For what end Titus was left in Crete. How they that are to be chosen ministers, ought to be qualified. The mouths of evil teachers are to be stopped: and what manner of men they are.
[Date uncertain.]
IN the inscription of this epistle, St. Paul asserted his apostleship, not with a view to raise himself in the estimationof Titus, but to make the false teachers in Crete, and all in every age who shall read this letter, sensible that every thing he ordered Titus to inculcate was of divine authority, Titus 1:1-2.—And by calling Titus his genuine son by the common faith, he insinuated to the Cretans, not only that he had been converted by his instrumentality, but that he was a teacher of the same grace, and of the same holydispositions, with himself, and as such he gave him his apostolical benediction, Titus 1:3-4.—Next, he puts Titus in mind that he had left him in Crete, to ordain elders in every city where churches had been planted, Titus 1:5.—And to direct him in that important business, he described to him the character and qualifications necessary in bishops and deacons, that ordaining to these offices none but persons of that description, they might be able both to instruct the people, and to confute gainsayers, Titus 1:6-9.—especially those of the circumcision in Crete, whose character the apostle explained, Titus 1:10.—and whose mouths he told him it was necessary to stop, because they subverted whole families, by teaching the efficacy of the Jewish sacrifices and purifications to obtain pardon for sinners, Titus 1:11.—Wherefore, the apostle ordered Titus sharply to reprove both the teachers and the people who held such doctrines, and to charge them to give heed no longer to Jewish fables and precepts of men, calculated to support that pernicious error; particularly the precepts concerning meats and sacrifices, taught by men who turned away the truth, when it offered itself to them, Titus 1:13-14.—Withal, to give the faithful an abhorrence of such teachers, the apostle observed, that both their understanding and their conscience were polluted, Titus 1:15.—They professed to know God, but in works they denied him, Titus 1:16.
TITUS.] This may be called "An epistle to the Cretans," as well as to Titus; for the apostle meant not only to instruct Titus, but also to furnish him with a rule to lay before the Cretans, to which he might appeal, when ever unworthy and unqualified persons attempted to intrude into the episcopal or ministerial office. Titus was a Greek. St. Paul took him with him to Jerusalem, to the great council held there in the year 49. And as Titus was of Gentile parents, St. Paul would not suffer him to be circumcised, that he might not abridge the liberty of the Gentile converts. Some years after this, St. Paul dispatched him to Corinth, to bring him an account of the state of that church, and afterwards sent him thither again, to hasten the collection for the poor Christians in Judea. After this, we hear no more of him till he is mentioned in this epistle, as having been with St. Paul in Crete. This epistle, according to Dr. Lardner,was written toward the end of the year 56, while St. Paul was in Macedonia, or near it. But Michaelis and others think it was more probably written in St. Paul's last progress through the Asiatic churches, between his first and second imprisonment at Rome; though they are not able to determine the precise year. Titus had been left at Crete, to settle the church which St. Paul had probably established there in his first journey to Rome, and afterwards: Acts 27:8. Titus 1:5. The churches in Crete had not hitherto any bishops and ordained ministers; Titus was to appoint them; but he was to be upon his guard against some of the circumcision, who aspired to ecclesiastical offices. The island of Crete was the parent of Roman and Greek idolatry; and the Cretans so far excelled other nations in inventing gods, that they were called the LIARS. They were also distinguished for unnaturalvices, and a spirit of sedition. The Cretan converts to Christianity were of course obliged to forsake idolatry, and the worship of images; but as the Cretans were Egyptians by descent, and had long intermixed the whims of Egyptian philosophy with Judaism, no church was in greater danger of adopting the absurd and heathen genealogies of the Eones: hence St. Paul warns them against all these errors, but particularly against those of the Judaizing teachers, who endeavoured to corrupt the purity of the gospel.