Bible Commentaries

Sound in Patience

Titus 2:2

The Apostle Paul has himself been described by a great Biblical student as "Paul the undiscourageable". And, indeed, he is worthy of the name, and there is no better way of studying the significance of his teaching than by watching his own life. He is his own best commentary on his own counsels. His purposes were frequently broken by tumultuous shocks. His plans were destroyed by hatred and violence. His course was twisted here, diverted there, and wrenched a hundred times from its appointed goings by the mischievous plots of wicked men. The little Churches he had founded were in chronic disturbance and unrest. They were often infested with puerilities, and sometimes they were honeycombed by heresies which consumed their very life. And yet how sound and noble his patience! With what fruitful tenderness he waits for his lagging pupils! His very reproofs are given, not with the blind, clumsy blows of a street mob, but with the quiet, discriminating hand of a surgeon. This Titus 2:2

In my very young years I had a gravity and stayed-ness of mind and spirit, not usual in children; insomuch that when I saw old men behave lightly and wantonly towards each other, I had a dislike thereof raised in my heart."

—George Fox's Journal.

A School for Womanhood

Titus 2:4

The suggestion of my text is "that they may teach". That is characteristic of the Bible. It is eminently a teaching book. The word rendered "teach" is rendered in the Revised Version "train". But perhaps its most literal translation would be "school"—"that they may school". This sacred book would put us all to school, and it would keep us there Are young women the only ones who need instruction? The first verse bids Titus 2:6

"I have delivered up my son to you," Cromwell wrote in1649 to the Mayor of Hursley; "and I hope you will counsel him; he will need it; and indeed I believe he likes well what you say and will be advised by you. I wish he may be serious; the times require it." In the next year (1650) he again wrote to the same friend: "I hope you give my son good counsel; I believe he needs it. He is in the dangerous time of his age; and it's a very vain world. O how good it is to close with Christ betimes!—there is nothing else worth the looking after."

Reference.—II:7.—Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p382.

Adorning the Doctrine

Titus 2:10

The universal test of religion is character, and that standard of judgment is a just standard. If the world is to be won for Christ it must be won by the unconscious evangelism of homely virtues and the upright, generous lives of the followers of Christ. Where you have a good life going out in the inspiration and power of Christianity you have an evidence of Christianity. As a sceptic once said: "There is not an argument for Christianity that I do not see through except one. I cannot make out how it was my mother was so good a woman."

I. The life that adorns the Gospel is the real evidence of Christianity. Christ implicitly rested the demonstration of His religion on the conduct of His disciples. The only evidence for Christ is that of Christians. We may treat that thought with effortless familiarity; but it is a wonderfully important thought full of thrust and moment. It means this, that Christians must be better than other men; if not, Christianity breaks down. Most of us are advocates for Christianity without being Christians. "Christian is that Christian does." You may know the truth of Christ, you may feel at times rapturously ecstatic. But what is it all for? All for this, to make us like Christ. Your religious life is not across the seas of far ideals and undiscovered truths—your religious life consists in putting goodness into homely outward shape. There are still men like Bulstrode in Middlemarch, who could not conceive that there was any relation between his business and religion, who thought that "the Lord's cause" had no connection with his shop at all.

II. How are we to be induced to adorn the Gospel of God? A preacher may stand up and say to his congregation "Be good," until the crack of doom. There is nothing more futile. It is not good advice that we need; it is good motive, or momentum to carry us past the place of danger. We need some principle of life, some flow of inspiration, that is large enough to influence the whole nature And that, as I understand it, is the crux of our holy religion. To be a Christian means to be in touch with Christ, to let Christ help us. Live so near to Christ that He has some chance of beautifying your life; submit yourself to the power of His Spirit. He means to be your comrade, your Saviour. But He cannot unless you will. When the Gospel of Christ grips a man's soul it entails the saving of a man's whole life.

—B. J. Snell, The All-Enfolding Love, p129.

References.—II:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No2416. W. L. Watkinson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p284. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Titus 2:13

I fear that this great truth—the coming again of the Lord—is largely a neglected truth.

Since the Lord Jesus Christ departed into the heavens, and men are really touched by matters spiritual, you will find, if you study the history of the great majority of the professing Christians, that they have almost entirely, if not quite, ignored the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as a Person to fulfil a great historical event. They think of that as a merely emotional dream of certain enthusiasts; and if they do admit that He is coming again in glory, they simply think of it as a general idea—that there will be some day a manifestation of judgment and glory; but with the details they have not the slightest possible interest

I. The Second Advent as a Matter of Reason.—I ask you, as a matter of reason, is it likely that the Great High God, Who has, as we are told in the opening of the Epistle to the Titus 2:15

"I met the society [at Norwich] at seven," says Wesley, in his journal for September, 1759 , "and told them in plain terms, that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society, that I knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied it to their hearts: so that many were profited; but I do not find that one was offended."

Reference.—II:15.—H. D. M. Spence, Voices and Silences p9.