Titus 2

But as for you: Titus must not match Crete’s diseased talk with more talk. Teach what accords with sound doctrine—teaching that produces a matching life in the households that follow. Sound doctrine is not a private hobby; it is the church’s public health.

Grace that saves also trains. The doctrine is to be taught because hearers can receive it and live it, or neglect it. Titus’s charge is a means of grace, not a lecture to people already finished.

Paul sets Titus over against the insubordinate of chapter 1. Sound doctrine has a shape: it accords with a holy household life, not with empty controversy.

God shepherds His people by a taught Word. The minister is a steward of that Word. Doctrine already given is still to be set out so that the flock’s life matches the gospel that saved them.

Older men should be temperate, sensible, sober minded, sound in faith, in love, and in perseverance. Age is not a free pass; it is a calling to a settled holiness the younger can actually see.

These virtues are graces to be exercised. The Spirit enables; the man must still be sober, loving, and steadfast. Soundness in faith without love, or love without endurance, would not be the doctrine Paul wants taught.

The first portrait is older men: gravity of mind, dignity, self-control, and a faith, love, and endurance that have not gone thin with years.

God often uses aged saints as the church’s living catechism. These marks are fruit of a heart the Spirit keeps, not a personality type. The church should honor such men and refuse to treat later life as a season when holiness no longer matters.

Older women likewise: reverent in behavior, not slanderers nor enslaved to much wine, teachers of that which is good. Reverence is public bearing; slander and wine are named because they wreck the teaching that follows.

Teaching what is good is a charge of older women toward the young—not the assembly’s governing pulpit, but holy instruction the church must not despise. Grace can be used here or neglected until the tongue and the cup catechize instead.

Likewise ties older women to the same soundness. Reverent behavior, a bridled tongue, and freedom from wine are the soil of their teaching. They are to teach what is good: Calvin will soon locate that teaching in the household’s ordered love.

God uses older women as instructors of the young women. The restriction of the public teaching office elsewhere does not silence this charge. Holiness of speech and habit is how the Word is handed from one generation of sisters to the next.

The good they teach has a face: train the young wives to love their husbands, to love their children. Calvin heard conjugal love and affection for children as a restraint from licentious attachments. The training is practical, not theoretical.

Love of husband and children is a grace to be learned and practiced, not a mood that arrives untaught. It is older women forming younger women in costly love.

Train: the young women are disciples, not left to guess at marriage and motherhood. Calvin: Paul wishes them restrained by conjugal love and affection for their children from giving themselves up to licentious attachments, and to rule their own house in a sober and orderly manner.

God cares about the household as a theater of the gospel. Love of husband and children is commanded fruit, not a sentimental extra. The same Lord who effectually saves a people also orders their common life; the next verse names that order without apology and without scorn.

Sober minded, chaste, workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands, that God’s word may not be blasphemed. Historic Wesley: keepers at home whenever they are not called out by works of necessity, piety, and mercy; the husband’s will, in all things lawful, is a rule to the wife; that the word not be blasphemed, particularly by unbelieving husbands who blame the religion of their wives.

Report Wesley as he wrote. He is not a 2020s egalitarian, and the aim is the Word’s reputation, not a manifesto. Kindness sits beside working at home; “all things lawful” is a limit on the husband’s will. The gospel sincerely at work in a woman should not become an excuse for a chaotic house or a bitter tongue that makes Christ look contemptible to the man who shares her roof.

Calvin: chaste and modest, subject to the dominion of their husbands, ruling their own house orderly, not wandering about in public places; that God’s word may not be evil spoken of. He reads household order as the fitting public face of the doctrine just named.

The verse is first-century household counsel with a gospel aim, not a brief for contempt. Submissiveness to their own husbands and working at home are what Paul wrote; Calvin took them as ordinary Christian order. The church sins if it uses the text to crush sisters, and it also sins if it pretends the apostle did not speak. The Word must not be reviled.

Likewise, exhort the younger men to be self-controlled. One word covers a great deal of young heat. The same sound doctrine that trains women trains men; there is no holiness for one sex only.

Self-control is a grace that must be urged because it can be neglected. The Spirit enables; the young man must still refuse the passions that would make the Word look cheap.

Younger men receive a compact charge: self-control. Paul does not flatter youth; he shepherds it. The “likewise” keeps them inside the same holy pattern.

God produces self-control as fruit of the Spirit in those He has made His own. The pastor still urges it, because this is how the Lord ordinarily trains sons in the faith. An undisciplined young man gives the opponent easy material (v. 8).

Titus himself must be a model of good works in all respects; in teaching, integrity and dignity. Wesley: showing thyself a pattern—Titus himself was then young. Youth is answered by a life that can be copied, not by bluster.

Example is a means of grace. Hearers can follow or refuse; the minister must still offer a visible holiness that matches the doctrine he teaches. Integrity in the teaching is part of the pattern: no crooked handling of the Word.

The young pastor is not exempt from the portraits he paints. Model of good works; in teaching, integrity and dignity. Calvin’s concern throughout is that the Word not be evil spoken of; the minister’s life is part of that defense.

God uses a visible pattern as a means. Titus’s example is not a second savior; it is how the same grace is made public. Integrity in doctrine and dignity in manner belong to the office, not to a later stage of life.

And soundness of speech that can’t be condemned, that he who opposes you may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say about us. The watching critic is assumed. Holy speech is meant to leave him without a handle.

“us” is the church’s common name. Speech can adorn the doctrine or hand the enemy a weapon. Grace that is resistible is also grace that must be used in the mouth; careless words can make a true gospel look false.

Sound speech that can’t be condemned: the opponent is to be shamed by a lack of material, not by a shouting match. The church’s public talk is part of its public holiness.

God cares how His people sound. He keeps a people whose speech matches the Word, so that slander falls to the ground. The aim is not image-management; it is that nothing evil can truthfully be said about those who bear the Name.