Titus 1:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Paul, a servant of the one living and true God In some of his other epistles, Paul calls himself a servant of Jesus Christ; but this is the only one in which he calls himself a servant of God: an appellation which some think he took because the Judaizing teachers in Crete affirmed that he had apostatized from God, by receiving into his church the uncircumcised Gentiles, and thereby freeing them from obedience to the law of Moses, as a term of salvation. And an apostle of Jesus Christ By this title he distinguishes himself from other pious and holy men, who were all servants of God; and asserts his apostleship, not to raise himself in the estimation of Titus, but to make the false teachers in Crete, and all in every age who should read this letter, sensible that every thing he ordered Titus to inculcate was of divine authority. According to the faith of God's elect That is, God's true people; the propagation of which faith was the proper business of an apostle. And the acknowledging of the truth That is, the doctrine of the gospel here termed the truth, to distinguish it from the errors of heathenism, and the shadows of the Mosaic law; and because it teaches the true, and the only true way of salvation for Jews and Gentiles; which is after godliness Which in every point agrees with and supports the true, vital, spiritual worship and service of God; and indeed has no other end or scope. These two verses contain the sum of Christianity, which Titus was always to have in his eye.