What Does Titus 1:2 Mean?
In hope of the life of the ages, which the God who does not lie promised before the times of the ages.
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
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;THE KEY
The life you hope for belongs to the ages, and its promise is spoken before those ages begin.
THE MEANING
The life you hope for is the life of the ages, held within God’s purpose. Its promise precedes the ages you inhabit, and the Promiser cannot lie. So your hope has ground beyond what your present circumstances can prove.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that your future is only as secure as your present circumstances make it seem.
THE ROOT
αἰωνίου
aiōniou
GROWS FROM
αἰων-
aiōn-
An age, era, or span of time.
The word carries the sense of what belongs to or endures through the ages. Titus uses this same word family for the life promised and for the times before which it was promised, so the life of the ages is already held in God’s purpose before those ages unfold.
ALSO GROWS
aiōn: An age or era.
αἰών
It opens “eternal life” to the sense of life belonging to the ages.
aiōnios: Of the age or ages; age-long.
αἰώνιος
This adjective describes both the life hoped for and the ages that precede it.
ἐπηγγείλατο
epēngeilato
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ-
angel-
To announce or convey a message.
“promised” in this verse is epēngeilato. The word for promise belongs to the language of announcing: the hope here rests on a declared word. The verse immediately names the character of the One who speaks, God cannot lie, so the promise carries the reliability of its Promiser.
ALSO GROWS
epangellomai: To promise or declare.
ἐπαγγέλλομαι
This is the verb behind the promise that grounds the hope.
angelos: A messenger, one who carries a message.
ἄγγελος
The shared announce-and-message word family gives a promise the shape of a word sent forth.
ἐλπίδι
elpidi
GROWS FROM
ἐλπ-
elp-
Expectation or hope.
The Greek word for hope is not merely a private wish; it is expectation directed toward what is promised. Here that expectation rests on life of the ages and on the One whose word cannot be false.
ALSO GROWS
elpis: Hope or expectation.
ἐλπίς
This is the noun used for the hope in which the verse is set.
elpizō: To hope or expect.
ἐλπίζω
The related verb shows hope as an orientation toward what is expected.
THE PATTERN
Hope rests on God’s promise, whose truth holds beyond human effort and changing circumstances.
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should relent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not make it stand?Who has delivered us and called us with a set-apart calling, not according to our works, but according to his own setting forth and the favor given us in Jesus the Anointed One, before the ages began.So that through two unshifting deeds, in which it is without power for God to lie, we might have a strong comfort, we who have fled for refuge to grip the hope lying before us.THE THREAD
So that through two unshifting deeds, in which it is without power for God to lie, we might have a strong comfort, we who have fled for refuge to grip the hope lying before us.Titus’s “hope” and Hebrews’ “hope set before us” share the Greek root ἐλπ- (elp-), expectation. Hebrews places that expectation beside God’s impossibility of lying, making explicit why the hope in Titus is secure.
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