What Does Titus 1:15 Mean?
All things are clean to the clean. To the stained and to those who do not trust, nothing is clean; but even their mind and conscience have been stained.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.THE KEY
The verse places the stain, or cleanness, not only in what is encountered, but in the mind and conscience of the one encountering it.
THE MEANING
Purity is not located only in the things around you; the verse connects it to the condition from which you receive them. When defilement and distrust take hold, nothing seems pure, because the stain reaches both mind and conscience. What you discern and what you carry within are bound together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that sorting the world into clean and unclean things can leave your own mind and conscience untouched.
THE ROOT
καθαροῖς
katharois
GROWS FROM
καθαρ-
kathar-
Clean, pure, free from contamination.
The word for “pure” belongs to the same family as “to cleanse” and “cleansing,” holding a clean state and the removal of stain together. The verse sets this cleanness beside the inner person, whose mind and conscience are named as defiled.
ALSO GROWS
katharizō: to cleanse, make clean
καθαρίζω
The cleansing verb shows the action related to the state called pure; the verse’s contrast turns on whether cleanness or stain is present.
katharismos: cleansing, purification
καθαρισμός
This noun names the process of cleansing, keeping the idea of purity connected to what is removed.
μεμιαμμένοις
memiammenois
GROWS FROM
μιαν-
mian-
The word family of μιαίνω (miainō): to stain, pollute, or defile.
“stained” in this verse is memiammenois. The verse repeats this verb family when it says the mind and conscience are defiled. The stain reaches the faculties by which a person thinks and discerns; it is not confined to an outside object.
ALSO GROWS
miasma: pollution, a defiling stain
μίασμα
This branch gives the stain a name, making visible the pollution implied by being defiled.
miasmos: defilement, pollution
μιασμός
This branch names the condition or act of pollution that the verse says reaches mind and conscience.
ἀπίστοις
apistois
GROWS FROM
πιστ-
pist-
Trust, confidence, and the quality of being firm or reliable.
“those who do not trust” in this verse is apistois. The negative form means “without trust,” and Titus places it alongside defilement. The word points to a stance of distrust, not simply a lack of information.
ALSO GROWS
pistis: trust, confidence
πίστις
The positive form clarifies what is absent in “unbelieving”: trust.
pisteuō: to trust, believe, or entrust oneself
πιστεύω
This verb shows trust as reliance, a way of receiving rather than merely knowing information.
pistos: firm, steady, reliable
πιστός
This related word carries the sense of steadiness that stands opposite to being without trust.
THE PATTERN
Scripture links cleanness and defilement to the inner condition of a person, not simply to the objects around them.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steady breath within me.There is nothing from outside a man, entering into him, that can make him common. But the things coming out of a man, those are the things that make the man common.I know, and I am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean through itself. But to the one who counts anything unclean, to that one it is unclean.THE THREAD
Already you are clean through the word which I have spoken to you.John uses the same Greek word family behind “pure” when Jesus calls the disciples “clean.” Titus names the mind and conscience as places where defilement is present; John shows cleanness received through the spoken word.
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