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. |