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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadEzekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - Titus 1:15 - 1:15
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Ver. 15. To the pure all things are pure: a great counter principle set over against that on which those Jewish semi-Gnostic sciolists were trading to the perversion of their own and other people’s consciences, Judaism in part, and Gnostic asceticism still more, associated moral good and evil with certain outward distinctions: “Touch not or take not this, and you are holy; touch or take it, and you are defiled.” No, the apostle virtually replies, these are but superficial distinctions; and even when they were to some extent of God, it was only as temporary and provisional arrangements—supplying for a season the lack of clearer light. All things which lie outside a man,—the things of whatever kind which he can use as articles of food, or turn into instruments of service,—these are in themselves indifferent; there is no power of intelligent and voluntary choice in them, and therefore no element of sanctity or corruption: this can only be where moral qualities reside, in the region of thought, desire, will; let there be but purity there, and then those external things assume a corresponding character, because they receive an impress and a direction from the spirit of him who uses them. It is but a fresh enunciation of the truth long before uttered by our Lord, and laid by Him as an axe to the root of the mistaken ceremonialism of the Pharisees. He told them that washed or unwashed hands, clean or unclean in food, had of themselves nothing to do with religious or moral purity: that for this everything depended on the state of the heart, from which proceed, as to good or evil, the issues of life (Mat_15:11-20; Mar_7:14-16). It is obvious, from the mere statement of this principle, that in the all things spoken of as pure to the pure, errors of doctrine and corrupt practices cannot be included, for these come from an impure source: they are what they are in spirit and character, as the soul is which gave them birth; they are not of God, but of the evil one. It is also obvious that the converse of the statement must hold equally good with the statement itself; as, indeed, the apostle expressly affirms: but to them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure. Surely a solemn thought for persons of this class, who are not wholly steeled against conviction! They have within a fountain of pollution, which spreads itself over and infects everything about them. Their food and drink, their possessions, their employments, their comforts, their actions—all are in the reckoning of God tainted with impurity, because they are putting away from them that which alone has for the soul regenerating and cleansing efficacy. The apostle, however, carries it even further; he brings out the evil more distinctly on its positive side: but both their mind and conscience are defiled. In saying this, he no doubt indicates the reason why nothing external is pure to them: but he does not give it formally as a reason; he rather advances it as an additional disclosure of their defilement, showing how it embraces both the intellectual and moral parts of their nature, and lays alike the powers of thought and the workings of conscience under bias to evil.