Titus 1:15 Commentary and Bible Study

Paul says this to answer a possible objection. He has been dealing with ‘the unruly and with vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision’. They obviously will argue that they cannot be at fault because they are appealing to the word of God and upholding the law of God. That surely puts them on the side of right. It means that what they are encouraging the Gentile converts to do – to embrace the Mosaic ceremonial law – cannot be criticised. Even though they are urging them to give up the freedom that they have in Christ and to submit to the bondage of the law all over again, who can say that they are doing wrong when they are only appealing to what is in Scripture? They are zealous for the law, and their very zeal proves that they are in the right. But, says Paul, that is a superficial way of looking at things. To prove his point he brings in a broader principle. These things have to be looked at more carefully. It is not enough simply to say that because the opposing party advocates what has once been ordained by God, that it is necessarily right for those living in New Testament times to stick to the minutiae of the ceremonial law. (Even those who were under the law were not to trust in their obedience for justification.) He gives an aphorism to counter this idea, and it has two parts. The emphasis is on the second part, the negative part – that is the part which is more obviously in context – but he starts with the positive part. ‘Unto the pure all things are pure.’ This saying is obviously of limited scope. Sin is not pure to the pure; it remains sinful and its nature cannot be changed. What he means is that those with pure hearts proceed with understanding, and all that they come into contact with is rightly handled by them. They recognise evil for what it is and treat it with appropriate caution; they also recognise the true purpose of what God has given and do not abuse it by putting it to a use that he never intended. This is the matter in question. The Judaizers were content to say that adherence to the ceremonial law must be pure, because the word of God which gave it is pure. Therefore it is right to require even Gentile Christians to live by it. No, says Paul, even good things can be misused. Even what God has given to Israel so long ago and which had to be observed in Old Testament ti9mes; even this can be put to a wrong use, and it is certainly a wrong use of these things to treat them as if they had efficacy in themselves. What does that have to do with purity of heart? Clearly he assumes that the only ones who have purity of heart are those who have come to faith in Christ, whose hearts have been made pure by the Holy Spirit. That purity enables them to evaluate everything correctly. This is not just a matter of knowledge; it is a matter of right motives and of having a conscience that is washed with the blood of Christ. The Judaizers believed that they earned the favour of God by their ceremonial practices. That wrong belief spoiled everything. The believing Jew living under the law saw that his righteousness fell far short of anything needed to justify him before God. He engaged in the statutes of the law, not because they gave him any merit, but because he saw the regulations of the law as a kind of promise of what God was going to do through Christ. He relied on grace. Purity or lack of purity does not come from externals, from eating of abstaining from certain foods, for instance. Purity comes from having faith in the heart and doing things from a good conscience to please the Lord. ‘But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.’ The lack of faith means that they cannot engage with God’s ordinances as he wants them to. They misunderstand them and turn them into something they are not. Even what is good turns out to do them harm, for they eat with a bad conscience, and in their minds they hold false beliefs about themselves.