Titus 2:11-15 meaning

In Titus 2:11-15, Paul launches into a summary of what God has saved us from and what He has saved us to. In verse 10, Paul noted that when bondslaves live righteously, they are “showing all good faith so that they will adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect” (Titus 2:10).

Paul now explains what God our Savior has done for us. This is something Titus knew well, and it probably encouraged him to be reminded of it. It is possible Paul intended Titus to read portions of this letter to the new believers in Crete, if not the entire letter.

Paul says of God our Savior: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men (v 11).

This is a present reality. The grace of God has appeared. It has happened. It has been seen and experienced. The word grace means "favor." The result of God’s favor appearing on earth is that it is bringing salvation to all men (v 11). Salvation means something is delivered from something. It can have different meanings based on context and tenses.

Here, Paul seems to be referring to the salvation that saves us, past tense, from sin and death (the penalty of sin), while also going on to describe it in the present tense, how it saves us from the power of sin right now, on this fallen earth. This salvation has been brought to all men, any who believe in Jesus, the bringer of salvation, when He died on the cross and resurrected from the grave. Thus, the grace of God that has already appeared is Jesus Christ, the God-man who took the form of human flesh and walked among us.

When referring to believers being saved, the various applications can be considered as falling into three categories, which can be thought of as three tenses:

• Past tense: Jesus has delivered all who believe from the penalty of sin, which is separation from His family and being His child. Those who believe are in His forever family (John 3:14-15, 2 Timothy 2:11, 13).
• Future tense: In the future, Jesus will deliver all believers from the presence of sin when He creates a new heaven and earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1-3). Romans 13:11 uses “salvation” in this manner, saying that our salvation gets closer each day that passes from the time we first believed because the context refers to Jesus’s return.
• Present tense: Each day each believer can be delivered from the power of sin—which brings us death and destruction, separating us from our design—by walking in the power of the Spirit (Galatians 5:13-17). It is by taking up our cross daily and following Jesus that we can live as disciples, following His commands, and be overcomers who inherit all things as a reward (Luke 9:23, 2 Timothy 2:12, Revelation 3:21, 21:7).

A major theme in this brief letter is instruction. Paul is instructing Titus on how to instruct the new community of believers in Christ on the island of Crete. The Cretans are having to unlearn their former Pagan, worldly ways, as well as learn not to listen to the hypocrites and false teachers in their midst (Titus 1:10-11, 2:15). Paul explains how the message of God’s grace and salvation are in the process of instructing those who believe in Jesus:

instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age (v 12).

God’s favor in sending Jesus to save us from sin, His life and teaching, is now instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires (v 12). To deny is to reject, to not value or practice, or to send it away without another thought. Both ungodliness and worldly desires go hand-in-hand. To practice ungodliness is to do the things which God disapproves of, to sin, which is to err and act outside of the will of God.

God’s design for us is to live in service to one another—seeking mutual benefit. That is the essence of the second greatest command, which is to love our neighbor as ourselves. And this is the primary thing God wants us to do in honoring the greatest command, which is to love God with all our being (Matthew 22:37-39). Sin is rebelling against God’s design. When we deny ungodliness we refuse to exploit others, and choose to seek their best interest.

Anything ungodly is destructive to us, and can lead us down a path of pain and ruin, because the basic cause-and-effect of sinning is that it results in death and separation (Romans 6:23). Paul wrote in Romans 1:18-28 that when we sin we suffer the negative consequences of sin, which progresses from lust, to addiction, to a loss of mental health.

The negative consequence of sin is imposed on anyone who gives themselves over to the power of sin in their daily life. Believers can be presently saved from this negative consequence through walking in the obedience of faith and denying ungodliness and worldly desires. This is an option for believers because they have access to the resurrection power of Jesus through God’s Spirit.

God’s grace and salvation empower us to walk in faith; this is fortified by God’s doctrine or teaching, which Paul has repeatedly pointed to throughout this letter (Titus 1:9, 2:1, 3, 5, 10). This teaching comes from God, which includes Jesus Christ who is the Son of God. God’s word and the leading of His Spirit show us how to restore our design, and overcome the world. Jesus promises that He will greatly reward those who follow His ways in this manner (Revelation 3:21, 21:7).

