Titus 2

Titus 2:1

While therefore so many deluding and deluded persons of corrupt minds and practices surround you on every side, take peculiar care to preach, and insist upon, such truths and duties as are agreeable to, and put honour upon, the solid, pure, wholesome, and soul-healing, doctrines of the gospel of Christ, and which lay all the professors thereof under the strongest obligations to piety and virtue, of whatsoever sex or station they be

Titus 2:2

Exhort therefore the more aged Christian brethren to be very watchful, circumspect, and sedate, in their temper and carriage;—to behave with a venerable gravity in their words, actions, deportment, and dress;—to be prudent in their conduct, and temperate in eating and drinking;—to be sincere believers of the pure doctrines of the gospel, and to live answerably to them;—fervent in love to God, to the saints, and to all men; not peevish, but patient under weakness, tribulations,—and offences

Titus 2:3

Exhort aged women to be exemplary in their dress and deportment, as becomes the professors of religion and holiness;—not false accusers, slanderers, or backbiters of others;—not inclined or addicted to immoderate drinking of liquors;—but careful instructors of children and others in the solid truths of the gospel and laudable practices of virtue. 4, 5. And let them particularly instruct and encourage young women to be wise, cautiously avoiding every thing that savours of lightness or lewdness; and, if married, to love their husbands and children in the most affectionate, endearing, and dutiful manner;—to be discreet, prudent, and obliging, in their whole behaviour;—quiet, modest, virtuous, and chaste;—careful and industrious in their attention to their families;—of a meek and humble temper;—kindly submissive and obedient to their husbands in every thing lawful;—that so God and his gospel may not be reproached as encouraging disorderly practices

Titus 2:6

In like manner, advise and excite young men, professing Christianity, to be considerate, chaste, meek and sober, and to guard against the impetuous, rash, proud, wilful, and frolicsome, temper common to youth. 7, 8. And, if you would have these things believed and practised by others, be yourself an exact pattern of every thing good and beneficial:—and in all your preaching, deliver nothing but the pure unmixed doctrine of Christ, with a disinterested and single aim at the glory of God and good of souls; with becoming seriousness and gravity, with all simplicity and godly sincerity, and in plain, significant, scriptural, and determinate, language,—that none may misunderstand it, or be misled by it; that so your most critical, carping, and cavilling enemies may be put to shame, when they can find nothing to object either to your doctrine or practice

Titus 2:9

And, whereas some judaizing teachers attempt to persuade converted slaves that they are not bound to remain in subjection to their Heathen masters, be you careful to inculcate on believing servants to continue, as much as ever, and from better principles, obedient to their masters in every thing lawful; and to behave towards them in the most courteous, obliging, and diligent, manner, cheerfully executing their commands without murmuring or disputing, and never returning any insolent or saucy answer when reproved or ordered to work

Titus 2:10

Charge them to be strictly honest; never daring to waste, embezzle, or apply to their own use, any part of their masters’ goods, money, victuals, or time, beyond their allowance;—but all ways faithfully obeying their orders, and doing all they can for their honour and advantage,—that thus they may be a credit to the gospel, and their profession of it, and may even strike conviction into the consciences of their Heathen masters, of the excellency, purity, and power, of it, to render men virtuous in every station of life

Titus 2:11

For the gospel of the grace of God, particularly in the New Testament dispensation of it, which so clearly displays the free favour of God, and so powerfully works grace in men’s hearts, as it brings glad tidings of deliverance from sin and misery of every form, and of eternal happiness, and shews the way of obtaining salvation by faith in Christ, has now shone forth upon all nations, and upon all sorts and ranks of men

Titus 2:12

Instructing, and effectually determining and obliging, as who, believe, that, renouncing, abhorring, and utterly forsaking, all infidelity, idolatry, and impiety, of every kind, contrary to the first table of the moral law, and all irregular inclinations and desires, which wordly men indulge and gratify, contrary to the second,—we should carefully live in all purity and holiness in a due government of our passions and appetites, and in a just, honest, and benevolent, behaviour towards men, and in all acts of public and private devotion towards God, in the exercise of every grace, and celebration of all his ordinances, and observation of all his commandments, as long as we continue in this ensnaring world

Titus 2:13

Always encouraging and animating ourselves by believing, expecting, and patiently waiting and longing for the perfect, all-comprehending, and everlasting, felicity which is the great object of our hopes,—and for the glorious appearing of the great and mighty God, even our Lord Jesus Christ, who at the last day will manifest himself on his throne of judgment, in all the majesty, beauty, grandeur, and brightness, of his divine and mediatorial glory, and in all the glory of his Father, and of all his holy and surrounding angels, and to be glorified in his saints

Titus 2:14

And what may we not look for and hope from him, who so loved us as to give himself, soul and body, to the most painful ignominious death, of the cross, that he might effectually redeem us from all the guilt, pollution, power, punishment, and in-being of our sins; and sanctify, cleanse and separate, us to himself, as his own special, precious, and peculiar people, made his by his Father’s gift, his own purchase, and our free and full consent in the day of his power,—that we might with the most fervent zeal, glorify him in the performance of every duty appointed in his word, from the best principles and motives, and in the best manner, to the best ends

Titus 2:15

These are things of such vast importance, and so vehemently opposed or corrupted by the enemies of Christ and his gospel, that you ought, in his name and authority, earnestly to explain and inculcate them, and sharply to confute and reprove the contrary errors and vices. And let your whole conduct be regulated with such prudence, faithfulness, and gravity, as may raise you and your office above the contempt of your most inveterate and scornful enemies

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. II.—With gravity, sincerity, faithfulness, authority, and scriptural evidence, ought ministers to preach the gospel, and apply it for exhortation, comfort, or reproof, as there is occasion. Nor can they expect that others will believe, or adversaries be silenced, unless their practice be answerable to their doctrine.—To adorn his profession, and honour the Lord Christ, every professor according to his age or station in the world, must act up to God’s commands himself, and promote holiness in others. The aged should be patterns and teachers of every Christian virtue and work; and the younger heartily disposed to receive their instructions, and follow their advice. Sound principles, sober gravity, temperance, charity, holiness, humility, diligence, honesty, and faithfulness, should deeply mark every Christian character. The grace of God, the tenor and scope of the gospel, the certain appearance of Christ to judgment, his death to redeem us from all iniquity, and the heavenly glory which he has prepared for us, in the strongest manner require and enforce our mortification of every lust, and earnest performance of every holy duty. A gospel of God’s redeeming grace, manifested to all ranks and sorts of men, requires universal holiness from all. We cannot manifest grace to be in our hearts unless we renounce every known sin. We can have no right hopes of heaven, unless we are given to the study of holiness as the preparation for it. We have no marks of being Christ’s redeemed while sin is our pleasure and work. And we can have no evidence of being his peculiar people, if, in our temper and conduct, we are confirmed to the world that lieth in wickedness