Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁵ The reason I left you in Crete was in order that you should complete that which was lacking, and should ordain elders in every city as I directed you – ⁶ if any be faultless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not known for running wild or disobedience. ⁷ For a bishop must be faultless, as it becomes the minister of God: not stubborn, not angry, no drunkard, no fighter; not given to the love of money, ⁸ but welcoming toward people and willing to take them in; one who loves goodness, sober-minded, righteous, holy, temperate; ⁹ and such as cleaves to the true word of doctrine, so that he may be able to exhort with wholesome teaching, and to refute those who speak against it.

¹⁰ For there are many contrary, who speak vanity and beguile minds, namely they of the circumcision, ¹¹ whose mouths must be stopped. They pervert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for easy money. ¹² One of them, who was an author of their own, said, The Cretans are always liars, evil creatures and lazy gluttons. ¹³ This witness is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they may be sound in the faith, ¹⁴ and not paying heed to Jewish fables, and to commandments of men that turn from the truth.

¹⁵ To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but even their very minds and consciences are defiled. ¹⁶ They confess that they know God, but with their deeds they deny him, and are abominable and obstinately self-willed, not to be trusted for any good works.