¹From Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. God sent me to help his chosen people deepen their faith and understand even better the truth that leads to godly living.

²Then they will live in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began that he would give us.

³At just the right time, he has revealed this hope through the preaching that he has trusted me to do. God our Savior has commanded all these things.

⁴To Titus, my true son in the faith we share.

May God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior give you grace and peace.

Choosing Elders Who Love What Is Good

⁵I left you on the island of Crete because I wanted you to take care of some unfinished business. I wanted you to appoint elders in every town, and I told you how to do that.

⁶An elder must be blameless. He must be faithful to his wife, and his children must be believers and not give anyone a reason to say that they’re wild and disobedient.

⁷Because a church leader takes care of God’s family, he must be blameless. He must not push people around, or get angry easily, or get drunk, or try to get money by cheating people.

⁸Instead, a church leader must welcome people into his home. He must love what is good and be self-controlled, decent, holy, and disciplined.

⁹He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught. Then he’ll be able to comfort others and build them up with the true teaching, and he’ll be able to prove that people who oppose it are wrong.

Warning People Who Fail to Do Good

¹⁰There are many rebellious people who try to deceive others with smooth talk. This is especially true of those who say that Gentiles who believe in Jesus have to be circumcised.

¹¹Those people need to be stopped. They’re disrupting entire families by teaching things they shouldn’t, and they’re doing it just to try to cheat people.

¹²One of Crete’s own prophets has said, “People from Crete are always liars, wild animals, and lazy gluttons.”

¹³That saying is true. I want you to correct these false teachers forcefully, so that they’ll understand the faith properly

¹⁴and not pay attention to made-up Jewish stories and the merely human commands of people who turn away from the truth.

¹⁵To people who are pure, all things are pure. But to those who have twisted minds and don’t believe, nothing is pure. Their minds and consciences are corrupted.

¹⁶They claim that they know God, but their actions show that they don’t know him. They’re despicable, disobedient, and worthless at doing anything good.