Titus 1:13

This testimony is true. For this reason, he rebuked them sharply, so that they might be sound in the faith. For this reason, he rebuked them sharply. Therefore, because some are wicked, he says, rebuke them more harshly, for they could not be led from gentleness to what is right. be sound in the faith. To be sound in faith, however, is if one has introduced nothing external to it, neither Jewish nor Gentile.

Therefore rebuke them sharply, he says, they are liars and evil beasts, and lazy gluttons, who deceive with falsehoods and thirst for the blood of the deceived like wild animals, and not working in silence, eat their own bread, whose god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame, and rebuke them so that they may be sound in the faith. Speak of the health of faith and what follows: that old men be sober, honorable, chaste, sound in the faith and love and patience, to whose faith the health of teachings is also called. For a time will come, he says, when they will not listen to sound doctrine. There are also speeches of health, of which he speaks in the first letter to Timothy: if anyone teaches differently and does not agree to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the teaching that is according to piety (1 Tim. 6:3). And in the second: Holding the example of sound words that you have heard from me (2 Tim. 1:13).

Ver. 13. "Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith." This he says, because their disposition was froward, deceitful, and dissolute. They have these numberless bad qualities; and because they are prone to lying, deceiving, gluttonous, and slothful, severe reproof is necessary. For such characters will not be managed by mildness, "therefore rebuke them." He speaks not here of Gentiles, but of his own people. "Sharply." Give them, he says, a stroke that cuts deep. For one method is not to be employed with all, but they are to be differently dealt with, according to their various characters and dispositions. He does not here have recourse to exhortation. For as he who treats with harshness the meek and ingenuous, may destroy them; so he who flatters one that requires severity, causes him to perish, and does not suffer him to be reclaimed. "That they may be sound in the faith." This then is soundness, to introduce nothing spurious, nor foreign. But if they who are scrupulous about meats are not sound, but are sick and weak; for, "Them that are weak," he says, "receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations" (Rom xiv. 1); what can be said of those who observe the same fasts, (with the Jews,) who keep the sabbaths, who frequent the places that are consecrated by them? I speak of that at Daphne, of that which is called the cave of Matrona, and of that plain in Cilicia, which is called Saturn's. How are these sound? With them a heavier stroke is necessary. Why then does he not do the same with the Romans? Because their dispositions were different, they were of a nobler character.