Titus 3:6

Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(6) Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.—In other words, which—namely, the Holy Ghost—the Father poured abundantly on us through Jesus Christ cur Saviour. The argument continues thus: He (God) saved us first by the laver of regeneration and of renewal of the Holy Ghost, which God—he proceeds to say—shed (or poured out) abundantly on us, and this constant renewal of the Holy Ghost poured out on the heart of each individual believer was owing to the mediation of Jesus Christ, without whose blessed atonement this effusion of the Holy Spirit never had taken place. In this verse the several operations of each of the Persons of the blessed Trinity are clearly set forth.

It is the Father who is ever pouring out upon us the Holy Ghost. It is owing to the Son’s atonement and intercession that this blessed outpouring takes place at all. It is the Holy Ghost poured out on us abundantly who builds us up in the new life, and trains us for the glories of eternity. Here the “Son” is given the same title of “Saviour,” which, in the preceding verse (Titus 3:5), was applied to the “Father.” The appellation belongs to both the First and Second Persons of the blessed Trinity, inasmuch as the Father may be said to have been the architect of our salvation, while the Son was its builder.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

3:1-7 Spiritual privileges do not make void or weaken, but confirm civil duties. Mere good words and good meanings are not enough without good works. They were not to be quarrelsome, but to show meekness on all occasions, not toward friends only, but to all men, though with wisdom, Jas 3:13. And let this text teach us how wrong it is for a Christian to be churlish to the worst, weakest, and most abject. The servants of sin have many masters, their lusts hurry them different ways; pride commands one thing, covetousness another. Thus they are hateful, deserving to be hated. It is the misery of sinners, that they hate one another; and it is the duty and happiness of saints to love one another. And we are delivered out of our miserable condition, only by the mercy and free grace of God, the merit and sufferings of Christ, and the working of his Spirit. God the Father is God our Saviour. He is the fountain from which the Holy Spirit flows, to teach, regenerate, and save his fallen creatures; and this blessing comes to mankind through Christ. The spring and rise of it, is the kindness and love of God to man. Love and grace have, through the Spirit, great power to change and turn the heart to God. Works must be in the saved, but are not among the causes of their salvation. A new principle of grace and holiness is wrought, which sways, and governs, and makes the man a new creature. Most pretend they would have heaven at last, yet they care not for holiness now; they would have the end without the beginning. Here is the outward sign and seal thereof in baptism, called therefore the washing of regeneration. The work is inward and spiritual; this is outwardly signified and sealed in this ordinance. Slight not this outward sign and seal; yet rest not in the outward washing, but look to the answer of a good conscience, without which the outward washing will avail nothing. The worker therein is the Spirit of God; it is the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Through him we mortify sin, perform duty, walk in God's ways; all the working of the Divine life in us, and the fruits of righteousness without, are through this blessed and holy Spirit. The Spirit and his saving gifts and graces, come through Christ, as a Saviour, whose undertaking and work are to bring to grace and glory. Justification, in the gospel sense, is the free forgiveness of a sinner; accepting him as righteous through the righteousness of Christ received by faith. God, in justifying a sinner in the way of the gospel, is gracious to him, yet just to himself and his law. As forgiveness is through a perfect righteousness, and satisfaction is made to justice by Christ, it cannot be merited by the sinner himself. Eternal life is set before us in the promise; the Spirit works faith in us, and hope of that life; faith and hope bring it near, and fill with joy in expectation of it.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Which he shed on us - Greek, "Which he poured out on us" - ἐξέχην exechēn; see the notes at Acts 2:17. The same Greek word is used there as here. It occurs also in the same sense in Acts 2:18, Acts 2:33.

Abundantly - Margin, as in Greek, "richly." The meaning is, that the Holy Spirit had been imparted in copious measure in order to convert them from their former wickedness. There is no particular allusion here to the day of Pentecost, but the sense is, that the Holy Spirit had been imparted richly to all who were converted, at any time or place, from the error of their ways. What the apostle says here is true of all who become Christians, and can be applied to all who become believers in any age or land,

Through Jesus Christ our Saviour - See Notes, Acts 2:33.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6. Which—the Holy Ghost.

he shed—Greek, "poured out"; not only on the Church in general at Pentecost, but also "on us" individually. This pouring out of the Spirit comprehends the grace received before, in, and subsequently to, baptism.

abundantly—Greek, "richly" (Col 3:16).

through Jesus Christ—the channel and Mediator of the gift of the Holy Ghost.

