“Lord Jesus, I am weary in Thy work, but not of Thy work. Let me go and speak for Thee once more … seal Thy truth, and then die.”—Whitefield.
FROM St. Paul’s message to Philemon we infer that as speedily as possible after he was set free he visited Ephesus and the cities of the Lycus. Even if he deferred this visit till he had carried out his once–cherished plan of visiting Spain, we know that the moment his destiny was decided he sent Timothy to Philippi, with the intention of following him at no long interval.1 Hence when Timothy rejoined him, probably at Ephesus, he left him there as we have seen to finish the task of setting the Church in order, and himself set out on his promised journey to Macedonia. It is not likely that he felt any desire to revive the gloomy reminiscences of Jerusalem, and to incur a second risk of being torn to pieces by infuriated Pharisees. In that unhappy city a fresh outburst of the spirit of persecution had ended the year before (A.D. 63) in the murder of James the Lord’s brother.2 Soon after the accession of Gressius Florus to the post of Procurator, there were violent disturbances throughout Judæa. The war which culminated in the total destruction of the Jewish polity did not indeed break out till A.D. 66, but the general spirit of turbulence, the deeply seated discontent with the government of Agrippa II., and the threatening multiplication of the Sicarii, showed that everything was ripening for the final revolt.3 We may be sure that when the ship of Adramyttium sailed from Tyre, St. Paul had seen his last of the Holy Land. From Macedonia he doubtless went to Corinth, and he may then have sailed with Titus to Crete.
On the southern shores of that legendary island he had involuntarily touched in the disastrous voyage from Myra, which ended in his shipwreck at Malta. But a prisoner on his way to trial, in a crowded Alexandrian corn–vessel which only awaited the earliest opportunity to sail, could have had but little opportunity to preach the gospel even at the Fair Havens and Lasæa, and we may at once reject the idle suggestion that the Church of Crete had then first been founded. It is probable that the first tidings of Christianity had been carried to the island by those Cretan Jews who had heard the thrilling words of St. Peter at Pentecost; and the insufficiency of knowledge in these Churches may be accounted for in part by these limited opportunities, as well as by the inherent defects of the Cretan character. The stormy shores of Crete, and the evil reputation of its inhabitants even from mythical days, may well have tended to deter the evangelising visits of the early preachers of Christianity; and the indication that the nascent faith of the converts was largely tainted with Jewish superstition is exactly what we should have expected. St. Paul’s brief sojourn in the island with Titus was probably the first serious effort to consolidate the young, struggling, and imperilled Churches; and we can easily imagine that it was the necessity of completing an anxious work, which reluctantly compelled the Apostle to leave his companion behind him. The task could not have been left in wiser or firmer hands than those of one who had already made his influence felt and his authority respected among the prating and conceited sophists of turbulent Corinth. Those who argue that, because Paul had but recently parted with Titus, the advice contained in the letter would be superfluous, are starting a purely imaginary difficulty, and one of which the futility is demonstrated by the commonest experiences of daily life. Objections of this kind are simply astonishing, and when we are told that the instructions given are too vague and commonplace to render them of any value, and that “the pointlessness of the directions must have made them all but worthless to an evangelist,”4 we can only reply that the Christian Church in all ages, in spite of the incessant tendency to exalt dogma above simple practice, has yet accepted the Pastoral Epistles as a manual which has never been surpassed.
From Crete, St. Paul may have returned by Ephesus and Troas to Macedonia, and thence to Dalmatia and Illyricum;5 and we learn from the Epistle to Titus that he was accompanied by several friends, for whom he found the amplest employment in missions to various Churches. He intended to spend the winter at Nicopolis, which, beyond all question, must be the well–known and flourishing city of Epirus, built by Augustus to commemorate his victory at Actium. When he wrote the Epistle to Titus, he was about to send Artemas or Tychicus to him in Crete, to continue the work of organisation there, while Titus is directed to join the Apostle at Nicopolis before the winter comes on.
How little we really know about Titus will be best seen by the theories which attempt to identify him with Titus (or, Titius) Justus (Acts 18:7), with Silas, and even with Timothy! Though he is not mentioned in the Acts—probably because he never happened to be a companion of the Apostle at the same time that Luke was with him—he seems to have been one of the trustiest and most beloved members of the noble little band of St. Paul’s friends and disciples. As he was a Greek by birth, St. Paul, whose convert he was, had chosen to take him to Jerusalem on that memorable visit, which ended in the recognition of Gentile emancipation from the yoke of Mosaism.6 If we were right in the conjecture that the generous self–sacrifice of Titus on this occasion rescued Paul from a grievous struggle, if not from an immense peril, we may imagine how close would have been the personal bond between them. He had special connexions with Corinth, to which he had three times been sent by the Apostle during the troubles of that distracted Church.7 The warm terms in which St. Paul always speaks of him as his brother, and associate, and fellow–labourer, and the yearning anxiety which made him utterly miserable when he failed to meet him in Troas, show that he was no ordinary man; and the absence from this Epistle of the personal warnings and exhortations which are found in those to Timothy, lead us to believe that Titus was the more deeply respected, even if Timothy were the more tenderly beloved. The last notice of him is his visit to Dalmatia during the second imprisonment, and we may feel the strongest confidence that this was undertaken as a special duty, and that he did not voluntarily desert his friend and teacher whom he had so long and faithfully served. The Epistle which St. Paul addresses to him goes over much the same ground as that to Timothy, but with additional particulars, and in a perfectly independent manner. It excited the warm admiration of Luther, who says of it: “This is a short Epistle, but yet such a quintessence of Christian doctrine, and composed in such a masterly manner, that it contains all that is needful for Christian knowledge and life.” The subjects are touched upon in the same easy and natural order as in the other Pastoral Epistles, and the incidental mention of people so entirely unknown in the circle of the Apostle’s friends as Artemas and Zenas, the lawyer, together with the marked variations in the initial and final salutations, are among the many incidental circumstances which powerfully strengthen the argument in favour of its authenticity.
The greeting with which the Apostle opens is somewhat obscure and involved, owing to the uncertainty of the exact meaning of the various prepositions employed. It differs from all other salutations in the phrase “a slave of God,” instead of “a slave of Jesus Christ,” and it is marked by the prominence of the title Saviour, which is applied throughout this Epistle both to God and to Christ.8
“Paul, a slave of God, but an Apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of the elect of God and the full knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, (based) on the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before eternal times, but manifested His word in His own seasons in the preaching with which I was entrusted according to the commandment of God our Saviour—to Titus, my true son after the common faith, grace and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.”
After this solemn greeting he proceeds at once to the many practical directions which are the object of his writing. He left Titus in Crete to finish all necessary regulations, and especially to ordain presbyters in every city, who are to be men of irreproachable character, and well–ordered domestic positions, for a “bishop” must be blameless as God’s steward, not self–willed, not passionate, and with the other positive and negative qualifications which he has already mentioned in the Epistle to Timothy—with the addition that he is to love what is good, and to hold fast the faithful word according to the instruction he has received that he may be able to exhort with healthy teaching and to refute the gainsayers.9
These opponents are described as being disorderly, prating, and self–deceiving Jewish Christians, who for the sake of filthy lucre turn whole families upside down. To these, as to the Cretans in general, St. Paul applies the stinging line of their fellow–countryman Epimenides— “The Cretans are always liars, evil wild beasts, lazy gluttons,”10
—for which reason they must be sharply rebuked, that they may be healthy in the faith, ceasing to heed Jewish myths and the commandments of men who turn away from the truth.11 Among these commandments there seem to have been many distinctions between things clean and unclean, all of which the Apostle sweeps aside in his clear decisive manner by the deep truth that to the pure all things are pure;—whereas nothing is or can be pure to men of defiled mind and conscience, such as these, who, professing knowledge of God, in deeds denied Him, being detestable, and disobedient, and to every good deed reprobate.12
“But speak thou the things which become the healthy teaching.” The keynote of this wholesome teaching is sober–mindedness. Agedmenare to be temperate, grave, sober–minded, sound in love, in faith, in endurance. Aged womenare to show a sacred decorum in demeanour, free from slander and intemperance,13 teachers of what is fair, that they may train the younger women, too, to be sober–minded, ennobling the estimate of their Christian profession by humble, diligent, submissive performance of their home duties. Titus must also exhort young men to be sober–minded, and in all respects he is to set them a pure example of dignity, and faithfulness to the truth. Slaves are to “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things,” by silent obedience and cheerful honesty.
“For God’s grace was manifested bringing salvation to all men, training us to the end that once for all rejecting impiety and all worldly desires, we should live in the present age soberly, and righteously, and godly, expecting the blessed hope and manifestation of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ,14 who gave Himself for us, that He might ransom us from all lawlessness, and purify for Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and rebuke and exhort with all authority. Let no man despise thee.”15
After this swift and perfect summary of the Christian life, alike in its earthly and spiritual aspects, he reverts to necessary subjects for practical exhortation. Naturally turbulent, the Cretans are to be constantly reminded of the duty of submission in all things right and good. Naturally ferocious, they are to be exhorted to meekness of word and deed towards all men. For even so God showed gentleness to us when we were living in foolish and disobedient error, the slaves of various passions, in a bitter atmosphere of reciprocal hatred. “But when”—and here follows another concentrated summary of Pauline doctrine unparalleled for beauty and completeness—
“But when the kindness and love towards man of God our Saviour was manifested, not in consequence of works of righteousness which wedid, but according to His mercy He saved us, by means of the laver of regeneration, and renewal by the Holy Ghost, which He poured upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by His grace we might become heirs, according to hope, of eternal life.”
Faithful is the saying16—and in accordance with it he desires Titus to teach with due insistence, that all who have believed may live up to their profession. This teaching is fair and beneficent, but foolish speculations and discussions, and genealogies and legalist disputes are vain and useless. But if, after one or two admonitions, a man would not give up his own depraved and wilful perversities, then Titus is to have nothing more to say to him.17
The brief letter closes with a few personal messages. Titus may soon expect the arrival of Artemas or Tychicus,18 and on the arrival of either, to take up his work, he is with all speed to join Paul at Nicopolis for the winter. He is also asked to do anything he can to further the journey and meet the requirements of Zenas the jurist,19 and Apollos. And St. Paul hopes that all our people also will learn to follow the example of these kindly services to all who require them, that they may not be unfruitful. “All who are with me salute thee. Salute those who love us in the faith. God’s grace with you all.”
These last three greetings have several points of interest. They show us that Paul, who was soon to be so sadly and unworthily deserted, was still carrying on his manifold missionary activities as one in a band of devoted friends. The fact that they differ in expression from every other closing salutation is a mark of authenticity, because a forger would have been sure to confine himself to a servile and unsuspicious repetition of one of the forms which occur elsewhere. But what does St. Paul mean by the remarkable expression, “let ourpeoplealsolearn to be forward in good works”? It is usually explained to mean “the other believers as well as thou;” but this is obviously unsatisfactory. On the other hand, we have no sufficient data to interpret it of the existence of converts of Apollos forming a different body from those of Paul. Its very obscurity is a sign that the allusion is to some fact which was known to the correspondent, but is unknown to us.
Titus here disappears from Christian history. The rest of his biography evaporates into the misty outlines of late ecclesiastical conjecture scarcely to be dignified by the name of tradition.