Titus 2

Notes

Ver. 1. While therefore so many deluding and deluded persons of corrupt minds and practices surround you on every side, take peculiar care to preach and insist upon such truths and duties as are agreeable to and put honour upon the solid, pure, wholesome, and soul-healing doctrines of the gospel of Christ, and which lay all the professors thereof under the strongest obligations to piety and virtue, of whatsoever sex or station they be. 2. Exhort therefore the more aged Christian brethren to be very watchful, circumspect, and sedate, in their temper and carriage;—to behave with a venerable gravity in their words, actions, deportment, and dress;—to be prudent in their conduct and temperate in eating and drinking;—to be sincere believers of the pure doctrines of the gospel, and to live answerably to them; fervent in love to God, to the saints, and to all men; not peevish, but patient, under weakness, tribulations, and offences. 3. Exhort aged women to be exemplary in their dress and deportment, as becomes the professors of religion and holiness;—not false accusers, slanderers, or backbiters of others;—not inclined or addicted to immoderate drinking of liquors;—but careful instructors of children and others in the solid truths of the gospel and laudable practices of virtue. 4, 5. And let them particularly instruct and encourage young women to be wise, cautiously avoiding everything that savours of lightness or lewdness, and, if married, to love their husbands and children in the most affectionate, endearing, and dutiful manner,—to be discreet, prudent, and obliging in their whole behaviour; quite modest, virtuous, and chaste;—careful and industrious in their attention to their families; of a meek and humble temper;—kindly submissive and obedient to their husbands in everything lawful;—that so God and his gospel may not be reproached as encouraging disorderly practices. 6. In like manner, advise and excite young men professing Christianity to be considerate, chaste, meek, and sober, and to guard against the impetuous, rash, proud, wilful, and frolicsome temper common to youth. 7, 8. And if you would have these things believed and practised by others, be yourself an exact pattern of everything good and beneficial:—and in all your preaching, deliver nothing but the pure and unmixed doctrine of Christ, with a disinterested and single aim at the glory of God and good of souls; with becoming seriousness and gravity, with all simplicity and godly sincerity, and in plain, significant, scriptural, and determinate language,—that none may misunderstand it or be misled by it; that so your most critical, carping, and cavilling enemies may be put to shame, when they can find nothing to object either to your doctrine or practice.—9. And whereas some judaizing teachers attempt to persuade converted slaves that they are not bound to remain in subjection to their heathen masters, be you careful to inculcate on believing servants to continue, as much as ever, and from better principles, obedient to their masters in everything lawful; and to behave towards them in the most courteous, obliging, and diligent manner, cheerfully executing their commands without murmuring or disputing, and never returning any insolent or saucy answer when reproved or ordered to work. 10. Charge them to be strictly honest, never daring to waste, embezzle, or apply to their own use any part of their master's goods, money, victuals, or time, beyond their allowance;—but always faithfully obeying their orders, and doing all they can for their honour and advantage,—that thus they may be a credit to the gospel, and their profession of it, and may even strike conviction into the consciences of their heathen masters, of the excellency, purity, and power of it, to render men virtuous in every station of life.—11. For the gospel of the grace of God, particularly in the New Testament dispensation of it, which so clearly displays the full favour of God, and so powerfully works grace in men's hearts, as it brings glad tidings of deliverance from sin and misery of every form, and of eternal happiness,? and shows the way of obtaining salvation by faith in? Christ, has now shone forth upon all nations, and upon all sorts and ranks of men.—12. Instructing, and gloriously persuading and leading us who believe, that, renouncing, abhorring, and utterly forsaking all infidelity, idolatry, and impiety of every kind, contrary to the first table of the moral law, and all irregular inclinations and desires, which worldly men indulge and gratify, contrary to the second—we should carefully live in all purity and holiness, in a due government of our passions and appetites, and in a just, honest, and benevolent behaviour towards men, and in all acts of public and private devotion towards God, in the exercise of every grace, and celebration of all his ordinances, and observation of all his commandments, as long as we continue in this insnaring world. 13. Always encouraging and animating ourselves, by believing, expecting, and patiently waiting and longing for the perfect, all-comprehending, and everlasting felicity which is the great object of our hopes, and for the glorious appearing of the great and mighty God, even our Lord Jesus Christ, who at the last day will manifest himself on his throne of judgment, in all the majesty, beauty, grandeur, and brightness of his divine and mediatorial glory, and in all the glory of his Father, and of all his holy and surrounding angels, and to be glorified in his saints. 14. And what may we not look for and hope from him who so loved us as to give himself, soul and body, to the most painful ignominious death of the cross, that he might graciously redeem us from all the guilt, pollution, power, punishment, and inbeing of our sins; and sanctify, cleanse, and separate us to himself, as his own loving, precious, and peculiar people, made his by his Father's love, his own sacrifice, and our free and full consent in the day of his grace—that we might, with the most fervent zeal, glorify him in the performance of every duty appointed in his Word, from the best principles and motives, and in the best manner, to the best ends. 15. These are things of such vast importance, and so vehemently opposed or corrupted by the enemies of Christ and his gospel, that you ought, in his name and authority, earnestly to explain and inculcate them, and sharply to confute and reprove the contrary errors and vices. And let your whole conduct be regulated with such prudence, faithfulness, and gravity as may raise you and your office above the contempt of your most inveterate and scornful enemies.

