Passage

Titus 2.13

Book: Titus · NASB95

Verse

"looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus," (Titus 2:13, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"11. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, 12. instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,"

"13. looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus,"

"14. who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. 15. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you." (Titus 2:11-15, NASB95)

Setting

Speaker: Paul the Apostle.
Audience: Titus, Paul's ministry partner; by extension, the church under Titus's pastoral oversight on the island of Crete (Titus 1:5).
Location: Paul writing likely from Macedonia or Nicopolis (Titus 3:12), c. AD 63-66 (between his first and second Roman imprisonments on the traditional reconstruction).
Time period: Late in Paul's ministry, after his first Roman imprisonment of Acts 28. The Pastoral Epistles (1-2 Timothy, Titus) reflect his concern for sound doctrine and ecclesiastical order.

Theological reading

The verse is one of the strongest single Christological statements in the Pauline corpus, and the locus classicus of the Granville Sharp rule, a Greek-grammatical rule that decisively settles the verse's identification of Christ as God.

The Greek phrase: tou megalou theou kai sōtēros hēmōn Christou Iēsou Literal: "of the great God and Savior of-us, Christ Jesus"

The Granville Sharp rule (from Granville Sharp, Remarks on the Uses of the Definitive Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament, 1798):

When two singular, personal, common-class nouns are joined by kai (and), and only the first noun has the article (ho, tēn, etc.), then both nouns refer to the same person.

Construction: tou + N1 + kai + N2 (one article over two nouns) → N1 and N2 are the same person.

Applied to Titus 2:13:

tou (article) + megalou theou (great God) + kai + sōtēros hēmōn (our Savior) + Christou Iēsou (Christ Jesus, in apposition)
One article, two nouns → same person
"Our great God and Savior" both refer to "Christ Jesus"

The verse asserts: Christ Jesus is our great God and Savior.

Granville Sharp's rule has been rigorously tested. The classic modern study is Daniel Wallace, Granville Sharp's Canon and Its Kin, 2009, Wallace examined every NT instance of the construction and concluded the rule holds 100% in genuine TSKS (article-substantive-kai-substantive) constructions where the substantives are singular, personal, and common-class. The rule was disputed for two centuries; modern scholarship has decisively confirmed it.

Other NT applications of Granville Sharp:

2 Peter 1:1, tou theou hēmōn kai sōtēros Iēsou Christou, "our God and Savior Jesus Christ", same construction, same conclusion.
2 Peter 1:11; 2:20; 3:18, "the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ", same rule applies.
Ephesians 5:5, "the kingdom of Christ and God", sometimes contested but follows the rule.

Watchtower / NWT translation. Predictably, the NWT inserts "the" before "Savior" to break the rule: "of the great God and of [the] Savior of us, Christ Jesus", making them two persons. The bracketed insertion has no Greek warrant; it is a theological emendation. Daniel Wallace (Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 1996) and Murray Harris (Jesus as God, 1992) document this as a clear violation of Greek grammar.

Patristic. Athanasius (Discourses Against the Arians II.39, c. AD 358) cites Titus 2:13 as one of the seven "explicit deity" verses for Christ. Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles) develops the verse against Nestorianism: the same person who is "our great God" is also "our Savior", one Christ, both natures.

Reformation. Calvin (Titus commentary, ad loc.): "Paul calls Christ our great God, that those who err most foolishly when they refuse to ascribe to Him essential deity might be confounded." The Heidelberg Catechism Q. 35 and Westminster Confession 8 cite this verse alongside John 1.1, John 20.28, Colossians 2.9, and Hebrews 1:8 to ground the doctrine of Christ's full deity.

Modern conservative. Murray Harris's Jesus as God (1992) gives the most thorough modern treatment of Titus 2:13 as a deity-of-Christ proof. Other defenders: F. F. Bruce (Pastoral Epistles), George Knight III (The Pastoral Epistles NIGTC, 1992), William Mounce (Pastoral Epistles WBC, 2000).

Eschatological context

The verse functions within the blessed hope expectation, the parousia (second coming) of Christ. The grammar pairs:

The blessed hope (tēn makarian elpida), Christian expectation of resurrection and consummation
The appearing of the glory (kai epiphaneian tēs doxēs), Christ's return in visible glory

Paul reads Christ's return as the appearing of our great God and Savior. The eschaton is the unveiling of Christ's deity to all creation (compare Revelation 1:7 "every eye will see Him"). The blessed hope is not a generic future-life-after-death; it is the personal coming of the divine Christ.

Key words

G2316 - theos, theos (God), predicated of Christ
G4990 - soter, sōtēr (Savior)
G5547 - christos, Christos (Christ)
G2424 - Iesous, Iēsous (Jesus)
G2017 - epiphaneia (pending), epiphaneia (appearing), used in Pastoral Epistles for both the incarnation and the parousia