For the grace of God which carries with it salvation for all men has appeared,
Just before this verse, Paul tells household slaves how to live. Then he gives the reason such a life is possible at all. Everything that follows rests on one thing God has done, not on any quality in the people he writes to.
Translators reached for a mild word here. The original is anything but mild.
We are told the English word our translators used in Titus 2:11–13 — "appearing" — is not strong enough. The Greek language, always so expressive, gives the idea of darkness suddenly giving way to bright light. Not so much a star, but a bright sun — the great sun that lights the day. The grace of God now stands in contrast to the dark times before the law was given, when God made His mind known only to a few.
Grace is not a mood or an idea. It appeared because a Person appeared.
The grace of God has appeared, and it appeared in the person of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him He makes His grace known. His finished work is the source of it. It flows from the cross. And this grace comes to man with salvation. It brings salvation, not to a certain class of men, but it brings salvation for all men.
That cross is also what keeps grace from becoming mere leniency.
When God acts in grace, it is never at the expense of His holiness. God is love and therefore acts in grace, but He is also light and therefore acts in holiness. His acting in grace needs a righteous foundation and He has found it in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
Commentators differ on what "for all" belongs to — the appearing, or the salvation it brings.
The margin of verse 11 reads, "The grace of God that brings salvation to all men, has appeared." That reading is better than the one in the text. The point is that now there is salvation for all. And the grace of God which has brought that world-wide salvation teaches us how to live, while we wait for the appearing of the glory.
Either way, the reach is the striking thing. God once made His mind known to a few; this message has no such fence around it.
Grace has appeared. It has appeared, not limited to one people, but to all men. It does not carry promises and blessings for this life; it brings salvation. It comes from God to men with salvation. It does not expect righteousness from men. It brings salvation to those who need it. This is a precious and simple truth. It makes us know God and puts us in our place — but it does so according to the grace that has leaped over every barrier.
"All" describes the character of the message, not a guaranteed outcome for every person.
"Saving to all" is the grace which has appeared. That is its character. But it does not set aside the warning of the same apostle, "not to receive the grace of God in vain" (2 Cor. 6:1), and it does not set aside that the gospel alone offers this grace.
Paul's own pronouns mark the shift, and the next verse narrows the circle.
While His grace presents salvation to all, it is also said to be educating us. The change from "all men" to "us" is important, and we should not overlook it. The one is the universal message of God, which people may or may not receive. The other is the distinct effect, whenever souls receive that message in faith.
Grace does not hand the believer over to another teacher after it saves him.
The grace received becomes teaching in those who receive the salvation it brings… And here, I note, it is "the grace" that teaches, and not something else. It is not man's wisdom, or man's morality, mixing itself with what is divine in his salvation… It is "the grace of God" that teaches him as well as saves him.
Paul gives this message to slaves, the people with the least standing in Roman society.
God's gospel is good news to the highest person on earth no less than to the lowest. As a rule it is preached to the poor, because they are usually the ones within reach. There is no king, no queen, no emperor who is not infinitely indebted to the grace of God, if the heart is opened. But if the heart is steeled against it, the message is one of salvation all the same. How sweet beyond words for those in the painful and trying position of slavery!
- Dawn. "Appeared" is sunrise language — not a faint star, but full daylight after long darkness.
- Person. What rose was not a policy but Christ Himself. The grace flows from His finished work at the cross, where holiness and love meet.
- Reach. Grace leaps over every barrier: not one nation, not one class, but salvation offered to all people.
- Response. The offer reaches all people; the "us" of the next verse is the company who received it by faith.
- Result. The grace that saved goes on teaching — the Saviour is also the Teacher, and no other rule replaces Him.
teaching us that, having denied impiety and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, and justly, and piously in the present course of things,
The letter to Titus was written to steady believers on Crete. Verse 12 says what saving grace does next: it teaches us how to live toward ourselves, toward others, and toward God.
The law taught too. The difference lies in how each one teaches.
The law was like a schoolteacher who hands the same code of rules to everyone. The rules are very clear and well printed. Yet he offers his pupils no help at all in putting them into practice. Grace teaches in a far more effective way. Grace is just as clear about everything it asks. The standard it sets is even higher than the law demanded. But it adds one thing more: it works IN us.
The verse before speaks of grace appearing to all. This verse narrows to "us." Two different things are in view.
His grace presents salvation to all. The verse also says it is educating us. The change from "all men" to "us" is important, and ought not to be overlooked. The one is the universal message of God, which may or may not be received. The other is the clear effect it has whenever souls receive that message in faith… Some put the Christian back under the law as his rule of life after he has believed the gospel. No mistake is worse. Nothing goes more against the teaching of the apostle. Christ alone remains — not only the Saviour, but the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Ungodliness and worldly lusts sound like two separate faults.
