Titus 1
1
1-4I, Paul, am God’s slave and Christ’s agent for promoting the faith among God’s chosen people, getting out the accurate word on God and how to respond rightly to it. My aim is to raise hopes by pointing the way to life without end. This is the life God promised long ago—and he doesn’t break promises! And then when the time was ripe, he went public with his truth. I’ve been entrusted to proclaim this Message by order of our Savior, God himself. Dear Titus, legitimate son in the faith: Receive everything God our Father and Jesus our Savior give you!
A Good Grip on the Message
5-9I left you in charge in Crete so you could complete what I left half-done. Appoint leaders in every town according to my instructions. As you select them, ask, “Is this man well-thought-of? Is he committed to his wife? Are his children believers? Do they respect him and stay out of trouble?” It’s important that a church leader, responsible for the affairs in God’s house, be looked up to—not pushy, not short-tempered, not a drunk, not a bully, not money-hungry. He must welcome people, be helpful, wise, fair, reverent, have a good grip on himself, and have a good grip on the Message, knowing how to use the truth to either spur people on in knowledge or stop them in their tracks if they oppose it.
10-16For there are a lot of rebels out there, full of loose, confusing, and deceiving talk. Those who were brought up religious and ought to know better are the worst. They’ve got to be shut up. They’re disrupting entire families with their teaching, and all for the sake of a fast buck. One of their own prophets said it best:
The Cretans are liars from the womb,
barking dogs, lazy bellies.
He certainly spoke the truth. Get on them right away. Stop that diseased talk of Jewish make-believe and made-up rules so they can recover a robust faith. Everything is clean to the clean-minded; nothing is clean to dirty-minded unbelievers. They leave their dirty fingerprints on every thought and act. They say they know God, but their actions speak louder than their words. They’re real creeps, disobedient good-for-nothings.
Currently Selected:
Titus 1: MSG
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Titus 1
1
Greeting.#On the epistolary form, see note on Rom 1:1–7. The apostolate is the divinely appointed mission to lead others to the true faith and through it to eternal salvation (Ti 1:1–3). 1Paul, a slave of God and apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of God’s chosen ones and the recognition of religious truth,#1 Tm 2:4; 4:3; 2 Tm 2:25; 3:7; Heb 10:26. 2in the hope of eternal life that God, who does not lie, promised before time began,#3:7; 2 Tm 1:1; 1 Jn 2:25. 3who indeed at the proper time revealed his word in the proclamation with which I was entrusted by the command of God our savior,#2:10; 3:4; Ps 24:5; 1 Tm 1:1; 2:3; 4:10; Jude 25. 4to Titus, my true child in our common faith: grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our savior.#2:13; 3:6; Phil 3:20; 2 Tm 1:10; 2 Pt 1:11; 2:20; 3:2, 18.
II. PASTORAL CHARGE
Titus in Crete. 5#This instruction on the selection and appointment of presbyters, substantially identical with that in 1 Tm 3:1–7 on a bishop (see note there), was aimed at strengthening the authority of Titus by apostolic mandate; cf. Ti 2:15. In Ti 1:5, 7 and Acts 20:17, 28, the terms episkopos and presbyteros (“bishop” and “presbyter”) refer to the same persons. Deacons are not mentioned in Titus. See also note on Phil 1:1.For this reason I left you in Crete so that you might set right what remains to be done and appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you, 6#1 Tm 3:2–7; 2 Tm 2:24–26.on condition that a man be blameless, married only once, with believing children who are not accused of licentiousness or rebellious. 7For a bishop as God’s steward must be blameless, not arrogant, not irritable, not a drunkard, not aggressive, not greedy for sordid gain, 8but hospitable, a lover of goodness, temperate, just, holy, and self-controlled, 9holding fast to the true message as taught so that he will be able both to exhort with sound doctrine and to refute opponents.#1:13; 2:1–2, 8; 1 Tm 1:10; 6:3; 2 Tm 1:13; 4:3. 10#This adverse criticism of the defects within the community is directed especially against certain Jewish Christians, who busy themselves with useless speculations over persons mentioned in the Old Testament, insist on the observance of Jewish ritual purity regulations, and thus upset whole families by teaching things they have no right to teach; cf. Ti 3:9; 1 Tm 1:3–10.For there are also many rebels, idle talkers and deceivers, especially the Jewish Christians.#Jewish Christians: literally, “those of the circumcision.” 11It is imperative to silence them, as they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what they should not. 12One of them, a prophet of their own, once said, “Cretans have always been liars, vicious beasts, and lazy gluttons.”#Cretans…gluttons: quoted from Epimenides, a Cretan poet of the sixth century B.C. 13That testimony is true. Therefore, admonish them sharply, so that they may be sound in the faith,#1:9. 14instead of paying attention to Jewish myths and regulations of people who have repudiated the truth.#3:9; 1 Tm 1:4; 4:7; 2 Tm 4:4; 2 Pt 1:16. 15To the clean all things are clean, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is clean; in fact, both their minds and their consciences are tainted.#Mk 7:18–23; Acts 10:15; Rom 14:14–23. 16They claim to know God, but by their deeds they deny him. They are vile and disobedient and unqualified for any good deed.
Currently Selected:
:
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc