Titus 3:4-7 meaning

Titus 3:4-7 presents the gospel as a reminder to Titus and the Cretan believers of the immense mercy and love God has for us in how He has saved us from sin and made us into new creations. Previously, Paul listed final instructions of behaviors to teach the young Cretan believers, while reflecting on how sinful and hateful men are apart from Christ.

Paul once again points to what it was that saved him, Titus, and all those who believe from malice, envy, and hatred:

But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us (vs. 4-5a).

In the previous chapter, Paul wrote in a similar rhythm, where he contrasted godly behavior with sin, and then praised “our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” who brought God’s favor and rescue from our sinfulness, instructing us how to live righteously (Titus 2:11-14).

Here again, Paul contrasts godly behavior with sin, and then doubles down on how Jesus saved us from our sin. It seems Paul wanted this letter to be read by Titus to the Cretans, and is emphasizing Jesus’s godhood and role as a savior to remind the Cretans of their new life as believers.

This was especially important because Titus was in the process of leading the Cretans toward the truth of the gospel and away from false teachers, “rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers,” who were “upsetting whole families” while boasting of being spiritually mature, but in reality were shamelessly sinning—“detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed” (Titus 1:10-16).

In the following verses, Paul demonstrates how the Triune God works in separate roles together to accomplish the plan of salvation for humankind.

He describes the reason why God the Son came to earth: it was because of God the Father’s kindness. We see God’s kindness on display many times while Jesus walked the earth, where He took pity on the wretched and the lost (Matthew 14:14, 15:32, 20:34; Mark 1:41, 6:34, 8:2, Luke 7:13, 10:33, 15:20), showing compassion:

“Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”
(Matthew 9:36)

This was God’s motivation before He came to earth; because of His kindness and His love for mankind,  Jesus appeared in the sight of men, lived a life among His creation, and He saved us through His death on the cross and resurrection from the grave: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

This motive of love is taught again and again in the gospels and the epistles. God has great love for mankind (Romans 5:6-8, 8:35-39, Ephesians 2:4-7, 3:17-19, Titus 3:4-7, 1 John 3:1, 4:16-19). It was because God loved the world so much that His Son appeared (Titus 2:11) and paid the penalty for our sins. The Apostle John writes that “the love of God was manifested” when Jesus was sent to earth (1 John 4:9-10). Jesus was God’s love appearing in person, visible, manifest, and on a mission to accomplish His plan to save us. He saved us because He has compassion for us.

Jesus, as God, “emptied Himself” by setting His divinity aside and becoming a human (Philippians 2:7). Jesus did this to please His Father by doing His will (Hebrews 10:7). The Father asked Jesus to die for us because of His great love for us (John 3:16). And, in doing His Father’s will, Jesus’s name, as a human, was lifted above all names (Philippians 2:9-10).

Paul refers to God the Father as God our Savior, and in verse 6 he calls Jesus Christ our Savior. This (and verse 5) shows that God saves us through all three of the persons of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and further highlights the truth that Jesus was and is also God.

The reason Jesus was put to death was because He claimed to be God (John 5:17-18, 10:30-33). Jesus was God’s Messiah, His anointed servant whom the Jews were expecting to come, but they did not expect that He would be God Himself, or that He would come to die for our sins. In trying to punish Him for claiming to be God, they helped carry out the will of God (Acts 4:27-28). Jesus came to die (Matthew 20:28, John 10:17-18). Thus, by His love and kindness, He saved us.

There are three ways in which Jesus saved us, saves us, or will save us. These three applications of salvation can be understood in three categories and three tenses:

Past tense: Jesus has saved all who believe in Him from the penalty of sin, which is separation from His family and being His child. Believers are in His forever family (John 3:14-15, 2 Timothy 2:11, 13).
Future tense: One day, 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, starting from when we first believed, because the context refers to Jesus’s return.
Present tense: Each day, now, in this life, each believer can be delivered from the power of sin through walking in the power of God’s Spirit. Sin results in death and destruction, separating us from our design. But by walking in the power of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:13-17), we are saved from sin’s power. It is by taking up our cross daily and following Jesus that we can live as disciples, obeying His commands, and be overcomers who inherit all things as a reward (Luke 9:23, 2 Timothy 2:12, Revelation 3:21, 21:7).

Paul is careful to clarify what it is that saved us from the penalty of sin. Much of this letter has been written to instruct the Cretan believers how to behave, what deeds they should do. But it is not our deeds that save us from the penalty of sin:

He saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit (v. 5).

This was and is a point of misunderstanding for believers in Christ. The notion that our deeds which we have done in righteousness play a role in earning our eternal destiny is false. We are not forgiven of our sins and made right in the sight of God if we do good deeds, if we exhibit righteousness.

Since we are humans with sin natures, nothing we do can wash out the stain of our corrupted state (Ephesians 2:1-5). Only God can cleanse that stain. Apart from Christ, we are in a condition of separation from God. We have fallen away from Him, and we cannot make our way back on the basis of deeds.

Paul’s explanation that He saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness is self-evident; if our deeds saved us, then it would not be Jesus who saved us, it would be we who saved us.

A drowning man who swims to shore has saved himself, and in some sense he was not even drowning. But when a lifeguard pulls a drowning man up out of the water and breathes life back into him, no effort from the drowning man contributed to him being saved. Left alone, a drowning man will drown and die. It was the outside actor—the lifeguard—who intervened and saved him from death.

It was according to Jesus’s mercy that He saved us. The word mercy is translated from the Greek word, “eleos,” which appears frequently in scripture to explain God’s actions toward us. “Eleos” is sometimes translated as “compassion.” It is tied to the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind which Paul described earlier. God looks on our fallen, sinful condition from which we cannot escape and pities us. He wants to restore us to our original state of sinlessness and peace.

This is why humans are so often described as being “lost,” or “sick,” or like defenseless sheep in need of protection and guidance (Matthew 9:12-13, Mark 2:17, 6:34, Isaiah 1:5-6, 53:6, Psalm 23:1, Luke 19:10, 1 Peter 2:25, Ezekiel 34:5-6). God wants to rescue us from death and separation. We cannot earn our way out of having a sinful nature. We cannot do enough good to cancel out the bad. Jesus came to cancel our unpayable debts (Colossians 2:14).

He is as just as He is merciful (Deuteronomy 32:4, Isaiah 30:18, Ecclesiastes 3:17). To satisfy justice required payment for our sins (Ephesians 1:7, Hebrews 9:22). He did this for us at His own expense, offering Himself as a sacrifice (Hebrews 9:12). Jesus became a curse for us and spread the blessing promised to Abraham to all peoples (Galatians 3:13-14).

It is according to His mercy that God acted to save us. The way in which He saves us is described as by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. The word regeneration is translated from the Greek “palingenesia.” The word “palin” means “anew” or “again” and “genesia” means “source” or “birth.” It is similar to Christ’s description to the confused pharisee Nicodemus that man must be “born again” to see God’s kingdom (John 3:5-8).

Paul describes our regeneration as coming by way of a washing. We are washed, or more literally bathed or baptized into His righteousness. The picture is of something dirty that is dunked into a cleansing bath and raised out of the bath in a state of new cleanliness.

When we believe in Jesus as our savior, we experience this spiritual washing of regeneration (“palingenesia”). Something covered in dirt is not made of dirt, for the dirt is only on the surface of that thing, and once removed, the thing is restored to what it truly is. However, when we are spiritually washed clean of our sins, we are made into something new. We are born again into a new life. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul describes this process as God making believers into a new creation in Christ.

The history of humankind is one long detour from God’s will. We were created as perfect creatures in a perfect environment, but through the choice to sin, we fell. With us the world fell as well. God is in the process of restoring us back to His original intent, and to something even better.

God is doing more than just restoring us to the same original innocent condition that Adam and Eve experienced before sinning. He is making us into something new so that we can fulfill our original purpose without ever falling away again. This washing of regeneration brings us out of the bath water as a new thing, a new creation. Paul pairs the word regeneration with the word renewing (Greek, “anakainōsis”). This word demonstrates that we are made better than before.

In the analogy of a drowning man (us) who is brought safely to shore by the lifeguard (Jesus), it is as though after being rescued from drowning, the drowning man is restored to even greater health and strength than before, so that he can never drown again. God is fixing us up to a better state, a better condition, raising us from death not just to life, but to life that will never end.

The washing of regeneration and renewing happens by the Holy Spirit. While Jesus is the one who washes us, the Holy Spirit is in some sense the soap in the bath that cleanses us. We can see this throughout the Book of Acts, where people come to faith and immediately receive the Holy Spirit to dwell in them, sometimes exhibiting His presence by being empowered to speak in foreign languages to praise God (Acts 2:1-4, 10:44-46, 19:5-6).

The washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit was prophesied about in Ezekiel 36:25-27:

“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

Paul draws the lines connecting the Spirit to Jesus: whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior (v. 6). The Spirit is He whom was poured out upon us. The language of bathing and washing continues, as though the Spirit was poured out upon us like a pitcher of water for cleansing.

The He who poured out the Spirit is God, apparently the Father, because Paul then ties together this picture by concluding that it was through Jesus Christ our Savior that the Spirit was poured out. This verse is a picture of the Trinity—God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three persons in one God, and the roles they take.

God the Father poured out God the Spirit through God the Son. It was because of Jesus Christ our Savior that we are able to receive the Spirit. Upon belief in Jesus Christ our Savior, the Spirit is poured out upon us (Acts 2:38, Ephesians 1:13). Paul uses the adjective richly to describe the abundance and generous excess with which God gifts us with His Spirit. He has poured Him out upon us richly, not sparingly or meagerly.

The Holy Spirit indwelling each believer acts as a Helper to us. He was promised by Jesus to help the Apostles remember Christ’s teachings and to know the right words to say (Luke 24:49, John 14:16-17, 26, 15:26, 16:7). He empowered them to perform miracles. He indwells all believers, seals us, and lives in us as a guarantee of our future entrance into God's presence when we die and pass to the next life (Ephesians 1:13-14). His presence in our hearts is a metaphorical promissory note of future deliverance into God’s kingdom (Romans 13:11).

The Spirit encourages us, He gives us strength as He leads us toward living rightly before God and rejecting sin in our daily life choices (Galatians 5:18, Romans 8:14, 26, Ephesians 3:16, Philippians 2:1). Though Jesus returned to Heaven for a time, God has remained with us in the person of the Holy Spirit.

In the Old Testament, only certain individuals were indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and for limited periods of time—the Spirit would leave them, usually due to disobedience (1 Samuel 18:12, Psalm 51:11, Isaiah 63:10). But now, because of Jesus Christ our Savior making those who believe righteous in the sight of God, the Spirit remains with those who believe, and will not leave us.

In John 16:7, Jesus told the disciples it would be to their advantage for Him to leave, because if He did not leave, “the Helper”—referring to the Holy Spirit—would not come. The inference is that believers are better off with the Holy Spirit than with Jesus being on earth. This makes sense given that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to empower each believer with the resurrection power of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is always leading us, always advocating for us to follow God’s will. He is always resisting the flesh, and encouraging us not to follow the flesh (Galatians 5:17).

But the flesh is always advocating as well. This battle between the flesh and Spirit rages in our mind, in our soul. The Spirit can be quenched if we persist in deliberate sin (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22), if we listen to and yield to our flesh.

It is our choice whether to walk in the Spirit or the flesh. The Holy Spirit is with us, having been richly poured out upon us, first washing us with regeneration and renewal, then persisting as our Helper, our Intermediary (Romans 8:26-27), giving us strength and direction to become more like Jesus each day we choose to obey Him and bear His fruit (Philippians 2:5-10, Galatians 3:27, 5:16-17, 22-25). On a daily basis, when we walk in the power of the Spirit, we are saved/delivered from the adverse consequences of sin.

Paul concludes this reminder of the Trinity’s work and role in saving us from the penalty of our sin:

so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (v. 7).

God’s grace is His favor. God gives His favor for His own reasons. As we see in 1 Peter 5:5, God “gives grace to the humble.” This means that sometimes God grants His favor to believers, rewarding them for humility. But that is because God decided to do so. God’s favor is never given because it can be demanded. There is no standard by which anyone can say to God “You must reward me because I met this standard.” God is the standard.

