Titus 1:1–16

¹Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ according to the faith of God’s chosen ones and the accurate knowledge of the truth which accords with godly devotion²upon the basis of a hope of the everlasting life which God, who cannot lie, promised before times long lasting,³whereas in his own due times he made his word manifest in the preaching with which I was entrusted, under command of our Savior, God;⁴to Titus, a genuine child according to a faith shared in common:

May there be undeserved kindness and peace from God [the] Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

⁵For this reason I left you in Crete, that you might correct the things that were defective and might make appointments of older men in city after city, as I gave you orders;⁶if there is any man free from accusation, a husband of one wife, having believing children that were not under a charge of debauchery nor unruly.⁷For an overseer must be free from accusation as God’s steward, not self‐willed, not prone to wrath, not a drunken brawler, not a smiter, not greedy of dishonest gain,⁸but hospitable, a lover of goodness, sound in mind, righteous, loyal, self‐controlled,⁹holding firmly to the faithful word as respects his [art of] teaching, that he may be able both to exhort by the teaching that is healthful and to reprove those who contradict.

¹⁰For there are many unruly men, profitless talkers, and deceivers of the mind, especially those men who adhere to the circumcision.¹¹It is necessary to shut the mouths of these, as these very men keep on subverting entire households by teaching things they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain.¹²A certain one of them, their own prophet, said: “Cre′tans are always liars, injurious wild beasts, unemployed gluttons.”

¹³This witness is true. For this very cause keep on reproving them with severity, that they may be healthy in the faith,¹⁴paying no attention to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn themselves away from the truth.¹⁵All things are clean to clean [persons]. But to [persons] defiled and faithless nothing is clean, but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.¹⁶They publicly declare they know God, but they disown him by their works, because they are detestable and disobedient and not approved for good work of any sort.