TITUS CHAPTER 1 - 3

THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO TITUS

Beloved, the most important lesson yet
In all the book is what St. Paul here set
To Titus: that good doctrine makes good life,
And godliness and truth bear with the strife.
There is no godliness in the denial
Of truth, nor is there any fiercer trial
Of teaching true than in the godly way
That the saints are led to live in Your ray.
Beloved, I seek the truth in word and deed,
The doctrine that is taught in double seed
Of every heart, and as I find Your grace
In truth revealed, I pray before Your face
For life imputed and imparted where
Your will is doubled on my hand and share.

TITUS 1

1 Paul, slave of God, apostle of
Jesus Christ, by the faith of
The elect of God and the knowing
Of truth which is of godly showing,
2 In hope of the eternal life,
Which God who cannot lie for strife,
Promised before the world began;
3 But has in due times manifest
His word through preaching, which in span
Is committed to me as best
According to commandment of
God who’s our Saviour, God of love;

Before the world began eternal life
Was set for some, both husband and the wife.
The promise made before creation's knife
Lies dormant, it may seem, before the strife
Of sin and wickedness, of government
And churchly programmes that You have not sent.
But in that promise I find greater share,
The hope of life eternal I may wear
By grace alone and by no human deed.
I grasp the certainty and not the creed.
Beloved, Your covenant of promise kept
Is bright before my chambered heart unswept,
And still I set aside my faith and view,
Relying on Your grace, trusting in You.

4 To Titus, my own son in view
Of common faith: Grace, mercy too,
And peace, from God the Father and
The Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour’s stand.
5 That’s why I left you in Crete, so
You should set in order the row
Of things in lack, and so ordain
Elders in every city’s vane,
As I appointed you for gain:
6 If anyone is blameless and
The husband of one wife to stand
With faithful children not accused
Of riot or unruly rused.
7 An overseer must be blameless,
As steward of God and not gameless,
Not self-willed, not soon angry, not
Given to wine, no striker, not
Given to filthy lucre’s lot;
8 Lover of hospitality,
A lover of good men to be
Sober, just, holy, temperate;
9 Holding fast the faithful word’s rate
As he’s been taught, so he may be
Able by sound doctrine to see
To exhort and convince the doubters.
10 For there are such unruly shouters
And vain in speech, deceivers of
Especially circumcision’s love,
11 Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert
Whole houses, teaching things that hurt
For filthy lucre’s sake to blurt.
12 One of themselves, a prophet of
Their own, said “The Cretians above
Are always liars and evil beasts,
And slow bellies come to their feasts.”
13 This witness is true. So rebuke
Them sharply, so without a fluke
They may be sound in faith like duke,
14 Not giving heed to Jewish fables,
Commandments of men at their tables,
Who turn from the truth in their cables.

Though You alone decide the fate of all,
And not the works of any to appal,
Still You send Your rebuke to those who teach
The unsaved to savour what sinners preach.
Though no man can climb from the sin of greed
Into the light of better, righteous seed,
No matter how he tries sincerity,
The things such do are still iniquity.
Beloved, the chips of marble cast aside
From Your creation of the imaged bride
Are fast determined for the trash heap's pride.
The statue's made of the same stony flesh,
The same hard core is in the artful mesh,
Your artist's hand makes all the difference fresh.

15 Unto the pure all things are pure:
But to those who are defiled and
The unbelieving nothing pure;
But even their mind and the stand
Of conscience is defiled in band.
16 They claim to know God, but in works
They deny Him and in their quirks
They are abomination and
The disobedient to stand,
And unto every good work land
As reprobate on every hand.

Yet works of goodness, my Beloved, do not
Show whom You have redeemed from sinful plot.
The good works of depraved men everywhere
Pretend to make society the share
Of progress and of hope and light to bare.
Some of the saved pass through a barren life
And do no good thing for praise or for strife.
The works are not the fruit upon the tree
To show the difference and in degree
Between the saved and lost eternally.
Beloved, the reprobate is always praised
For contribution and for funds he's raised.
Beloved, give me what works You in Your love
Determined before worlds to fit my glove.

TITUS 2

1 But speak now things appropriate
To sound doctrine and heard in rate,
2 Tell old men to be sober, grave,
And temperate, sound in faith’s wave,
In love and patience to instate.
3 Old women too should act the part
Of holiness come from the heart,
Not false accusers, given to wine,
Teachers of good things on the vine,
4 So they may teach young women to
Be sober, to love husbands due,
To love their children, 5 be discreet
And chaste, and keepers on their street
At home, good and obedient to
Their husbands, so God’s word and true
Not be blasphemed by any crew.

The Old School Baptist that I seem to be
Is sometimes caught in alcoholic spree.
Supporting no Bible society
Nor any mission programmes nor the lot
Of Sunday schools in missionary plot
Goes hand in hand with leaving out in cold
The temperance societies unsold.
But St. Paul says old folks should never stay
In the control of wine on any day.
If Primitive Baptists must drink and drive,
I'd rather follow Paul and stay alive.
Beloved, I have good evidence that You
Do not engage in whiskey or the brew
While You sit on Your throne by heaven's crew.

6 Young men likewise exhort to be
Sober minded and patiently.
7 In all things show yourself a model
Of good works, in doctrine don’t coddle
But uncorrupt in gravity,
Teach all things with sincerity,
8 Sound speech, that cannot be condemned,
So the one who’s contrary hemmed
May be ashamed, without a thing
Of wickedness at you to sling.

