1 PAUL, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the knowledge of the truth which is according to piety,
2 for the hope of eternal life, which God who cannot lie announced before eternal ages,
3 but manifested his word in the times which were suitable for it by the preaching with which I was intrusted, according to the command of our Saviour God,
4 to Titus my faithful son in the common faith; grace and peace from God the Father, and Christ Jesus our Saviour.
5 For this cause I left you in Crete, that you might regulate things which are deficient, and appoint elders in every city, as I charged you,
6 if any one is blameless, a husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of intemperance or of insubordination.
7 For a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God, not self-indulgent, not soon angry, not given to wine, not contentious, not devoted to base gain,
8 but a lover of hospitality, kind, sober, just, holy, self-denying,
9 holding firmly the faithful word taught, that he may be able both to exhort with sound instruction and to convince those who contradict.
10 For there are many disorderly wranglers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision,
11 whom it is necessary to silence, who mislead whole families, teaching for base gain what they ought not.
12 A certain one of them, their own poet, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gormandizers.