Sound Teaching and Christian Living
1 But you are to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching. f 2 Older men g are to be self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, and sound in faith, love, h and endurance. 3 In the same way, older women i are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking. They are to teach what is good, 4 so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, workers at home, kind, and in submission j to their husbands, so that God’s word k will not be slandered.
6 In the same way, encourage the young men l to be self-controlled 7 in everything. Make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching. 8 Your message is to be sound beyond reproach, m so that any opponent will be ashamed, because he doesn’t have anything bad to say about us.
9 Slaves are to submit to their masters n in everything, and to be well-pleasing, o not talking back 10 or stealing, but demonstrating utter faithfulness, so that they may adorn the teaching of God our Savior p in everything.
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, q 12 instructing us to deny godlessness r and worldly lusts s and to live in a sensible, righteous, t and godly u way in the present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope, v the appearing of the glory w of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. 14 He gave himself for us x to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession, y eager to do good works.
15 Proclaim these things; encourage and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.
2:1–5. If the false teachers deny God by their actions (1:16), the faithful teacher must see to the confirming of God’s character in the lives of Christ’s followers (2:1). God’s character is visible where Christ creates people marked by “self-control” (2:2, 5–6, 12), where relationships bear these marks of God’s character (2:2–10), and where the story of Christ’s incarnation and redemptive work forms a people “eager to do good works” (2:11–14).
2:6–8. To younger men, Paul addresses but one command: control yourselves (2:6). As unoriginal as the instruction may appear to us, it would have been altogether countercultural—and exceptionally community-formative—for Cretan young men to commit themselves to control over bodily appetites, avarice, ambition, temper, and tongue. What older women are to be to their younger sisters, Titus is to be to his younger brothers. In the whole of his behavior he is to be an example to them. In both the manner with which he teaches (2:7) and the theological accuracy with which he teaches (2:8), Titus is to point younger men to an intersection of life and doctrine, robbing detractors of a potent point of critique.
2:9–10. Paul loads slaves’ faithfulness in the most basic behaviors (not talking back and not pilfering) with the weightiest of freight. Thus, Paul joins ranks with Jesus in embracing the radically countercultural notion that the most eloquent pulpit is a towel and a basin (Jn 13).
B. Theological grounding: God’s grace and glory (2:11–15). Paul transitions now to the idea that God came not to punish but to save us from our “godlessness and worldly lusts” (2:12). Thus he “has appeared” once in “grace” (2:11). There will also be a future “appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (2:13). To counter the Cretan religious lie that God emerged from humanity, Paul stresses that deity has come down to humanity. Further, it is as one who is already fully divine that Jesus bestows saving benefits—deity is not something conferred on him after the fact.