Sound speech that none can criticise in word
Is more than I can achieve in the herd.
Each sonnet in ghazel I write to You
Is fraught with double meaning on the dew.
There's hardly any line that cannot be
Misunderstood and misapplied to see
As something to condemn in sinful spree.
So I return ashamed to my own pew.
Beloved, let Titus speak a clear word when
He stands before the church to speak to men.
I am not welcome in the church at all,
And so I speak to birds and beasts in thrall
Of winter or of summer on the wing,
Or on the scratchy feet of creeping thing.

9 And tell the slave too to obey
Their own masters, and find a way
To please them well in all they say,
Not answering back to go astray.
10 Do not purloin, but show good faith,
So they will not follow a wraith,
But decorate doctrine of God
Our Saviour in all on the sod.
11 For God’s grace that brings saving came
As manifest to all men’s frame,
12 And teaching us to flee the blame
Of wickedness and worldly lust,
To live in soberness uncursed,
And righteously, and godly too
In this present world and in pew,
13 Looking for that blessed hope as well
As glorious appearing and swell
Of the great God and of His own
Our Saviour Jesus Christ as shown,
14 Who gave himself for us, so he
Might redeem from iniquity,
And purify himself a folk
Zealous of good works under yoke.
15 These things speak, exhort, and rebuke
With all authority for fluke,
So let no man call you a bloke.

The Bible is a book that does not show
The values of this better time in glow,
Now that we understand that slavery's wrong
And that there are better ways to seem strong.
Slavery implies the owner will resolve
To care for his own chattel that revolve
About his fields and house the whole day long.
Now we know to make camps where men can work
Until they drop, or if they do not shirk,
Prisons long-term where relatives supply
The nourishment for prisoners or try.
An industry in grand monopoly
Can also find ways to deprive the free.
Thank You for alternatives to slavery.

TITUS 3

1 Put the folk in mind to submit
To principalities as fit
And power, to obey magistrates,
To be ready in all your states
To do each good work that elates,
2 Not to speak wrong of any man,
Not to be brawlers if you can,
But gentle, showing meekness all
To every man and every doll.

The kingdom of Your Christ may well imply
That earthly kingdoms are only a Satan's try,
And yet Paul tells Titus to keep the way
That reinstates the magistrates in sway.
A look at Gibbon's Rome's enough to say
That government lacked much in justice and
Economy plain and simple to stand.
If that was rule to honour, any state
Today is worthy of likeness in rate.
Beloved, I pay my taxes for my share
At least when I have work and such to spare,
And criticize the president as much
As Briton, German or even the Dutch,
Who blame the rulers who fail to take care.

3 For we ourselves also sometime
Were foolish and sunken in crime,
Deceived, and serving divers lusts
And pleasures, living without trusts
In malice, envy and in hate,
Despising one another’s state.
4 But after the kindness and love
Of God our Saviour from above
Toward humankind appeared at last,
5 Not by works of righteousness past
Which we have done, but according
To His mercy He saved from sting
By washing of rebirth to sing,
Renewing of Holy Ghost’s ring,
6 Which he gave us abundantly
Through Jesus Christ our Saviour wee,
7 That being justified by grace
We should be made heirs in his place,
According to the hope of life
Eternal given without strife.

Eternal life is Your choice for the one
On whom election falls when You have done.
No act of faith earns life or even stalls
Destruction from the grave's enmarbled walls.
Eternal life is given in the same
Power of creation's coming like a flame
To wake the clay and breathe the breath of life
Into the nostrils waiting for the knife.
Beloved, I am Your servant in the sky
Of Your salvation dropping down and nigh,
Or in the depths of hell where You place me
If that turns out to be Your joy's decree.
I offer nothing in my way to make
A righteous claim upon Your favour's stake.

8 This is a faithful saying, and
These I hope you can understand
To affirm constantly, so those
Who have believed in God and chose
Might be careful to do good works.
Such good profit no good man shirks.
9 But foolish questions now avoid,
And genealogies employed
With their contentions and their strife
About the law; for they are rife
With vanity and without life.
10 One who remains a heretic
After the first and second trick
Of admonition, such reject,
11 Knowing that such ones now reflect
Their own subversion and their sin,
Condemning themselves not to win.
12 When I’ll send Artemas to you
Or Tychicus, keen then in view
To come to me at Nicopolis,
For I’ll keep there in winter solace.
13 Bring Zenas the lawyer, also
Apollos on their journey’s show,
So nothing be lacking their row.
14 And let ours also learn to keep
To good works for the needed leap,
So they’ll not be unfruitful heap.
15 Everybody with me would send
You greetings, so greet every friend
In faith for us. Grace now again
Be with you all, and so amen.

You have created me to do You will,
And that includes good works to my life's fill.
In doing well I earn no merit here,
But only do according to the fear
For which I was created on the bier.
Beloved, create in me the works that still
Remain to be done by my hand and way,
Give me the strength to live another day.
I have no merit in the faith that I
Place in belief in You before I die,
Nor in the hope of life eternal that
You place within my heart and to combat
The darkness that whirls round the throne of grace,
That fills the churches here before Your face.

AUTHOR: THOMAS G. MCELWAIN

Copyright © 2007 Adams & McElwain Publishers and Thomas McElwain First Published in two volumes, The Beloved and I 2005, and Led of the Beloved, 2006. Second Edition, 2010 Third and revised edition, 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this verse commentary on the sacred Scriptures may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from publisher.

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