the faith of God’s elect …,” which the NIV understands as “to further the faith …” The words appear to mean not so much the purpose or the mark of his apostleship as that it is this which is its very essence or characteristic. His apostleship is grounded in and determined by the qualities named. “The faith of God’s elect” preserves a due balance between the divine initiative and the human response. “Their knowledge of the truth” draws attention to the importance of apostleship in promoting advance in the knowledge of what God has revealed.
But the main part of this opening is concerned with “eternal life.” This is spoken of as the object of hope. But this hope, as is usual in the New Testament is not a vague optimism, but the present conviction of something which is not yet but which surely will come. There is, of course, a sense in which eternal life is the Christian’s present possession. But there is another sense in which its full realization is still future, and this is what is being referred to here. Although we do not yet see it, there is no doubt about it, for it rests on the promise of God and God “never lies” (1:2). The promise goes back “ages ago.” The revelation is up to date, in the preaching of the word as it has been entrusted to Paul. There may possibly be a glance at Jesus as the Word (as in John 1:1), but this is not the main thought, which is that God is pleased to reveal himself in the preaching he commits to his apostle Paul. Notice that Titus, like Timothy (1 Timothy 1:2), was a convert of Paul’s (1:4).