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Summary: AI-assisted (Claude) from transcripts

Summary

Titus in the New Testament

Titus appears in the New Testament both as a companion of the apostle Paul and as the namesake of one of the Pastoral Epistles. He was a Greek believer, uncircumcised, who traveled with Paul and Barnabas as a living test case for the gospel of justification by faith alone. When Paul went up to Jerusalem to confer with the apostles, he brought Titus along, and "even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek" Galatians 2:1-3.

Why Titus Was Not Circumcised

The refusal to circumcise Titus was no small matter—it was the gospel itself at stake. False teachers were insisting, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved" Acts 15:1-2. To circumcise Titus under that demand would have been to concede that faith in Christ alone is not enough. Paul's later willingness to circumcise Timothy Acts 16:3 out of brotherly love for Jewish hearers was a very different matter, because it was not done as a condition of salvation. With Titus, the issue was the integrity of the gospel; Paul "overcame" his opponents not by force of personality but because the Holy Spirit confirmed his preaching among the Gentiles. See Galatians: Lesson 4 for the fuller account of motive and circumstance.

The Letter to Titus

The Pauline letter addressed to Titus speaks the gospel with great clarity. One of its most-quoted verses is Titus 3:5: "He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to His mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit." This single sentence anchors the Lutheran confession of monergism—God's saving work alone—and ties our salvation to Holy Baptism, where the Lord joins ordinary water to His word of promise and applies the victory of the cross and empty tomb personally to us.

A Witness to Baptismal Grace

Titus 3 is one of the great baptismal texts of Scripture. It stands alongside 1 Peter 3:21, Acts 22:16, and Ephesians 5:25-26 to show that what God did for Israel at the Red Sea and the Jordan, He now does for His Church through the washing of water by the word. The crossing of the Jordan foreshadows what God accomplishes in our baptism, and Titus 3:5 names it plainly: rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. See Joshua: Servant of the Lord - Lesson 3 for the connection between the crossing and the saving use of water.

A Witness to God's Mercy

The same passage opens with the mercy of God: "When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us… according to His mercy" Titus 3:4-5. This is the wellspring of every Christian act of mercy. We do not earn God's mercy by being merciful; rather, having received His mercy in Christ, we are freed and empowered to extend it to others. The cycle is grace upon grace—God shows mercy, that mercy makes us merciful, and we keep on receiving it. This dynamic is unfolded in Blessings in Disguise Lesson 3.

Titus and Christian Liberty

Taken together, the figure of Titus and the letter that bears his name press the same point from two angles. In Titus the man, we see Paul refusing to add a single condition to the gospel; in the Letter to Titus, we hear the gospel positively confessed—He saved us, not by our works, but according to His mercy. To stand in that liberty is to breathe freely, to serve our neighbor without fear, and to know that our righteousness is the spotless garment of Christ given in baptism, not a purity of our own making.

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