In the case of eternal salvation, God grants His favor to us simply because He loves us (John 3:16). And we receive that salvation merely by faith. We have only to trust in Jesus to receive the gift of God’s grace, to redeem us from sin.

His grace has justified us in His sight. Jesus’s sacrifice paid for our sins, once and for all (Hebrews 9:12). We are declared righteous by faith, even as Abraham was declared righteous because of His faith (Romans 4:3, 5). Though we are sinful and separated from God, and cannot regenerate ourselves, God looked upon us with favor when He sent His Son to die for us.

We are justified in God’s sight, declared righteous in God’s accounting, because of His perfect Son’s payment of our sin and His resurrection life which He gives to those who believe (Romans 5:1, 8:29, 1 Corinthians 2:16, 2 Corinthians 5:21).

Now, being justified by His grace we would be made heirs. There are two kinds of inheritance spoken of in the New Testament, those that are conditional and those that are unconditional. Paul delineates between these two inheritances in Romans 8:17-18, that believers are heirs of God (unconditional) and also heirs who share Christ’s inheritance, with a conditional “if” placed to indicate that this inheritance is received only if we suffer the world’s rejection and overcome it as Christ did. To be an heir of God, where reconciliation with God is our inheritance, is unconditional. He is God the Father. All believers in Jesus are made His children, and that is an unconditional gift (Romans 11:29).

Another way to look at this inheritance as heirs is to view it through the lens of Israel. God granted the land of Israel to Abraham’s descendants as a promise (Genesis 15:18). But the first generation coming out of Egypt was required to possess their inheritance through a walk of faith by crossing the Jordan River and taking the land. The first generation refused, and therefore did not possess their inheritance. God did not reject them; God was their inheritance notwithstanding their refusal to walk in faith. As God made clear, He chose Israel because He loved them and their fathers (Deuteronomy 7:7-8).

Hebrews 3:12-19 uses the example of the first generation’s lack of faith in God’s promise to make the point to New Testament believers that we too can fail to possess the reward of our inheritance if we fail to walk in faith:

“For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.”
(Hebrews 3:14)

To be a partaker with Christ is to share in His inheritance and reign with Him. Although God is always our inheritance, because we have been made righteous in His sight through Christ, to possess a full reward of our inheritance requires a walk of faith.

To share the inheritance of Christ will mean to reign with Christ in His kingdom. This is a great reward for those who are faithful witnesses who do not fear rejection, loss, or death from the world. To be “glorified with Him” is to share His reign, to “enter into the joy” of our Master and be put “in charge of many things” (Matthew 25:21). In Revelation, Jesus says He wants to reward believers (His servants) who overcome as He overcame by sharing His throne of authority with them (Revelation 3:21).

Here in Titus 3, Paul is describing the inheritance of eternal life which is received by God’s grace. Verse 7 can also be translated being justified by His grace we would be made heirs “of eternal life according to hope.” We will receive eternal life when we die, because we will go to be with God and live forever with Him. This is what we put our hope in. This is a future we do not yet have.

Paul describes this same hope in his letter to the Romans,

“For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”
(Romans 8:24-25)

This hope of eternal life was a comfort to Paul. It should be a comfort to all who believe, because no matter what we suffer in this life, and regardless of our failures, at its end we will go to a forever home and live in harmony with our Creator. Paul, who suffered greatly during his life, desired above all to be with the Lord Jesus:

"Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord."
(2 Corinthians 5:6-8)

We are called to live active lives of service and faithfulness in this life (Ephesians 6:6, Romans 12:1, 1 Peter 2:16 Galatians 5:13), just as Jesus did (Matthew 20:26-28, Luke 22:27). But we should anticipate what we cannot yet see what we hope for, which is the essence of faith (Hebrews 11:1). Just as Jesus endured the rejection of this world with His eyes set on the joy of sitting down at His Father’s right hand in the glory of Heaven (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, Hebrews 12:2) so should we be faithful stewards that we might enter into the joy of our Master, and be rewarded by being given great responsibilities in His kingdom (Matthew 25:21).