We Were That Too

Paul turns from the household to the street. Titus is to remind the believers to submit to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to malign nobody, and to be peaceable and gentle. The word remind is doing quiet work there, because it tells you they had been taught this already.

Then the list ends on the widest phrase on the page, which is that they are to show full consideration to everyone. Not to the deserving, and not to the ones who agree with them, and not to the neighbors who have made their lives difficult. Everyone, and the verse stops there without adding a condition.

That is a great deal to ask of people living where these people lived, so Paul gives the reason. It is not the reason anybody would guess.

For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.

Paul writes we too, and by doing it he puts himself inside the sentence with them. Whatever those neighbors are, we were that, and he does not soften the list to make it easier to own. Eight conditions are named in that one verse: foolish, disobedient, misled, enslaved to desires, living in malice and envy, hated, and hating one another. They describe the believers this letter is written for.

So the reason for gentleness turns out to be memory. It is hard to look down on somebody for standing exactly where you were standing.

Verse 4 pivots the whole passage on the words but when, and what appeared was kindness. The kindness of God our Savior, Paul says, and his love for mankind. Then he states plainly how the saving did not happen: not by the righteous deeds we had done. He does not say there were none. He says they were not the reason, which is a harder thing to accept if you happen to have some.

This is the Spirit He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs with the hope of eternal life.

Poured out abundantly, and not measured or rationed to the ones who looked promising. Verse 7 calls us heirs, which is a family word, and an heir receives something that has been kept for them. People who were hated and hating in verse 3 are handed an inheritance in verse 7, and the passage closes on the hope of eternal life, which is the hope Titus 1:2 opened the letter with.