“Paul, bondman of God and apostle of Jesus Christ according to [the] faith of God's elect, and full knowledge [or acknowledgment] of truth that is according to godliness” (ver. 1).
Bondman “of God” is unusual. Thus in the Epistle to the Romans it is “bondman of Jesus Christ.” So it is in the Epistle to the Philippians, where Timothy is associated with the apostle. Here alone it is “bondman of God and apostle of Jesus Christ.” No Christian ought to doubt that there is special suitability between that relationship to God, and the Epistle. “God,” as such, is prominent in all the pastoral Epistles rather than “Father,” where “bondman” could not be appropriate or rightly conceivable. Nevertheless it is only to Titus that the apostle presents himself as here he does. We may be thereby assured from this fact that it falls in with the character of the Epistle before us more even than with any other of the pastoral letters. Rom. 6 may help a little to explain why. The great truth in the latter portion of that chapter is that, though we are under grace, we are bondmen to Him whom we obey. Once alas! we were bondmen of sin; now, having got our freedom from sin, we have become bondmen to righteousness (ver. 18) and to God (ver. 22), having our fruit unto holiness and the end eternal life. A similarly fundamental depth is found in the Epistle to Titus: only here Paul predicates the term of himself, not of believers in general. If he calls himself “apostle of Jesus Christ,” he takes care previously to say that he was “bondman of God.” It was important for Titus to take heed to this. At the very outset it was a solemn reminder from the Holy Spirit. If the apostle did not often so speak, it was always true; and the expression of the truth here seems intended of God to be a fresh lesson to Titus, and the rather because in the circumstances before him it might easily be forgotten.
Titus was called to a serious but highly honorable charge. Had it been only to exercise oversight, he who aspires to that desires a good work. But Titus was called amongst other things to establish overseers: clearly a far more delicate and responsible service. Self-importance might here readily enter, as it has often done even with most excellent men. Hence the apostle, who had authorized and directed Titus in that high service, begins with the emphatic statement, “Paul, bondman of God.” All was worthless, if the will of God were not done. The Son of God shows the perfection of a life wholly devoted to that one thing, and first set it before all as a moral jewel of the highest water. In order to do His will in that perfection, He emptied Himself, taking a bondman's form, coming in the likeness of men, and, having been found in figure as a man, humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, death of the cross. In that perfection He stands alone; nevertheless He forms others according to His own blessed pattern, and none more evidently than the inspired man who now writes to Titus as “bondman of God.”
Titus was not, and could not be, like Paul, “apostle of Jesus Christ;” but was it not open to him to be, no less than the apostle, “bondman of God”? His special position was according to the will of the Lord Jesus, and he would fulfill its proper functions all the better if he valued, as the apostle did, the being “bondman of God.” His own will was thus to be forfended; and the apostle implies this in an introduction so peculiar and impressive. We may be sure that the words were not lost on Titus, but that he laid each deeply to heart.
There is another peculiarity here which has greatly perplexed the learned. As is too usual in a difficulty, they have departed from the plain and obvious meaning of the text, not by a daring conjecture, in the way of emendation as a substitute for it, but by a version, to say the least, of an arbitrary nature, which is quite uncalled for by the context. Two of the ablest recent commentators have joined in discarding “according to,” and in adopting “for.” But this is to lose the peculiar force of the scripture before us. To be apostle of Jesus Christ “for” the faith of God's elect, is a commonplace. It is no doubt, like all such proposals, an easy way of understanding the clause; but the truth intended vanishes. “According to the faith of God's elect” has the same ground as, and no less reason than, “according to piety,” just afterward, with which these commentators do not tamper. It is safest to translate correctly, even if one is obliged to feel or own we have no exposition to offer of which we are assured. The Revisers, therefore, as well as the Authorized translators, have acted more faithfully. Very possibly they might not have been able to explain the propriety of the phrase; but at any rate they have done no violence to the text in their respective versions. They have left the word of God for others to explain in due time, according to their measure of spiritual insight.
Is then the apostolic statement so hard to be understood? Not so, if we are simple. Aaron was anointed priest according to the law. There is now an entire change—a new system, resting upon an altogether different basis. It was no longer the first man dealt with morally, or helped ceremonially. There is the Second Man, the Last Adam. Faith, therefore, is come and revealed. It is no longer a question of any being guarded under law: believing men, even of Israel, were no longer under the old tutor. Paul, the Jew, and Titus, the Gentile, are alike sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Hence Paul here describes himself as “apostle of Jesus Christ according to faith of God's elect.” The entire system of legal ordinances had come to its end; Christ had effaced it, and taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. The ancient people of God have for the time completely passed away, with all the peculiarities of their probationary status. It is now a question of what God has wrought, given, and revealed in the person of Christ; and hence, therefore, of faith on the part of God's elect. What is external in Christianity may be more or less apprehended by the world; but here the apostle points only to what is unseen and eternal, and God's elect alone enter in and enjoy. Hence we see that in this short Epistle there is more than one pithy, yet fall, exhibition of the gospel in its deep moral power; wherein it is distinguished from the two Epistles to Timothy. This is in keeping with the “faith of God's elect,” and helps to illustrate why the writer describes himself as apostle of Jesus Christ accordingly.
But he adds another particular. Paul was His apostle also according to the full knowledge or acknowledgment of truth that is according to godliness. This is the more remarkable, because we find him a few verses afterward speaking of his having left Titus in Crete to set right what was wanting, and establish elders in every city, as he had ordered him; but he in no way describes his own apostleship as being according to such a direction of authority. This authority is not to be doubted in any way, and it is of high moment in its place; but Paul characterizes it after another pattern altogether. It was “according to faith of God's elect, and knowledge of truth that is according to godliness.” Its stamp was not merely ecclesiastical but Christian, and its Christian description is the only thing on which the apostle here insists, even when he is about to notice the charge he had given Titus for ecclesiastical order. If Christianity is bound up with the faith of God's elect, it is for that very reason also with “knowledge of truth that is according to godliness.” “The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.” Shadows and outward observances are now treated as vain. The body is of Christ. The truth must be known by faith, and that truth is according to godliness, else the apostle would have disowned it as having no living link with Christ.