Part V · One God, One Mediator
σωτήρ
Sōtēr so-TAIR
savior, deliverer, preserver
“Six Times the Father, Four Times the Son”
Read Titus straight through with a pencil and something odd emerges.
Chapter 1, verse 3: the command of God our Savior. Verse 4: Christ Jesus our Savior.
Chapter 2, verse 10: the teaching of God our Savior. Verse 13: our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Chapter 3, verse 4: the kindness of God our Savior. Verse 6: through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Three times, in three chapters, the same title is applied to the Father and then within a few verses to the Son. It is not a slip and it is not a habit of loose speech. A letter this short does not do a thing three times by accident.
Across the three Pastoral letters the title falls to God six times and to Christ four. Nowhere is the reader told to keep them straight. The letters simply use the word both ways and let the reader draw the conclusion — which, at Titus 2:13, they finally draw for him in a single phrase.
The Word
The Greek word is σωτήρ (sōtēr), pronounced in the Erasmian convention as so-TAIR, with the accent on the second syllable. It is a third-declension masculine noun, an agent noun from sōzō (σῴζω), to save, to rescue, to preserve, to heal.
The verb is broader than English “save” suggests. In the Gospels sōzō is used of healing (your faith has saved you, said to people whose bodies were mended), of rescue from drowning, of preservation of life in a storm — and of salvation in the full theological sense. A sōtēr is anyone who brings someone out of a danger.
The word family:
Sōzō (σῴζω) — to save. Frequent. In these letters: 1 Timothy 1:15; 2:4, 15; 4:16; 2 Timothy 1:9; 4:18; Titus 3:5.
Sōtēria (σωτηρία) — salvation, deliverance. 2 Timothy 2:10; 3:15.
Sōtērios (σωτήριος) — the adjective, bringing salvation. Titus 2:11: the grace of God appeared, sōtērios to all people. The adjective is rare and it stands at the head of the paragraph that Session Ten is built on.
Background, and why the word was provocative. Sōtēr was not a neutral religious term in the first century. It had two loud prior uses.
It was applied to gods — Zeus Sōtēr, Asclepius the healer — in inscriptions and dedications all over the Greek world.
And it was applied to rulers. Ptolemy I took Sōtēr as a title. Hellenistic kings and, decisively, Roman emperors were hailed as saviors and benefactors of the world, and the imperial cult made the acclamation routine. To call a crucified Galilean sōtēr in a Greek city was to use the emperor’s word about a man the empire had executed.
The Septuagint background pulls in a third direction, and it is the one that matters most for Titus 2:13. In the Greek Old Testament sōtēr belongs to God, emphatically and exclusively. Isaiah 45:21 is the sharpest: a righteous God and a sōtēr; there is none besides me. A first-century reader formed on that verse could not hear savior applied to Jesus as a compliment.
Range of Meaning
God as Savior. The Septuagint’s dominant use, carried into these letters six times: 1 Timothy 1:1; 2:3; 4:10; Titus 1:3; 2:10; 3:4. Also Luke 1:47, in Mary’s song.
Christ as Savior. 2 Timothy 1:10; Titus 1:4; 2:13; 3:6. And across the New Testament: Luke 2:11; John 4:42; Acts 5:31; 13:23; Ephesians 5:23; Philippians 3:20; and five times in 2 Peter.
The two together, in one phrase. Titus 2:13. See below.
The hard verse: 1 Timothy 4:10. “…because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of believers.”
This is the most difficult occurrence and a study should not glide past it. Sōtēr pantōn anthrōpōn, malista pistōn. Three readings are seriously held:
Universal provision, particular reception. God is genuinely the Savior of all — the ransom was given for all (1 Tim 2:6) — and believers are those in whom that saving actually lands. On this reading malista marks where the salvation is received, not a second and better salvation.
Temporal preservation, then eternal salvation. God preserves all people in this life — the ordinary providential sense of sōzō — and saves believers eternally. This takes the breadth of the verb seriously and has real support in the way sōzō works elsewhere.
Potentially all, actually believers. A softening that most readers find weaker than the first, since the verse says God is the Savior, not that he could be.
The first is the reading confessional Lutheran theology takes, and it fits the letters’ own argument: 1 Timothy 2:4 says God desires all to be saved, and 2:6 says the ransom was for all. Whichever reading a person prefers, the honest observation is that this letter twice states a universal scope before it reaches 4:10, so the verse is not an anomaly to be explained away.
Where You’ll Meet It
Titus 2:13. “…as we wait for the happy fulfillment of our hope in the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Tou megalou theou kai sōtēros hēmōn Iēsou Christou. One article governing two singular personal nouns joined by kai, with Jesus Christ in apposition — the construction discussed under epiphaneia, where the grammar is set out. On the standard reading Jesus is called our great God and Savior in one breath.
What the sōtēr entry adds is why this is the climax rather than an isolated proof text. Titus has been alternating the title between the Father and the Son for two chapters. At 2:13 the alternation stops and the two are said together, of one person. Set that against Isaiah 45:21 — a righteous God and a Savior, and none besides me — and the sentence is doing something quite deliberate.
1 Timothy 1:1. “…by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.” The letter opens with the pairing, and the titles are distributed: God is Savior, Christ is hope. Titus will spend three chapters loosening that distribution.
2 Timothy 1:10. “…but now made visible through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has broken the power of death.” Sōtēr attached to the first appearing and to the decommissioning of death.
Titus 3:4–6. The kindness of God our Savior appeared (v. 4); the Spirit was poured out through Jesus Christ our Savior (v. 6). Both titles inside one sentence about baptism — see palingenesia.
Luke 2:11. “Today your Savior is born in the city of David.” The word announced by an angel over a feeding trough, in an empire whose ruler held the same title.
What Confessional Lutherans Hear
Sōtēr — savior, deliverer, preserver
Three emphases.
The Titus alternation is a Christological argument made by usage. The Formula of Concord’s article on the person of Christ argues at length for what Titus demonstrates by repetition: that what is proper to the divine nature is truly said of this one Person. Titus does not construct the argument. It simply calls the Father sōtēr, then calls Jesus sōtēr, three times over, and finally says both of one person in one phrase.
That is worth noticing methodologically. The New Testament’s Christology is often carried in the way titles are handled rather than in propositions about natures. The propositions came later, in the creeds, because the usage was being denied — but the usage came first.
Salvation is God’s act, from beginning to end. The title is agentive: a sōtēr is one who does the saving. Nothing in these letters describes God as making salvation available for others to complete. Titus 3:5 states it flatly — he saved us — with the works of righteousness we had done explicitly excluded.
This is the Lutheran sola gratia stated in a noun rather than a preposition. The Apology’s long argument about justification amounts to insisting that the word means what it says: the one who saves is the Savior, and the person being saved is the object of the verb.
And it is a political word, which the church should not tidy up. The imperial background is not decoration. When the Pastorals call Jesus sōtēr, they take a title the empire claimed and give it to a man the empire killed — and then, at Titus 2:13, wait for his epiphaneia, using the word for a royal arrival.
Lutheran theology has generally been cautious about political theology, and rightly wary of turning the gospel into a program. But the caution should not become deafness. The confession that Jesus is Savior has never been religiously private, because the word was never religiously private. It says that rescue comes from somewhere other than the powers that offer it — which is a claim about where a Christian’s hope is not lodged, and is why the same letters can tell believers to pray for rulers (1 Tim 2:2) without ever calling one of them sōtēr.
The full treatment of sōtēr appears in Guard the Deposit, Session Five, which continues with “Where People Get It Wrong,” “So What,” and “If You Want to Go Deeper.”