¹ Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of the choice ones of God, and an acknowledging of truth that is according to piety,

² upon hope of life age-during, which God, who doth not lie, did promise before times of ages,

³ (and He manifested in proper times His word,) in preaching, which I was entrusted with, according to a charge of God our Saviour,

⁴ to Titus--true child according to a common faith: Grace, kindness, peace, from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour!

⁵ For 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;

⁶ if any one is blameless, of one wife a husband, having children stedfast, not under accusation of riotous living or insubordinate--

⁷ for 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;

⁸ but a lover of strangers, a lover of good men, sober-minded, righteous, kind, self-controlled,

⁹ holding--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;

¹⁰ for there are many both insubordinate, vain-talkers, and mind-deceivers--especially they of the circumcision--

¹¹ whose mouth it behoveth to stop, who whole households do overturn, teaching what things it behoveth not, for filthy lucre's sake.

¹² A certain one of them, a prophet of their own, said--`Cretans! always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies!'

¹³ this testimony is true; for which cause convict them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith,

¹⁴ not giving heed to Jewish fables and commands of men, turning themselves away from the truth;

¹⁵ all 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;

¹⁶ God they profess to know, and in the works they deny Him , being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work disapproved.