Titus 2:15 These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise you. 1. The central idea of the passage appears to be a life of sobriety, righteousness, and godliness, issuing in and sustaining the practical advice previously offered to old men and maidens, to matrons, aged and young, to youths, and slaves of all degrees. 2. The subjective condition of this heavenly life on earth is explicitly stated — a denial of all godliness and worldly passions. 3. This "life" and its "conditions" are originated and promoted by a process of Divine discipline. Here are processes, mental and disciplinary, which augment and stimulate this life of godliness. 4. This entire subjective process rests upon two groups of sublime objective realities:(1) The historic epiphany of the grace of God in the Incarnation; (2) the anticipated and prophetic epiphany of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Thus it calls for the exercise of the twofold energy of "faith" and "hope." 5. The "grace" and the "glory of God," received and appropriated in Christian faith and hope, attain their highest expression in the redemptive self-sacrifice of the God-man. 6. By way of closing the circle of the thought, it is expressly stated that the end of the redemptive work is the creation of "a holy people," who are not only His "peculiar treasure" and inheritance, but who have, as the law and charter of their incorporation, this grand distinction, that they are charged with the genius of goodness — the passion for godliness. They are the very "zealots of goodness," passionately eager for all that will help and move them to realise the ideal of the Divine life. (H. R. Reynolds, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.WEB: Say these things and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no man despise you. |
    |