For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived. — Better rendered, For we were once ourselves foolish, disobedient, going astray. Surely, the Apostle argues, Christians can never refuse obedience to one in authority, or decline to be meek, courteous, kind, and forbearing to their neighbours, because, forsooth, they deem the magistrate in authority or their neighbours idolators, and therefore outside the pale of God’s mercy and their courtesy; for remember, writes St. Paul, we were once (not so long ago) ourselves in their condition. We once needed mercy our selves. This strong appeal to Christians, by the memory of their past, by the memory of what they once were, must have gone home to one like Titus, himself of a Gentile family, and most probably nurtured in idolatry. It would, no doubt, be repeated with strange, touching earnestness, would this argument of St. Paul by Titus when he spoke to the assembly of the Cretan Christians. We were once ourselves “foolish,” that is, without understanding what was true; and “disobedient,” that is, unwilling, indisposed, to do what was right; “deceived,” or rather going astray (errantes), wandering away from the narrow road which leads to life.
Serving divers lusts and pleasures. — This is the service we served in the old past days of our sin and shame, while we were “disobedient” to what was right and pure. We were obedient to, we were “serving” as slaves, many an impure lust, many a wrongful pleasure — for the lusts and pleasures to which St. Paul referred were those of the people with whom for the moment the Apostle was classing himself. The pleasures of these partly Greek, partly Asiatic peoples consisted, indeed, in the wanton satisfaction of the lusts of the flesh; their shameless revellings were scarcely covered with their thin and flimsy veil of beauty and false refinement.
Living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. — These pleasure-loving, lust-indulging ones envied each one his neighbour the good things he possessed; and thus we — for we, remember, were once of this number-once spent our lives in this atmosphere of hate, hating others with a jealous dislike, hated ourselves for the same reasons. Shall we then — once like them — now refuse all sympathy to these poor souls still left in ignorance and sin?