Haweis - Titus - 1

1:1  PAUL, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of the elect of God, and the knowledge of truth which leads to godliness;

1:2  in hope of life eternal, which God, who cannot lie, hath promised before time had a being;

1:3  but hath manifested in his own appointed season his word by the preaching, with which I have been entrusted, according to the command of our Saviour God;

1:4  to Titus, my genuine son after the common faith, be grace, mercy, peace, from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.

1:5  For this purpose I left thee behind me at Crete, that thou mightest direct the regulations which remained to be executed, and that thou shouldest appoint presbyters in every city, as I charged thee to do:

1:6  if there be a man blameless, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, not under an accusation or debauchery, or disorderly conduct.

1:7  For a bishop ought to be irreproachable, as the steward of God; not self-willed, not irritable, not addicted to wine, not quarrelsome, not greedy of filthy lucre;

1:8  but the stranger’s host, the good man’s friend, grave, just, holy, temperate;

1:9  firmly attached to the faithful word, according to the doctrine delivered, that he may be able to exhort with sound instruction and to confute the opposers.

1:10  For there are many disorderly persons vainly talkative, and under a spirit of delusion, especially some of the circumcised;

1:11  whose mouths ought to be muzzled, who pervert whole families, teaching things which they ought not, for the sake of base gain.

1:12  One of them, a poet of their own nation, hath said, The Cretans are always liars, wicked beasts, slothful gluttons.

1:13  This testimony is true. For which cause rebuke them with severity, that they may be sound in the faith;

1:14  not attending to Jewish fables, and injunctions of men, who have turned away from the truth.

1:15  All things indeed are clean to the clean: but to the defiled and to the unbelievers there is nothing clean; but their very mind and conscience are defiled.

1:16  They profess to know God; but in works deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.