Titus 1:5–16

⁵For this cause left I thee in Crete, that the things lacking thou mayest arrange, and mayest set down in every city elders, as I did appoint to thee.

⁶If any one is blameless, of one wife a husband, having children stedfast, not under accusation of riotous living or insubordinate— ⁷for it behoveth the overseer to be blameless, as God’s steward, not self-pleased, nor irascible, not given to wine, not a striker, not given to filthy lucre; ⁸but a lover of strangers, a lover of good men, sober-minded, righteous, kind, self-controlled, ⁹holding—according to the teaching—to the stedfast word, that he may be able also to exhort in the sound teaching, and the gainsayers to convict; ¹⁰for there are many both insubordinate, vain-talkers, and mind-deceivers—especially they of the circumcision— ¹¹whose mouth it behoveth to stop, who whole households do overturn, teaching what things it behoveth not, for filthy lucre’s sake. ¹²A certain one of them, a prophet of their own, said—‘Cretans! always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies!’ ¹³this testimony is true; for which cause convict them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, ¹⁴not giving heed to Jewish fables and commands of men, turning themselves away from the truth; ¹⁵all things, indeed, are pure to the pure, and to the defiled and unstedfast is nothing pure, but of them defiled are even the mind and the conscience; ¹⁶God they profess to know, and in the works they deny Him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work disapproved.

Chapter 2