Dictionary Article

1. One of Paul’s converts—“my true child in a common faith” (Ti 1:4, nasb)—who became an intimate and trusted associate of the apostle in his mission of planting Christianity throughout the Mediterranean world (2 Cor 8:23; 2 Tm 4:10; Ti 1:4-5). Mentioned frequently in Paul’s letters (eight times in 2 Corinthians, twice in Galatians, once each in 2 Timothy and Titus), his name occurs nowhere in Acts. This is a puzzling silence that some scholars have sought to explain with the fascinating, but uncertain, suggestion that he was a brother of Luke, the author of Acts.

Unlike Timothy, who was half Jewish, Titus was born of gentile parents. Nothing is recorded of the circumstances surrounding his conversion and initial encounter with Paul. He is first introduced as a companion of Paul and Barnabas on a visit to Jerusalem (Gal 2:3). The occasion appears to have been the Jerusalem Council, about AD 50, which Paul and Barnabas attended as official delegates from the church at Antioch not long after the apostle’s first missionary journey (Acts 15).

With the hotly contested issue of compulsory circumcision of gentile converts to Christianity before the council, Paul decided to make a test case of Titus. The council decided in Paul’s favor against the Judaizing party, and Titus was accepted by the other apostles and leaders of the Jerusalem church without submitting to the rite of circumcision. Thus, Titus became a key figure in the liberation of the infant church from the Judaizing party.

Titus probably accompanied Paul from that time on, but he does not appear again until Paul’s crisis with the church at Corinth during his third missionary journey. According to 2 Corinthians, while Paul was conducting an extended ministry in Ephesus, he received word that the Corinthian church had turned hostile toward him and renounced his apostolic authority. Other attempts at reconciliation having failed, he sent Titus to Corinth to try to repair the breach. When Titus rejoined Paul somewhere in Macedonia, where the apostle had traveled from Ephesus to meet him, Titus brought the good news that the attitude of the Corinthians had changed and their former love and friendship were now restored (2 Cor 7:6-7). In view of this development Paul sent Titus back to Corinth, carrying 2 Corinthians, which included instructions to complete the collection of the relief offering for the Jewish Christians of Judea (8:6, 16). In this venture also Titus was apparently successful (Rom 15:25-26).

Paul Searches for Titus

Paul hoped to find Titus in Troas and receive news about the Corinthian church. Not finding him there, he went to Macedonia (most likely to Philippi), where he found Titus.

Assuming that Paul was released after his first Roman imprisonment, it appears that Titus accompanied him on a mission to the island of Crete. On departing from Crete, Paul left Titus behind to consolidate the new Christian movement there (Ti 1:5). The assignment was difficult, for the Cretans were unruly and the struggling church was already invaded by false teachers (vv 10-16). His handling of the Corinthian problem some years before, however, demonstrated that Titus possessed the spiritual earnestness, skillful diplomacy, and loving concern required to meet the present challenge, and Paul was confident that this new commission was therefore safe in his hands.

Paul’s letter to Titus, one of his three Pastoral Letters, was written somewhat later to encourage Titus in his Cretan ministry. The letter closes with the apostle’s request that Titus join him at Nicopolis, a town on the west coast of Greece, where he planned to spend the winter (Ti 3:12). Most likely it was from Nicopolis, or else later from Rome (where the apostle was imprisoned again and eventually martyred), that Paul sent Titus on the mission to Dalmatia, a Roman province in what is now Yugoslavia (see 2 Tm 4:10). If later tradition is correct, Titus returned to Crete, where he served as bishop until he was an old man.

2. Variant spelling of a gentile proselyte in Corinth, to whose house Paul went after the Jewish community in general rejected his message (Acts 18:7). Better manuscript evidence names him as Titius Justus. See Justus #2.

Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary