Titus 3:5

Ver. 5. Here the apostle carefully guards the divine benignity and loving-kindness with respect to the freeness of its actings: not of works works in righteousness which we did, (There is a diversity of reading here: the received text has ὧν ἐποιη ́ σαμεν the ὧν by attraction for ἁ ́, as very commonly in the New Testament with E, K, L, and many later MSS.; but the reading of א, A1,C1,D1, F, is ἁ ́ ἐποιη ́ σ., which is adopted by Tisch., Lachm., Ηuther, Alford, who regard the other as a correction of the scribes in accordance with the law of attraction. It may have been so; but apart from that, this is the reading of our best MSS., and on that ground should be adhered to.) but according to His mercy He saved us. The act of God, though expressed only at the close, covers the whole of the passage: He saved us, not on one ground, but on another. Not of works that is, out of them (ἐξ) as the formal or meritorious cause. And then the works are more exactly defined as τῶν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ those, namely, done in righteousness as the state or sphere in which we moved, or, with Winer ( Gr. § 48. 3, e), in the spirit of a righteous person; and to make the meaning plain in English, we require either to repeat works, or to insert some such word as done or wrought. Bengel rightly states that “the negative belongs to the whole announcement: We had not been in righteousness; we had not done works in righteousness; we did not possess works through which we could be saved.” The works of righteousness, in respect to which salvation is denied, are contemplated as past with reference to God's saving act: they were non-existent when that act came into effect, consequently had no influence in calling it forth; it proceeded entirely irrespective of them. And then, in contrast to this negation as to things on our part works that we had not done there is introduced the real ground of action God's own mercy. The connection is expressed by κατὰ, which in such a case denotes the occasion or reason, and is much the same as “in consequence of,” “by reason of” (see Winer, Gr. § 49. d. b, and similar examples in Acts 3:17; 1 Peter 1:3; Philippians 2:3). So that the wellspring of salvation is here represented as lying in the kind and loving propensions of God toward men, and these coming forth in the character of provisions and overtures of mercy in behalf of the undeserving, the sinful (comp. Luke 1:72; Luke 1:78; Romans 9:23; Ephesians 2:4). As the apostle, however, is speaking of the actual experience of salvation, the mercy of God is contemplated mainly in connection with the application of the provisions of grace to individual souls. For, as well noted by Wiesinger, “it is only the part which God performs in our salvation that is held up to view; and so it did not admit of that being mentioned which is required on the part of man, as the subjective instrument or condition of his entrance on salvation. Hence it is not said, διὰ τῆς πίστεως (as in other passages); for the apostle's aim here is not to describe the new state of the man, but to point to the act and saving agency of God in regard to the individual, by which the new state is brought about, and which shows, more than anything else, that this new state does not rest on man's merit or his own doing.”

