Titus 1:5

Titus, like Timothy, served as the agent of an apostle with apostolic authority. He was in a position of authority over the other local Christians.

"Timothy was not the pastor of the church at Ephesus in the modern sense of that term; nor was Titus the bishop of the Cretan churches, as is sometimes thought. Both men are addressed as the personal representatives of the apostle Paul and had been left at their stations to carry out the work assigned to them by the apostle." [Note: D. Edmond Hiebert, Titus and Philemon, p. 7.]

"Titus may have been older, more mature and therefore less prone to depression and the need for encouragement than was Timothy. The Cretan situation was also less serious, and Titus was in less danger." [Note: Mounce, p. 385.]

The public reading of this epistle would have helped the Christians recognize Titus’ authority and submit to Paul’s instructions.

The churches in Crete needed organization. The ones in Ephesus, where Timothy was when Paul wrote 1 Timothy, had been in existence longer and seem to have been better organized. An evidence of this may be that in 1 Timothy Paul wrote about removing bad elders (1 Timothy 5:19-25). In Titus we see no need for this. Paul prescribed an organizational structure but left it flexible. He did not dictate the details but left these open for local leaders to determine. Consequently the quality of the church’s leaders was very important.

"It is . . . impossible to determine how many elders would have been selected in every town (meaning ’in the house church of each town’); but the general rule would probably have been a plurality of leaders." [Note: Towner, 1-2 Timothy . . ., p. 224. Cf. Philippians 1:1.]

We do not know how many churches there were on Crete, but Homer, who lived in the ninth century B.C., referred to the island as "Crete of the hundred cities." [Note: Cited by Barclay, p. 268.] It was heavily populated.