Introduction
1
📚Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s chosen 📖 ones and the knowledge of the truth that is in accordance with godliness,1:1 Rom 1:1; Gal 1:1; 1 Tim 1:1. Paul’s great work was to bring people to faith in Christ, and to encourage and strengthen their faith by giving them the truth of God. Compare Rom 1:5, 11, 12.
The truth Paul proclaimed was “in accordance with godliness” – means to live with real devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ and to holiness of life (Titus 2:12). Any religious teaching that does not do this is false.⚜
2 📚in expectation 📖 of eternal life 📖, 📖 which God, who cannot lie 📖, promised before the world began 📖, 3 📚and at the proper time 📖 has revealed his word through preaching, which has been committed to me 📖 according to the command of God our Saviour,
4 📚To Titus, my own son in the common faith, grace, mercy and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Qualifications for church elders
5 📚For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order what was lacking, and ordain elders 📖 in every city, as I had instructed you,
1:5 Crete is a large island in the Mediterranean Sea, south of Greece.⚜
6 📚if there is anyone who is blameless, the husband of only one wife, having faithful children 📖 not accused of wildness or unruliness. 7 📚For an overseer in the church, as God’s steward, must be blameless, not self-pleasing 📖, not soon angry 📖, not given to wine, not quarrelsome, not greedy for sordid gain 📖, 8 📚but a lover of hospitality, a lover of what is good 📖, able to think soundly 📖, upright 📖 holy 📖, temperate, 9 📚holding firmly the faithful word as he has been taught, so that by sound doctrine 📖 he will be able both to exhort and to convince opponents.
1:6-9 See the list of qualities for an overseer in 1 Tim 3:2-7. Some qualities in this list are not found there; some in that list are not here. For the complete picture of what an elder or overseer (this is the same position – Acts 20:17, 28) should be both these lists are necessary.⚜
1:9 An elder must not only hold firmly to the Word of God, he must know it well enough to teach others the truth and be able to refute error.⚜
Empty talkers and deceivers
10 📚For there are many unrestrained people, 📖 empty talkers 📖 and deceivers 📖, especially from the circumcised ones 📖, 11 📚whose mouths must be stopped 📖, who destroy whole households 📖, teaching things they ought not, for the sake of sordid gain 📖. 12 📚One of them, a prophet of their own, has said, “The Cretans 📖 are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons”. 13 📚This witness is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith 📖, 14 📚and not pay attention to Jewish fables 📖, and the commandments 📖 of men who turn away from the truth. 15 📚To the pure 📖 all things are pure, but to those who are unclean and unbelieving nothing is pure. Even their mind and conscience 📖 are unclean 📖. 16 📚They profess to know God, but in works they deny him, 📖 being abominable and disobedient and unfit for any good work.