Then follows an indication of the means through which the divine mercy realizes itself in experience: through the laver of regeneration, and [through] renewing of the Holy Ghost. Such appears to be the proper rendering of the text. The word λουτρόν, which in New Testament Scripture occurs only here and in Ephesians 5:26, has been very variously understood. Washing is the sense adopted by Wycliffe and the Authorized Version; but Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Geneva have fountain; the Rheims, after the Vulgate ( lavacrum), has laver. This last is the only ascertained sense of the word: taken literally, it signifies not the act of washing, but the vessel or bath in which the act was performed. And the only question is, how the expression, when coupled here with regeneration, is to be explained. Some have taken it in an altogether figurative sense, as emblematically representing the spiritual change; some, again, of the Holy Spirit, or of the word the one as the efficient, the other as the instrumental, cause of regeneration. But these cannot be termed quite natural explanations; and neither here nor at Ephesians 5:26 do they seem to have once occurred to the ancient interpreters. They all apply the expression to the baptismal ordinance: thus Theodoret, by the complex phrase λουτρόν παλιγγενεσίας, understands τὸ σωτήριον βάπτισμα, saving baptism; Greg. Naz., “We call baptism λουτρόν, as being an ablution” ὡς ἔκπλυσιν (see further in Suicer, Thes., under the words λουτρόν and παλιγ.). “I do not doubt (says Calvin) but that he at least alludes to baptism; nay, I readily admit that the passage is to be explained of baptism, not because salvation is included in the outward symbol of water, but because baptism seals to us the salvation procured by Christ.... But the apostles are wont to deduce an argument from the sacraments to prove the reality sealed therein; since that beginning ought to convince pious minds that God does not mock us with empty figures, but by His own power inwardly accomplishes what He exhibits by an external sign. That man will rightly hold the proper use and virtue of the sacraments, who shall thus connect the sign and the thing signified, so as neither to make the sign empty or inefficacious, nor yet, with the view of extolling it, detract from the Holy Spirit what is His own.” When interpreted thus, the passage yields no countenance to a ritualistic and superstitious use of the ordinance, such as became common with the Fathers, when they regarded the very waters of baptism as being, when rightly administered, impregnated with the power of the Spirit trans-elemented, as it was called so as by a kind of sacred magic to produce the spiritual result. (It was a source of inextricable confusion in the Patristic theology, and the occasion of much practical error and superstition, that the Fathers identified, in the unqualified manner they did, the ordinance of baptism with regeneration. Mr. Mozley's endeavour to justify them in so doing (in his Primitive Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration), though containing much valuable matter, cannot be regarded as satisfactory; for their usual style of representation was clearly fitted to mislead, and in Augustine particularly was inconsistent with his doctrine of grace. But occasionally they could distinguish well enough. Augustine, for example, speaks of the possibility of the laver of regeneration being unaccompanied with the grace of regeneration (Enar. in Psalms 77), and of conversion of heart being sometimes where there is not baptism, and of baptism being where conversion of heart is not (De Bap. 4:25). So Jerome speaks of persons who do not receive baptism with a full faith, and says of them that “they have received the water, but have not received the Spirit” (Com. in Ezekiel 16:4-5).) It is simply as an ordinance of God an ordinance that has specially connected with it the promise of God's Holy Spirit that the apostle here speaks of it; implying that, if entered into with the same sincerity on man's part that it is appointed on God's, the promise will assuredly be made good; while to the hypocritical and unbelieving it may not less certainly prove, in common with other divine ordinances, altogether fruitless. If, therefore, we say that the natural import of St. Paul's words here obliges us to hold that he speaks of baptism, it is of baptism, we must remember (to use the words of Ellicott), “on the supposition that it was no mere observance, but that it was a sacrament, in which all that was inward properly and completely accompanied all that was outward. He thus could say, in the fullest sense of the words, that it was a laver of regeneration, as he had also said (Galatians 3:27) that as many as were baptized into Christ had put on Christ entered into vital union with Him.” The most exact parallel, however, is 1 Peter 3:21, where, with reference to the salvation wrought for Noah through the deluge and the ark, the apostle says that “baptism now also saves us; “but then baptism of what sort? Not that (he presently adds) which is simply outward, and which could avail only to the purifying of the flesh, but that which carries with it “the answer (or interrogation) of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” It was baptism of such a kind as involved an earnest and conscientious dealing with God in respect to salvation, and an appropriation of the new life brought in for believers by the death and resurrection of Christ.

In our passage, what is said of baptism is further guarded and defined by what follows respecting the work of the Spirit: through the laver of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost (καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως Πν. ἁγίου). So far as grammatical construction is concerned, ἀνακαινώσεως might be made dependent either on λουτροῦ or on διὰ : it might be rendered either “through the laver of regeneration and of the Holy Ghost's renewing,” or “through the laver of regeneration, and through renewing of the Holy Ghost.” With the view of securing the latter rendering, several MSS. insert a second διὰ (D, E, F, G); Jerome also expresses it, per renovationem, though the Vulgate has renovationis: hence connecting renovation as well as regeneration with laver. By renovation, however, as used in New Testament Scripture, is meant a progressive change to the better a growing advancement in the divine life, of which the Holy Spirit, indeed, is the efficient agent, but in which also there is a concurrent action of the regenerated soul. The grace that works in it is not converting, but co-operating and strengthening grace. And while baptism is the seal of the new birth, and gives assurance of the Spirit for all redemption blessings, it is never formally represented as the seal of spiritual progress, nor could it with propriety be so. For it has respect to our introduction into a new state, but not to any future and successive advances thereafter to be made in it. The ordinance of the Supper, in a sacramental point of view, stands related to this, not baptism. There are therefore two things marked here first baptism (as the laver of regeneration), and then the renewing of the Holy Ghost, which is but another name for progressive sanctification. And as the apostle, in predicating salvation, or an experimental acquaintance with the saving mercy of God in Christ, speaks only of such as have partaken alike of baptism and of the Spirit's renewal partaken not of one of these merely, but of both it is a departure from the precedent of apostolic teaching to use language indicative of a saved condition, where one only of the two can be said to have come into play. If people will speak of baptismal regeneration, let them take care, as Alford has justly cautioned, to bear in mind what baptism in such a case should be understood to mean: “not the mere ecclesiastical act not the mere fact of reception by that act among God's professing people; but that, completed by the divine act, manifested by the operation of the Holy Ghost in the heart and through the life.” Precisely similar language, it may be added, is often used regarding the word which is here applied to baptism: it, too, is coupled with regeneration, or a saving change (John 1:12-13; 1 Corinthians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 1:21; Romans 10:9; James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:23; 1 John 5:1); but then it is always on the understanding, expressed or implied, that the word has been received into the heart, and produced through divine grace its proper effect.