The obstacle believers must overcome is worldly desires. These are desires which are found in this world (Proverbs 1:10-19, Psalm 73). To be worldly is to adopt the values of this world. The world leads us to serve self, and be selfishly ambitious. This runs counter to God’s design, and accordingly brings indignation from Him (Romans 2:8). To be righteous is to align with God’s design for us, which is to serve others as we wish to be served.

The world desires us to believe this life is all that matters. It seeks to have us believe that there is no future accountability for what we do here, no God who designed and ordered our existence, and to thus act accordingly to a meaningless, instant-gratification mindset. It places “Me” at the center of all things. Of course, when everyone places themselves at the center, that pits every person against every other person, which in turn leads to violence and coercion. This is the way of Satan, whose desire is to reign over all as a tyrant (Isaiah 14:13-14). God’s design is for humans to silence Satan and demonstrate that service is a superior way to lead (Psalm 8:2, Matthew 20:28).

Worldly people, non-believers, promote evil desires as though they are good—the worship of money, power, the pursuit of sexual immorality. These all tend to lead to exploitation which violates the summary of God’s law, which is to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39, Galatians 5:14, James 2:8). Our sin nature falsely tells us that such desires are worthy of striving after. Although believers are a new creation in Christ, we retain our fallen nature (2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 5:16-17).

That means there is still a part of our old self that urges us to follow these fleshly desires, which, if followed, result in the harm of ourselves and others (Galatians 5:16-21, Romans 7:14-25, 8:1-14, Hebrews 12:1-4, 1 John 1:8-9). But to deny ungodliness and worldly desires is to live in a godly way and follow our deeper, heavenly desires. To look to Christ’s coming kingdom of heaven and what will be valued there, what will be rewarded there, and what will last into eternity (James 1:12, Matthew 5:3-10, 6:19-21, 16:27, Luke 12:33-34, 1 Timothy 6:17-19.)

As Paul puts it here, to deny ungodliness and worldly desires is to live sensibly. This word sensibly or "sensible" has occurred several times in this chapter and once in Chapter 1 (Titus 1:8, 2:2, 5-6). Paul is adamant that Titus model to the Cretans how to live sensibly, sanely, in a way that makes sense and benefits all. The lifestyle of the Cretans before Christ was apparently fairly insane; families were being neglected and the old men and women in the community were prone to drunkenness and mean gossip (Titus 2:1-6).

Paul writes something similar in Romans 12:1-2, where he says in light of all he has taught up until that point, that the logical/reasonable/rational/spiritual (Greek "logikos") thing for believers to do is to be living sacrifices, giving their all to please God in all they do. This is a reasonable/logical conclusion because living as unto the Lord brings immense reward (life) and living according to the world brings loss, slavery, corruption, addiction, madness, and death. When the choice is framed in this (true) manner, the logical/reasonable/sensible answer is to deny ourselves and follow Christ.

The Cretans are called to live righteously and godly in the present age (v 12). The present age simply describes the current world in which we live. To live righteously in this age is to live apart from the fallen world’s system and worldly desires. Perhaps Paul intends to make clear that his instructions are meant to be applied now; godly living is preparation for the age to come. Paul may be closing a door on the potential for someone to twist his words and say, "Paul means we will live this way in heaven, not now."

This world is in a state of failure and decay, and everyone is misguided by the world and their own fallen nature. We are all constantly urged to follow our own ways by exploiting others for pleasure and gain, rather than serving one another and living in harmony. To live righteously and godly is to live as God designed us to live originally, before Adam and Eve chose sin in the Garden of Eden and caused the Fall of Man.

The word translated righteously is "dikaiōs," which appears over eighty times in the New Testament. It is sometimes translated as "just" or "justly" or "uprightly." It means for something to line up with a standard. A "left justified" margin lines up correctly with the assigned column spacing. Justice, or righteousness, is a primary theme of scripture, and the righteousness urged by God is to line up with His standard, which is to our profit.

To live in a godly manner is to align our actions with His standards. It is to live according to His design. It is to value what God values, to do what He wants us to do, to train our minds to think His thoughts, to follow His ways. All of this is for our good, and all that is ungodly and unrighteous brings us harm.

