Titus 1:13-14

Titus 1:13. Paul boldy adds his own testimony to base on it an exhortation to a sharp or severe handling of the people.

Rebuke is ‘confute,' as in Titus 1:9 the elders were to do.

Sharply, or unsparingly, with a view to their becoming sound in the faith. The Gospel has power to subdue the wildest natures.

Titus 1:14 defines the evil to be cured (cf. 1 Timothy 1:4; 1 Timothy 4:1).

Fables; literally, ‘myths, fantastic fictions about the world of spirits, nourished by the secret teaching traditional among the Jews' (Matthies); ‘Rabbinical fables and fabrications, whether in history or doctrine' (Ellicott). Word only found in Pastoral Epistles and in 2 Peter 1:16.

The commandments were late glosses on the Mosaic law with no moral basis, chiefly turning on distinction between clean and unclean (cf. Matthew 15:9 and Mark vii 7). Against these last, Titus 1:15 lays down the broad rule of Christian faith which cuts false asceticism to the root.