Ver. 4. To love their children. Not such a love as indulges the waywardness of their tempers and all the demands of their appetites, and thereby pampers them into future rebels against parental authority; but such a love as indeed sacrifices the ease of the parent for the comfort of the child, yet will not sacrifice the temporal interests of the child by the neglect of education; nor the interests of its immortal soul by the neglect of 'the nurture and admonition of the Lord.' C.

Ver. 8. Sound speech. Every man is bound carefully to watch over his words—inasmuch as 'for every idle word he shall give (a personal) account in the day of judgment;' but men holding public office in the church are doubly bound, inasmuch as an unguarded word, an unsound speech, is not merely a fault in themselves, but may either mislead their friends, who pay deference to their opinions, or give enemies, 'who watch for their halting,' an occasion to blaspheme. C.

Ver. 10. That they may adorn, &c. The Christian servant who is not himself 'adorned' with dress as his richer superior, may yet, by his cheerful obedience, command of tongue, and unshaken fidelity, 'adorn the gospel' which he professes, and commend it to his master, his children, his guests, and friends—so that, like the captive maid in the house of Naaman, who directed her master to the prophet of Israel and the cure of his leprosy, he may be the means of directing to a greater Prophet, and the removal of a more grievous malady. C.

Reflections.—With gravity, sincerity, faithfulness, authority, and Scripture evidence, ought ministers to preach the gospel, and apply it for exhortation, comfort, or reproof, as there is occasion. Nor can they expect that others will believe, or adversaries be silenced, unless their practice be answerable to their doctrine.—To adorn his profession, and honour the Lord Christ, every professor, according to his age or station in the world, must act up to God's commands himself, and promote holiness in others. The aged should be patterns and teachers of every Christian virtue and work; and the younger heartily disposed to receive their instructions and follow their advice. Sound principles, sober gravity, temperance, chastity, holiness, humility, diligence, honesty, and faithfulness, should deeply mark every Christian character. The grace of God, the tenor and scope of the gospel, the certain appearance of Christ to judgment, his death to redeem us from all iniquity, and the heavenly glory which he has prepared for us, in the strongest manner require and enforce our mortification of every lust, and earnest performance of every holy duty. A gospel of God's redeeming grace, manifested to all ranks and sorts of men, requires universal holiness from all. We cannot manifest grace to be in our heart unless we renounce every known sin. We can have no right hopes of heaven unless we are given to the study of holiness as the preparation for it. We have no marks of being Christ's redeemed while sin is our pleasure and work; and we can have no evidence of being his peculiar people, if, in our temper and conduct, we are conformed to the world that lieth in wickedness.