Jewish kingdom program, a sacramental priesthood, a law-keeping holiness system, and a Church Age gospel all under the same roof. The result is always confusion. Paul is the apostle God raised up with the revelation and doctrine for the Body of Christ, and Titus belongs to that Pauline lane.
That is why Titus is loaded with Church Age material. It talks about “the faith of God’s elect,” “the truth which is after godliness,” eternal life promised by God who cannot lie, the word manifested through preaching, grace, mercy, peace, bishops, elders, sound doctrine, good works, the blessed hope, redemption, purification, regeneration, justification by grace, and heirs according to the hope of eternal life. That is not temple Judaism. That is not Roman sacramentalism. That is not kingdom law. That is not tribulation endurance doctrine. That is Pauline Church Age truth applied to local churches in a dirty Gentile world. Paul does not tell Titus to build an altar, offer a sacrifice, keep a feast day, restore temple ordinances, or submit the Cretan assemblies to Jerusalem’s hierarchy. He tells him to set things in order according to sound doctrine.
This is where many systems go wrong. They claim to honor the whole Bible while refusing the divisions God put in it. They run to Matthew to steal Israel’s kingdom promises, run to Acts to imitate transitional signs, run to James to muddy justification, run to Hebrews to terrify Church Age saints, run to Revelation to put the Body of Christ in Jacob’s trouble, and then run away from Paul whenever Paul clarifies the matter. Titus is a Pauline book. The man writing it is not an optional commentator. He is the apostle of Jesus Christ. If the Church Age believer wants to know how saved people should live under grace, how churches should be ordered, how leaders should be qualified, how false teachers should be handled, and how good works fit after salvation, he does not need a Roman catechism, a denominational handbook, or a scholar correcting the English Bible. He needs Paul.
Chapter Five — The Faith of God’s Elect Without Calvin’s Cage
Paul says his apostleship is “according to the faith of God’s elect.” Now watch the theological buzzards start circling. The Calvinist sees the word “elect” and immediately drags out his system like a man pulling a corpse through the church aisle. Before the verse can breathe, he has unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and fatalistic machinery bolted onto the text. But the verse says “according to the faith of God’s elect.” It does not say according to the fatalism of Geneva. It does not say according to a decree that makes God the author of sin and man a puppet. It does not say according to a theological cage where God damns men before they are born and then commands them to believe a gospel they could not possibly receive. The Bible word “elect” belongs to God, not Calvin.
In Titus 1:1, the elect are connected with faith and the acknowledging of the truth. That matters. The verse does not present election as a dead philosophical category. It presents living people who believe and acknowledge truth that produces godliness. Election in Scripture must be handled with the whole Bible open and the divisions in place. Israel is called elect in one context. Christ is called elect in another. Believers are elect in Christ. There is election connected with service, purpose, calling, foreknowledge, and position. But when a man imports a theological system into every occurrence of the word, he stops reading and starts dictating. Titus is not a Calvinist proof text; it is a Pauline statement about the faith and truth connected with God’s people.