“These things speak and exhort.” Do you see how he charges Timothy? “Reprove, rebuke, exhort.” But here, “Rebuke with all authority.” For the manners of this people were more stubborn, wherefore he orders them to be rebuked more roughly, and with all authority. For there are some sins, which ought to be prevented by command. We may with persuasion advise men to despise riches, to be meek, and the like. But the adulterer, the fornicator, the defrauder, ought to be brought to a better course by command. And those who are addicted to augury and divination, and the like, should be corrected “with all authority.” Observe how he would have him insist on these things with independence, and with entire freedom.
“Let no man despise you.” But
Chap. iii. 1. “Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers.”
What then? Even when men do evil, may we not revile them? Nay, but “to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man.” Hear the exhortation, “To speak evil of no man.” Our lips should be pure from reviling. For if our reproaches are true, it is not for us to utter them, but for the Judge to enquire into the matter. “For why,” he says, “do you judge your brother?” But if they are not true, how great the fire. Hear what the thief says to his fellow-thief. “For we are also in the same condemnation.” We are running the same hazard. If you revile others, you will soon fall into the same sins. Therefore the blessed Paul admonishes us: “Let him that stands, take heed lest he fall.”
“To be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men.”
Unto Greeks and Jews, to the wicked and the evil. For when he says, “Let him that stands take heed lest he fall,” he wakens their fears from the future; but here, on the contrary, he exhorts them from the consideration of the past, and the same in what follows;
Ver. 3. “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish.”
Thus also he does in his Epistle to the Galatians, where he says, “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.” Therefore he says, Revile no one, for such also you were yourself.
“For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.”
Therefore we ought to be thus to all, to be gently disposed. For he who was formerly in such a state, and has been delivered from it, ought not to reproach others, but to pray, to be thankful to Him who has granted both to him and them deliverance from such evils. Let no one boast; for all have sinned. If then, doing well yourself, you are inclined to revile others, consider your own former life, and the uncertainty of the future, and restrain your anger. For if you have lived virtuously from your earliest youth, yet nevertheless you may have many sins; and if you have not, as you think, consider that this is not the effect of your virtue, but of the grace of God. For if He had not called your forefathers, you would have been disobedient. See here how he mentions every sort of wickedness. How many things has not God dispensed by the Prophets and all other means? Have we heard?
“For we,” he says, “were once deceived.”
Ver. 4. “But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared.” How? “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”
Strange! How were we drowned in wickedness, so that we could not be purified, but needed a new birth? For this is implied by “Regeneration.” For as when a house is in a ruinous state no one places props under it, nor makes any addition to the old building, but pulls it down to its foundations, and rebuilds it anew; so in our case, God has not repaired us, but has made us anew. For this is “the renewing of the Holy Ghost.” He has made us new men. How? “By His Spirit”; and to show this further, he adds,
Ver. 6. “Which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.”
Thus we need the Spirit abundantly.
“That being justified by His grace”— again by grace and not by debt— “we may be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
At the same time there is an incitement to humility, and a hope for the future. For if when we were so abandoned, as to require to be born again, to be saved by grace, to have no good in us, if then He saved us, much more will He save us in the world to come.
Source: Homilies on Titus (New Advent)