PASSAGE · BSB

Titus 3

14 positions in the corpus lean on this chapter. Cited verses are marked.

1Remind the believers to submit to rulers and authorities, to be obedient and ready for every good work,

2to malign no one, and to be peaceable and gentle, showing full consideration to everyone.

3For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.

4But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared,

5He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

6This is the Spirit He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior,

7so that, having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs with the hope of eternal life.

8This saying is trustworthy. And I want you to emphasize these things, so that those who have believed God will take care to devote themselves to good deeds. These things are excellent and profitable for the people.

9But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, arguments, and quarrels about the law, because these things are pointless and worthless.

10Reject a divisive man after a first and second admonition,

11knowing that such a man is corrupt and sinful; he is self-condemned.

12As soon as I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, make every effort to come to me at Nicopolis, because I have decided to winter there.

13Do your best to equip Zenas the lawyer and Apollos, so that they will have everything they need.

14And our people must also learn to devote themselves to good works in order to meet the pressing needs of others, so that they will not be unfruitful.

15All who are with me send you greetings. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with all of you.

Who leans on it

Aquinas on indwelling of the holy spiritSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Draws the sharpest technical distinction of anyone here. God is present in all things by essence, power and presence — a common mode true of every creature — but indwelling is a distinct and new mode whose only cause is …Augustine on justificationPRIMARY SOURCELEANS°Justification makes the sinner actually righteous, not only declares them so — but Augustine's fuller argument is subtler than that headline. The good works that earn eternal life as a 'reward' are themselves gifts of gr…Augustine on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Baptism is the ordinary means, but sacrament and the conversion of the heart are explicitly separable in both directions — the sacrament can exist in an infant without the heart's conversion, and the thief on the cross h…Chrysostom on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°The Spirit comes at the font, and he treats that as settled enough to argue from. Asked how anyone can now tell that a person has the Spirit, given that the sign-gifts have stopped, his answer is that for a believer the …Chrysostom on baptismSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Baptism regenerates, and he presses the word deliberately: it is not called a laver of remission, because it does not merely wipe the vessel clean — a wiped vessel keeps traces of what it was — but recasts it in a new mo…Jonathan Edwards on divine plurality & the unseen realmPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Angels are real created spirits of limited understanding, appointed to different parts of the created order and holding a real if ministerial dominion within them — "a kind of princes under God" — and Edwards says they a…Josh Howerton on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°By grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, always with the rider 'with the words properly defined.' Good works are the fruit of salvation, not the root. Salvation has three tenses: from sin's penalty, power, and…Second London Baptist Confession on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Chapter 6 has Adam's guilt imputed and corrupt nature conveyed to all his posterity, leaving them 'utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good' (6.4). Chapter 9 then answers the will question directly: na…Luther on baptismPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Infants are baptized, and baptism genuinely does something: it is 'a laver of regeneration,' it works forgiveness, and its power, work, profit and end 'is this, namely, to save.' Luther refuses to make the child's faith …Luther on indwelling of the holy spiritDISPUTED READINGCONTESTED°Luther answers by what means rather than at what instant. The Spirit is never had apart from the external Word, and Baptism is where he is ordinarily given: the baptized receive 'the entire Christ, and the Holy Ghost wit…R.C. Sproul on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Regeneration precedes and causes faith, so the Spirit's entry is prior to the conscious moment of believing rather than a response to it. Argued from the force of the Greek behind John 6:44 — 'draw' read as compulsion ra…Charles Haddon Spurgeon on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Reformed Baptist. Faith itself is named as the Spirit's own work, which places the Spirit's operation before the act of believing rather than after it — the monergistic order, stated directly rather than inferred. The wi…Wesley on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Baptism is the ordinary means of a real regeneration in which 'a principle of grace is infused,' so for an infant there is no conscious entry point at all — but the grace given is conditional on a life lived in keeping w…Westminster Confession on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°WCF 11.1 is unusually explicit for a confession: it denies infusion by name, denies that the act of believing is itself what is imputed, and names imputed obedience and satisfaction as the ground. Faith is the instrument…