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Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ to further the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness—
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and which now at his appointed season he has brought to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior,
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To Titus, my true son in our common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
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Appointing Elders Who Love What Is Good
The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.
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An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.
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Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain.
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Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.
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He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.
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Rebuking Those Who Fail to Do Good
For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group.
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They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain.
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One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.”
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and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth.
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To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.
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They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.
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Doing Good for the Sake of the Gospel
You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine.
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Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.
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Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.
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Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children,
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to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
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In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness
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and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.
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and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.
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For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.
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It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,
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while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,