While we are called to live according to God’s standard now, which pits us against the world and inevitably brings us opposition, those who walk in obedience have something amazing to look forward to:

looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus (v 13).

This is the great hope. The story is just beginning. Christ Jesus will come back to earth. When He died and rose again on His first advent, He bore the sins of the world (Colossians 2:14). But He promised He will appear again and reward His people (Revelation 22:12). This is something we are looking for in the future; it has not happened yet (Matthew 24:36-44, John 5:28-29, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

The world is still fallen, we as believers still struggle to follow God and deny sin. But this looking forward is to anticipate a coming future that is our blessed hope (Romans 8:19-25). By keeping our eyes on this future goal we can be encouraged to put our current difficulties in context. In 2 Corinthians 4:17, Paul put the extreme difficulties he was encountering due to his faithful testimony in the context of the future hope and glory Christ promised, and said that it was “momentary” and “light” by comparison.

When Jesus returns, our hope will be fulfilled and we will be blessed by His return. He will establish a forever kingdom where evil is no more, all will live rightly, where nature will be at peace with itself, where no one will suffer want (2 Peter 3:13). It will be a new paradise, but one that cannot be lost as the first was (Daniel 2:44, 7:13-14 Isaiah 11:6-9, Romans 14:17).

Jesus’s future appearing will be full of glory, His glory. The word glory means someone or something’s essence being demonstrated (1 Corinthians 15:40-41). Jesus’s appearing will show exactly who He is. Though during His first time on earth as the human son of Mary His divinity was cloaked, in His second return His might will be revealed. In His first advent Jesus was meek, unwelcomed, and ended with His own people arranging His execution (Matthew 11:29, 8:20, Acts 2:22-23).

Jesus will return showing His true glory, just as Peter, James, and John saw briefly on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-2). Revelation 19 describes this return, and Jesus is pictured as a conquering general leading a heavenly army that defeats Satan and his instruments. This validates that Jesus, as God, is also the Lord of Hosts, which can be translated as “Lord of Armies.”

Paul describes Jesus with three terms: our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus (v 13).

The word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word "Mashiach," or "messiah." It means "God’s anointed one"; His chosen servant. Jesus was anointed to be the Savior of the world, which Paul will describe in greater detail in the following verse. But Paul also makes clear that Jesus was not just a man whom God chose for a task; Jesus is our great God. He is the Son of God, the second member of the Trinity (God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). At the outset of his gospel, the Apostle John unpacks Jesus’s godhood and how He is the mechanism of creation as well as the source of life:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."
(John 1:1-4)

In his letter to the Philippian church, Paul described Jesus before His incarnation, "who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:6-7).

Jesus was in heaven with God, as God, co-existing and co-equal to God the Father. God Himself came to earth on a mission.

Jesus’s anointed mission was to be our Savior:

who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds (v 14).

Jesus gave Himself into the hands of the Romans to be crucified. He was a willing victim whose very purpose for coming to earth was to die and resurrect (John 10:18). This was the plan from the beginning. The result of giving Himself for us was to redeem us from every lawless deed (v 14).

He died to raise us into new spiritual life (Romans 6:4), to redeem us, which is to liberate, to deliver, or to pay a ransom which results in our release from death. We have been released from our captivity to the power of sin and our imprisoned separation from God. We are saved from sin’s penalty of being separated from God and are reconciled to Him.

Though we still have a sin nature goading us to follow our desires to exploit, we have been redeemed from every lawless deed. Those who believe are fully restored to be part of God’s forever family, where nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:31-35). We now have the power to overcome our fleshly desire to act out any deed that is lawless, that violates God’s right standard or law. We have this capacity to overcome because we have been redeemed from sin’s power over us. We are empowered now to walk according to His ways if we follow the indwelling Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:13-17).

Further, this act of redemption through Christ’s death is intended to purify for Himself (Jesus) a people for His own possession. We have been chosen out of this fallen, sinful race to become holy (set apart from the world), living like He modeled, which will purify us. This is commonly called "sanctification" (Hebrews 2:10-13).

