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Note at the outset two points. First, the central words, on which as on a peg the whole structure both of thought and of expression hangs, is the proposition — "He saved us." In what sense is man lost? In what must his salvation consist? What is necessary in order to it? In proportion as these questions are answered in a profound or in a shallow way will be our appreciation of those redemptive actions of God — the mission of His Son and the outpouring of His Spirit. Next, let it be noted that in this saving of man by God three leading points have to be attended to: The source or origin of it; the method of it; the issues and effects of it. What we have to ask from St. Paul is a distinct reply to these three great queries —

1. FROM WHAT SOURCE DID GOD'S SAVING ACTIVITY ON OUR BEHALF TAKE ITS RISE?

2. Through what methods does it operate upon us?

3. To what ultimate issues does it conduct those who are its objects?

I. The answer to the first of these need not detain us long. True, it is a point of primary importance for the immediate purpose of the writer in the present connection. What he is engaged in enforcing upon Cretan Christians is a meek and gentle deportment toward their heathen neighbours. With this design, it is most pertinent to observe that they have not themselves to thank for being in a better state than others — saved Christians instead of lost heathen; not themselves, but God's gratuitous kindness. It is worth remarking too in this connection, how singularly human are the terms selected to express the saving love of God. Two terms are used. The one is God's "kindliness" or sweet benignity, like that gentle friendliness which one helpful neighbour may show to another in distress. The other is God's "love for man," literally, His philanthropy, or such special benevolence to all who wear the human form as might be looked for indeed among the members of our race themselves, but which it startles one to find is shared in by Him who made us. These curiously human phrases are chosen, it is to be presumed, because St. Paul would have us imitate in our dealings with one another God's behaviour towards us. In substance, however, they describe just the same merciful and compassionate love in God our Saviour, to which the whole New Testament traces back man's salvation as to its prime or fontal source. It is quite in harmony with this ascription of our salvation to God's love as its fountainhead, that, throughout his account of the process, Paul continues to make God the subject of his sentence, and man its object. All along the line God appears as active and we as receptive; He is the doer or giver, man the field of His operations and the recipient of His benefits.

II. We pass next from the epiphany of God's unmerited kindness in the advent of the Saviour, TO THAT PROCESS BY WHICH INDIVIDUALS, at Crete or elsewhere, BECOME PARTAKERS IN HIS SALVATION. The conversion of one born a heathen wears a conspicuous character, which is usually awanting to cases of conversion among ourselves. The day of their baptism, on which they sealed their conversion to the Christian faith, had marked a complete revolution in every department of their life. It had in many cases severed family ties. It had in all cases made them marked men in society. It had brought them into the circle of a strange community, and affiliated them to new comrades under the badges of a foreign religion. Outwardly, no less than inwardly, they were become new creatures; the old had passed away and all things were become new. The font at which they sealed their vows of discipleship had proved to be a second birth — the starting point for a changed life. Of course it is still the same among the converts who are won at our mission stations abroad; and we require to keep the condition of an infant missionary church well in mind if we would do justice to such language as St. Paul has here employed to describe the conversion of his readers. He speaks of the change in phrases borrowed both from its outer and inner side, its ritual and its spiritual elements. Inwardly, the convert was saved by the power of the Holy Spirit regenerating and renewing him. Outwardly, this spiritual second birth found its expressive seal in the bath or laver of holy baptism. Paul's language could not mislead his Cretan readers. But it was admirably adapted to revive their most touching recollections. As they read his words, each one of them seemed to himself to stand once more, as on the most memorable and solemn day of his life, beside the sacred font. Once more he saw himself descend into the laver to symbolise the cleansing of his conscience from idol worship, from unbridled indulgence, from a vain conversation, by the precious death and burial of his Lord. By that act how utterly had he broken once for all with his earlier life and its polluted associations, leaving them behind like a buried past! Coming up afresh to commence the new pure career of a Christian disciple, he had received the symbolic white robe amid the congratulations of the brotherhood, who thronged around to welcome the newborn with a kiss of love — to welcome him among that little band who, beneath the cross, had sworn to fight the devil in Jesus' strength, and, if need arose, to shed their blood for Jesus' name! How keenly, as all this rushed back upon the Christian's recollection, must he have felt that a change so wonderful and blessed was the Lord's doing. What power, save God's, could have turned backward the currents of his being, reversing the influences of education with the traditions of his ancestry and the usages of his fatherland? What hand but the Almighty's could have snatched him out of the doomed nations over which Satan reigned, to translate him into that kingdom of light — the kingdom of God's dear Son? Where was the spiritual force that could have opened his eyes, cleansed his conscience, quickened his heart, and made a new man out of the old one, save that Divine Spirit whose advent at Pentecost had been the birthday of a new era for the human family? The grateful praise which could not fail to mount to the lips at such a recollection, was a doxology to the Triune God, into whose name he had been baptized: to the Father unseen, eternal fountainhead of mercy; to the Incarnate Son, sole channel for its manifestation to guilty men; to the Holy Ghost, who, like a stream of life, had been plentifully poured forth from the Father, through the Son, to be the effectual giver of life in sinful souls!

III. Consider, in the last place, WHITHER THIS SAVING ACTIVITY ON THE PART OF THE GODHEAD IS CARRYING SUCH AS SURRENDER THEMSELVES TO IT. What is to be the outcome of His redemptive undertaking? In this alone, that the sinner is justified freely by His grace? Is the release of the guilty from condemnation and penalty the issue of all that God has done in His kindness? No; but that, "having been justified, we should be made heirs." Birth of the Divine Spirit involves sonship to God Himself. The privilege of sons is to inherit; "heirs," therefore, of "life eternal." The word is one which opens, as it were, a door into heaven. It is true that it is not yet apparent what the children of God shall hereafter be, for purity, for freedom, for wisdom, for felicity. But forth from that opened door, how there streams to meet us a radiance of the unseen glory, which in the twilight of this lifetime dazzles our earthly eyes! For that undiscovered heritage of the saints in light we can only hope. To this point, therefore, and no further, does the Christian gospel conduct its disciple. Here for the present it leaves him, sitting patient and expectant by the gate of Paradise, to await, with steadfast heart, the moment that shall disclose to him his patrimony of bliss. While he sits and waits, shall he not behave himself as a child of God, and strive to grow more meet for the heritage of the holy?

(J. O. Dykes, D. D.)

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KJV: But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,

WEB: But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love toward mankind appeared,