Titus

Titus is a short letter to a man left behind to finish a job. Paul had been on Crete, had started something there, and had left with the work half done. He says as much in the fifth verse: he left Titus to set in order what was unfinished and to appoint elders in every town. The whole letter runs to three chapters and forty-six verses, and it ends with travel arrangements, which is a fair description of what it is. It is a working document rather than an essay.

The trouble on the island is named early. There are people teaching for money, and Paul says they are undermining entire households. He quotes a line about Cretan character that one of their own writers produced, agrees with it, and then tells Titus to rebuke them so that they will be sound in the faith rather than so that they will be humiliated. The purpose clause is easy to read past and it changes the tone of everything around it.

What holds the letter together is a pattern that repeats. Paul gives instructions, and then he gives the reason underneath them, and the reason is always something God has already done. Live like this, because the grace of God has appeared. Be gentle with everyone, because we were foolish and hated and hating one another once, until the kindness of God our Savior appeared. The two great passages of the book, at 2:11-14 and 3:3-7, are both reasons rather than commands.

The household instructions in chapter 2 go through the house group by group, older men and older women, young women and younger men, and then the enslaved members of the household. What Paul tells them is that their ordinary honesty adorns the teaching about God our Savior.

It ends with a lawyer named Zenas, a winter at Nicopolis, and an instruction that the whole congregation must learn to meet pressing needs. Grace arrives first in this letter, and then it turns into errands.