Titus 1:2

Ver. 2. "Which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." That is, not now upon a change of mind, but from the beginning it was so foreordained. This he often asserts, as when he says, "Separated unto the Gospel of God." (Rom. i. 1.) And again, "Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate." (Rom. viii. 29.) Thus showing our high origin, in that He did not love us now first, but from the beginning: and it is no little matter to be loved of old, and from the beginning. "Which God, that cannot lie, promised." If He "cannot lie," what He has promised will assuredly be fulfilled. If He "cannot lie," we ought not to doubt it, though it be after death. "Which God, that cannot lie," he says, "promised before the world began"; by this also, "before the world began," he shows that it is worthy of our belief. It is not because the Jews have not come in, that these things are promised. It had been so planned from the first. Hear therefore what he says, "But hath in His own times manifested." Wherefore then was the delay? From His concern for men, and that it might be done at a seasonable time. "It is time for Thee, Lord, to work" (Ps. cxix. 125), says the Prophet. For by "His own times" is meant the suitable times, the due, the fitting.

I confess that I do not know what ages passed before the human race was created, yet I am perfectly sure that no one creature is coeternal with the Creator. Curiously enough, the apostle uses the expression tempora aeterna in reference not to the future but to the past. Thus he says: "in the hope of eternal life which God, who does not lie, promised before the eternal times, he has in due times manifested, his word." He seems to be saying that time stretches backward eternally; yet time is not coeternal with God, since not only did God exist "before eternal times" but he promised eternal life which he manifested in his own time, that is, in due time. Now, what he promised was his Word. For the Word is eternal life. But how did he make this promise, since it was made to those who certainly did not exist before the "eternal times"? The meaning, then, must be that what was to take place in its own time was already predestined and determined in his eternity and in his coeternal Word.