Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁶⁵ You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord, according to Your promise.

⁶⁶ Teach me good judgment, wise and right discernment, and knowledge, for I have believed (trusted, relied on, and clung to) Your commandments.

⁶⁷ Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now Your word do I keep [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying it].

⁶⁸ You are good and kind and do good; teach me Your statutes.

⁶⁹ The arrogant and godless have put together a lie against me, but I will keep Your precepts with my whole heart.

⁷⁰ Their hearts are as fat as grease [their minds are dull and brutal], but I delight in Your law.

⁷¹ It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn Your statutes.

⁷² The law from Your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.

¹² For there shall be a day of the Lord of hosts against all who are proud and haughty and against all who are lifted up—and they shall be brought low—^(A)

¹³ [The wrath of God will begin by coming down] against all the cedars of Lebanon [west of the Jordan] that are high and lifted up, and against all the oaks of Bashan [east of the Jordan],

¹⁴ And [after that] against all the high mountains and all the hills that are lifted up,

¹⁵ And against every high tower and every fenced wall,

¹⁶ And against all the ships of Tarshish and all the picturesque and desirable imagery [designed for mere ornament and luxury].

¹⁷ Then the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

1 Paul, a bond servant of God and an apostle (a special messenger) of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) to stimulate and promote the faith of God’s chosen ones and to lead them on to accurate discernment and recognition of and acquaintance with the Truth which belongs to and harmonizes with and tends to godliness,

² [Resting] in the hope of eternal life, [life] which the ever truthful God Who cannot deceive promised before the world or the ages of time began.

³ And [now] in His own appointed time He has made manifest (made known) His Word and revealed it as His message through the preaching entrusted to me by command of God our Savior;

⁴ To Titus, my true child according to a common (general) faith: Grace (favor and spiritual blessing) and [heart] peace from God the Father and the Lord Christ Jesus our Savior.

⁵ For this reason I left you [behind] in Crete, that you might set right what was defective and finish what was left undone, and that you might appoint elders and set them over the churches (assemblies) in every city as I directed you.

⁶ [These elders should be] men who are of unquestionable integrity and are irreproachable, the husband of [but] one wife, whose children are [well trained and are] believers, not open to the accusation of being loose in morals and conduct or unruly and disorderly.

⁷ For the bishop (an overseer) as God’s steward must be blameless, not self-willed or arrogant or presumptuous; he must not be quick-tempered or given to drink or pugnacious (brawling, violent); he must not be grasping and greedy for filthy lucre (financial gain);

⁸ But he must be hospitable (loving and a friend to believers, especially to strangers and foreigners); [he must be] a lover of goodness [of good people and good things], sober-minded (sensible, discreet), upright and fair-minded, a devout man and religiously correct, temperate and keeping himself in hand.

⁹ He must hold fast to the sure and trustworthy Word of God as he was taught it, so that he may be able both to give stimulating instruction and encouragement in sound (wholesome) doctrine and to refute and convict those who contradict and oppose it [showing the wayward their error].