our Saviour—immediately; as the Father is mediately "our Saviour." The Father is the author of our salvation and saves us by Jesus Christ.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Which Holy Spirit, as well for the renewing of us, as for the collation of more common or extraordinary gifts, God poured out upon us

abundantly, through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Which he shed on us abundantly,.... "Or richly"; either which love he shed abroad in the hearts of those whom he regenerated and renewed by his Spirit; or which water of regeneration, that is, grace, comparable to water, he plentifully shed, and caused to abound where sin had done; or rather whom, or which Holy Spirit, with his gifts and graces, such as faith, hope, and love, and every other, he poured forth in great abundance on them; see Isaiah 44:3

through Jesus Christ our Saviour; the love and kindness of God the Father our Saviour, comes through him; the mercy of God streams through him; the salvation itself is by, and through him; the grace communicated in regeneration and renovation is out of his fulness; the Spirit himself is given forth from him; and every supply of grace, by which the work is carried on, comes out of his hands; and everything wrought in us, that is well pleasing in the sight of God, is through him; and even the gift of God, eternal life itself.

Geneva Study Bible

Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Titus 3:6. οὗ ἐξέχεεν: Joel 3:1 (Joel 2:28) is the passage alluded to. Cf. in addition to reff. given above, Acts 10:45, Romans 5:5, Galatians 4:6. The οὗ refers of course to πνεύματ. ἁγ. by attraction, not to ἀνακαινώσεως. All gifts of the Holy Spirit that come through Jesus Christ are a continuation of the Pentecostal outpouring. The aorist is due to the Apostle’s thought of that occasion, although the ἡμᾶς shows that the immediate reference is to the experience of St. Paul and other Christians.

διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ: to be connected with ἐξέχεεν. See John 15:26, Acts 2:33. The finished work of Jesus Christ was the necessary pre-condition to His effusion of the Holy Spirit.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

6. which he shed on us abundantly] More closely in R.V. which he poured out upon us richly; the verb is the same, in the same tense, as in Acts 2:33, ‘he hath poured forth this’; the aorist there being used according to Greek idiom of what has just happened, here of God’s objective act once for all, in which all His successive giving was potentially included.

through Jesus Christ our Saviour] ‘As its channel and medium,’ Alford. ‘All the spiritual Blessings of the New birth, and of the New life, are represented as flowing down to us from and out of the one fountain and well-spring of the love of God the Father; and are all derived to us through God the Son, God and Man, Who is the sole channel of all grace to men; and are applied to us personally by the agency of God the Holy Ghost. All these Blessings come to us through the Incarnation of God the Son, Who took our nature and died for us, and washed us from our sins by His blood. And the Incarnation is, as it were, the point of contact at which the Channel of Filial Grace joins on to the Well-spring of Paternal Love. And the point of contact at which the living water of Grace, which flows from the Well-spring of Paternal Love through the Filial channel of Grace, is poured forth into our souls is in the laver of our New Birth in Baptism.’ Wordsworth.

Bengel's Gnomen

Titus 3:6. Οὗ) Πνεύματος Ἁγίου—διὰ, through) This depends on He saved, etc., Titus 3:5; as the conjugates saved and Saviour prove. [Through Jesus our Saviour is not to be connected, as in Engl. Vers., with He shed on us.]

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 6. - Poured out upon us richly for shed on us abundantly, A.V. Which (οϋ); viz. the Holy Ghost. It is in the genitive (instead of the accusative ὁ, which is another reading), by what [he grammarians call attraction. Poured out (ἐξέχεεν); the same word as is applied to the Holy Ghost in Acts 2:17, 18, 33, and in the LXX. of Joel 2:28, 29. Richly (πλουσίως); as 1 Timothy 6:17; Colossians 3:16; 2 Peter 1:11 (compare the use of πλοῦτος in Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:7). Through Jesus Christ. It is our baptism into Christ which entitles us to receive the Holy Spirit, which we have only in virtue of our union with him. The Spirit flows from the Head to the members. In Acts 2:33, 34 Christ is said to have received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, and to have poured it forth upon the Church. Titus 3:6

Vincent's Word Studies

Shed (ἐξέχεεν)

Or poured forth. Only here in Pastorals. Most frequent in Revelation. The pouring out of the Spirit is an O.T. metaphor. See Joel 3:1, Joel 3:2, cit. in Acts 2:17, Acts 2:18; Zechariah 12:10. In Paul the verb occurs but once, of shedding blood, Romans 3:15, cit.