We are glad to turn our backs on our former life; we deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. These two things make up the life of the world. They mean, "We won't have God, and we will please ourselves." But for us, God has become so attractive through the gospel that we cannot live without Him.
The verse says "worldly" lusts, not just fleshly ones. Behind such lusts lies an attitude toward God Himself.
Notice too that it is not simply a question of fleshly but of worldly lusts. All of it was hatred of God, and discontent with what He gives as our portion. So we give in to a craving that is never satisfied, always wanting what we do not have.
The verse gives three words: sober, righteous, godly. Each one points in a different direction.
Having brought this salvation, grace instructs us fully about our walk in this world. That instruction covers our relation to ourselves, to other people, and to God. We renounce all ungodliness, and all desires that find their satisfaction in this world. We are to hold the will of the flesh in check in every respect and live soberly. We are to acknowledge the claims of others and live righteously. We are to own the rights of God over our hearts and live in godliness.
Teaching alone leaves a person stuck. Grace does not stop at teaching.
Grace instructs us to renounce all ungodliness and all desires that find their satisfaction in this age. But grace does more than that; it supplies the power to do it. It gives the believer a new nature and the Holy Spirit. Walking in the power of all this, he does not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. The believer, saved by grace, has renounced ungodliness and worldly lusts. Now he is to walk with grace as his guide, instructor and power.
Crete had a coarse atmosphere. Our own world is no better, and living in it calls for one difficult word.
Someone may say that we are not in as coarse an atmosphere as Crete. But we are in a world that is as ungodly as ever, and it is wrapped up in its own affairs… There are many things to which we must say that difficult word "No!"
This life is not postponed to better days. The phrase quoted below, "this present world," is ESV's "the present age."
This is not an ideal to hope for in the future. It is for "this present world." No matter how contrary the world is, it is here and now that grace enables a fruitful life of faith.
- Grace saves. The same grace that brings salvation stays on as teacher; it is never left behind once we believe.
- Grace schools. Unlike a code of rules handed out with no help, grace sets a higher standard and works inside the person to meet it.
- Grace strips. A whole way of life goes: refusing God and pleasing ourselves. The restless craving for what we do not have goes with it.
- Grace shapes. Three words mark three relationships. Sober toward ourselves. Righteous toward others. Godly toward God.
- Grace succeeds — now. Not in a kinder future world, but in this present age, where saying "No" is difficult and grace supplies the power.
awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ;
Paul has just told servants, wives, young men and older believers how to live. Now he anchors all of it in something they are watching for. The verse sets the Christian between two great moments: one already past, one still ahead. It raises two questions. What are we waiting for, and who is the Person named here?
Verse 13 leans on the verse before it. Grace has already shown itself; the glory has not. One writer sets the whole passage in that gap, and calls it the place where real Christianity shows itself.
So there are two appearings: grace has appeared, and the glory of our blessed Lord will appear. Between these two appearings, those who have been brought into the possession of grace are to display true and practical Christianity. Without doubt the appearing of grace began when our Lord became man. It was seen in the whole of His life... it was declared at the cross... and it has continued ever since in the preaching of the good news.
In the original, one article covers both the hope and the appearing of the glory. So commentators treat them as joined but not identical. The first satisfies the heart. The second clears the world of evil.
The one article covering the two objects links them together. It does not make them identical. It joins them here on purpose, to give one combined outlook. "The blessed hope" is the only thing that can satisfy the heart. It means being in the presence of Christ on high, changed at His coming into His likeness, and with Him for ever. "The appearing of the" divine "glory" belongs with it, and follows at the right time. It is the display of divine power, and our renewed souls cannot help longing for it, for it shuts out all moral and physical evil and every crafty work of Satan.
The second of the two is not good news for everyone.
"That blessed hope" is the coming of the Lord Jesus for His saints, and so it is unmixed blessing. "The appearing of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ" is His later showing to all the world in power and great glory. To many this will be blessing; to many others solemn judgment.
Commentators differ on how far apart the two are. Some read "our blessed hope" as Christ coming for His people, separate from His public appearing. Others reply that this coming is not the theme of the letters to Timothy and Titus, where the appearing is the goal. Even so, they allow that a hint of it may lie in the phrase.
The wording of the phrase carries the weight of who is coming.
The words "our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" are arranged in the original so that they may, and beyond question do, refer to the same Person. It is not God and, separately, the Saviour Jesus Christ. The One who will appear in glory is our great God as well as our Saviour Jesus Christ. What a display of the dignity of His person — yes, of His Deity! And what a glorious event we are waiting for!
Kelly explains why the title "great God" stands here. It keeps us from ever forgetting what He is in Himself. He emptied Himself to become a servant and went down to the death of the cross.
A hope is not decoration. What a person looks at shapes what a person becomes.
The object before us is what forms our character. The Christian's object is the Lord in glory... The essential thing for the salvation of the soul is certainly Christ and His work for us, received by faith. But if a believer lacks the true hope, then even with that, the gap left can never be repaired.
This hope reaches ordinary working lives. One writer pictures a rough man from Crete after grace has changed him.
Here is a man from Crete who has been converted. This wild beast of a man is fully tamed. He now plods on serving his master in a sober, upright and godly way. But suppose he had nothing to look forward to! Life might then look very drab to him. Grace teaches him to lift up his eyes and look for the glory that is coming... That glory will be the fulfilment of all the hopes grace has awakened.
- Grace appeared. The first appearing is behind us — seen in Christ's life, declared at the cross, still preached today.
- Grace teaches. Once we receive it, grace trains us to live in a sober, upright and godly way.
- Grace waits. It fixes one object before us: Christ Himself, the blessed hope, and the glory that follows.
- Grace names Him. The One we wait for is our great God and our Saviour — one Person, not two.
- Grace forms us. What we look for is what we become. Life with nothing ahead turns drab. The coming glory tames and steadies the most unlikely man.
who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all lawlessness, and purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous for good works.
Titus 2:14 closes a passage about how grace trains believers to live. It roots that training in one act: the Saviour who is coming in glory is the One who gave Himself for us. The verse then names what that gift was for — freedom from lawlessness, a people who belong to Him, and lives eager for good.
Before the verse says anything about our conduct, it says what Christ gave. William Kelly draws out how far that gift reaches, and why it leaves no ground for boasting:
We have no claim and no merit. We stand by nothing and for nothing but the Saviour. He did not give this or that only, nor even all the other precious things which He alone could give. He gave what is beyond all price: "Who gave Himself for us." God the Father had His own blessed part in that priceless gift. He knew all, and He gave Him and sent Him.
That gift is presented here as the engine of a holy life, not merely as a fact to believe:
How touching is the motive to holiness which is presented in the closing verse of our passage! ... Here we have the end of redemption in the practical walk of the believer in this world. But what can equal the motive that is presented in the declaration, "Who gave himself for us"?
Older translations say "iniquity" here. The sense is lawlessness: living by your own will. Edward Dennett points to a side of Christ's death that is easy to miss:
This side of the death of Christ is well worth noticing. The point here is not that He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, though He certainly did that on the cross. The point is that He would redeem us from all "lawlessness," from all self-pleasing and doing our own will. He would also have us for Himself: a cleansed people, His own possession, marked out by zeal for good works, going about doing good, just as He Himself did.
Redemption here is not release into independence. It is a transfer:
Redemption from all iniquity includes the wilful, unrestrained state we are in by nature. This is worth noticing, because it makes the contrast even sharper. He redeemed us from lawlessness to bring us under the blessed yoke of the Lord Jesus, and to purify us for Himself.
Older translations call us "a peculiar people." The history of that word shows what it means:
The Hebrew word means "to surround on all sides," and so "to gather together, set apart, reserve, make one's own." Used of property, it means the private treasure a person has gained and holds as his own, as opposed to what he shares with others... The word "peculiar" comes from the Latin peculium, which carries much the same force. It was used of the private purse a member of a household could build up and keep for himself, apart from what had to go to the good of the family as a whole.
Being His own has nothing to do with being odd:
Let us take care to make this real in our hearts. His grace wants a people for His own possession — not people who are peculiar in words or manner, habit or feeling, but people He can have and delight in as His own. How wonderful that He should care to have us at all, or make so much of such a possession!
The verse does not stop at cleansing. It ends with energy directed outward:
It is not enough to be set free from doing evil. We are to be keen in chasing what is good, and not only in theory but in practice. We are not only to do good works, but to do them with zeal... Once a liar, an evil wild beast, a lazy glutton; now redeemed from lawlessness, purified before God, full of zeal for good works. What a transformation!
Zeal is not the same as constant busyness:
There is no greater trap today than excessive activity, in which the soul often loses all communion, and so all power. Even so, we should never be careless about works that are according to the mind of God.
Because He gave Himself, He holds a claim on us that nobody else can match:
In this way He has established a claim on us — a claim of love — that we should live for His pleasure... No one has such a claim on us as Christ. As someone has asked, "Who in this world, the nearest or dearest, ever gave himself for you?" Living for His pleasure will set us free from all lawlessness.
- The gift — He gave not something He owned but Himself. That leaves no room for our merit or boasting.
- The freedom — He redeems us from lawlessness itself: self-pleasing and doing our own will, not only from the penalty of sins.
- The exchange — Freedom from our own will means coming under the yoke of the Lord Jesus — a blessed yoke, not a burden.
- The possession — "Peculiar" means privately treasured. He keeps us for Himself and delights in us. It never meant odd manners or speech.
- The proof — Cleansing is only half. He looks for eager, practical good — real zeal, but never busyness that costs us communion with Him.