This purification will have two phases. First, while living on earth, we can be purified through the suffering of death, as Jesus was purified. We can do this by dying to self, setting aside the flesh, and walking apart from the world. This brings opposition from the world (2 Timothy 3:12). We are to follow Jesus’s example, and give no value to the world’s shame (Hebrews 12:2). In adopting this perspective, we can consider difficulties heaped upon us by the world as a benefit for which we can be grateful (James 1:2). We realize that this purification of our faith is laying up for us great rewards in heaven (James 1:3, 12).

The second stage of purification will take place at the judgment seat of Christ. Paul describes this as being a refining fire that tests our deeds; deeds done in faith, walking in Christ’s commands, will endure. Like gold, silver, and jewels, they are further purified in Christ’s refining fire. There will be great reward for these who are faithful. But deeds done for earthly rewards will combust, and that person will experience loss (1 Corinthians 3:11-17).

This picture of Jesus’s final refinement of His people completes the prophesied messianic refining fire pictured in Malachi 3:2. Jesus will purify for Himself those who are in Him. Jesus will never deny those who are in Him; to do so would be to deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). But Jesus will purify all who are in Him. All believers will be purified. Those who choose to live as faithful witnesses who are purified in this life through a walk of faith will inherit all things and gain the great reward of being “sons” together with Jesus, and will reign with Him as servant leaders in the new earth (Revelation 3:21, 21:7, Hebrews 2:5-10, 2 Timothy 2:12).

We are His own possession; we belong to Him. Just as Paul earlier addressed bondslaves serving their masters (Titus 2:9-10), Jesus is our true master and we are His own possession. This is why Jesus will see that all His possessions are purified. That qualifies them to live in the new earth with Him. There will be no unrighteousness there (2 Peter 3:13).

All who believe are His and cannot be taken away from Him (John 10:28-30). In our journey of sanctification in this life, as Jesus purifies us, we are being trained to be zealous for good deeds. To be zealous is to burn with a desire to see something accomplished. Good deeds are to be our ardent desire in this life, something we passionately and fervently pursue. These good deeds are contrary to our sin nature and the values of the world system. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul explains that we are the result of God’s good work and that He has prepared good work for us to accomplish:

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them."
(Ephesians 2:10)

This is what Titus is exhorted to train into the minds and actions of the Cretan believers. They have been redeemed by their faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection and are now His own possession. Jesus is purifying them and redeeming them from lawless deeds so that their sole purpose in life might be to accomplish the good deeds He has given them to do.

Paul concludes this section with a strong commendation of Titus’s authority in this situation:

These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you (v 15).

Paul instructs Titus that These things which he has written are what Titus should speak and exhort to the Cretans. Though this is a personal letter, it was probably meant to be read to the Cretan churches as well. More importantly, it was to be acted on.

Titus is told to speak Paul’s instructions to his flock. He is to exhort (Greek, "parakaleō") the Cretans. "Parakaleō" is related to the job title Jesus assigned to the Holy Spirit when He warned the disciples He would go to Heaven, but would send a "paraklétos," a "helper" (John 15:26-27). Titus is to act like a helper to the Cretans, standing beside them to comfort, instruct, encourage, strengthen, and even urge them to do the things which Paul has written.

Titus is also deputized to reprove the Cretans with all authority. He must call out sinful behavior and correct it. He is like a father training unruly children to behave themselves. And he is to do so with all authority, to the extent that Paul tells him to Let no one disregard him.

Titus is to be insistent. He is to persevere in striving for the truth. He is not to merely speak his piece so that the new believers will take it into consideration. His purpose is not to share his opinion and then leave them alone. He is up against false teachers and corrupt individuals who are hurting Cretan families and leading people astray (Titus 1:10-16). He is to strive and insist on being heard.

Paul does not want anyone to ignore Titus or treat him as just another person trying to gain influence. Titus is in charge. He is their interim chief elder, appointed by Paul to establish a body of ruling elders, set the Cretans on the right path, and model to them how to walk it (Titus 1:5-9, 2:7-8). Titus has all authority given him by God’s Apostle, Paul, who was tasked by Jesus Christ Himself (Galatians 1:1, Acts 26:15-18).

In the following and final chapter, Paul will conclude with more descriptions of how the Cretans are to now live, contrasting it with the ways unbelievers live (a category in which Paul includes himself, before he believed in Christ).