Titus 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul opens this letter to Titus by naming himself a servant of God and an apostle, and by tying his work to the faith and knowledge of God's chosen people and the hope of eternal life. He reminds Titus why he left him on the island of Crete: to finish organizing the churches there and to appoint elders in every town, and he lists the qualities such a leader must have. He then warns about people who teach false things for money, quotes a harsh line about Cretans from a prophet of their own, and tells Titus to correct these people firmly so their faith stays sound.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • Paul is the writer.
   • Paul is a servant of God.
   • Paul is an apostle of Jesus Christ.
   • Paul's apostleship is according to the faith of God's chosen ones.
   • Paul's apostleship is according to the knowledge of the truth.
   • That truth accords with godliness.
2. 1:2
   • The faith and knowledge rest on the hope of eternal life.
   • God promised that eternal life.
   • God cannot lie.
   • God made the promise before times eternal.
3. 1:3
   • God has made his word manifest in its own appointed times.
   • God made his word manifest through preaching.
   • That preaching was entrusted to Paul.
   • The entrusting was according to the commandment of God our Saviour.
4. 1:4
   • The letter is addressed to Titus.
   • Titus is Paul's own true child.
   • Titus is Paul's child according to the faith they share in common.
   • Paul wishes Titus grace, mercy, and peace.
   • The grace, mercy, and peace come from God the Father.
   • The grace, mercy, and peace come from the Lord Jesus Christ.
   • Jesus Christ is our Saviour.
5. 1:5
   • Paul left Titus in Crete for this reason.
   • Titus was to set in order the things that were left unfinished.
   • Titus was to appoint elders in every city.
   • Titus was to do this as Paul had directed him.
6. 1:6
   • An elder must be blameless.
   • An elder must be the husband of one wife.
   • An elder must have faithful children.
   • An elder's children must not be accused of dissipation.
   • An elder's children must not be insubordinate.
7. 1:7
   • A bishop must be blameless.
   • A bishop is a steward of God.
   • A bishop must not be self-willed.
   • A bishop must not be quick to anger.
   • A bishop must not be a drunkard.
   • A bishop must not be violent.
   • A bishop must not be greedy for dishonest gain.
8. 1:8
   • A bishop must be hospitable.
   • A bishop must be a lover of what is good.
   • A bishop must be sober-minded.
   • A bishop must be just.
   • A bishop must be holy.
   • A bishop must be self-controlled.
9. 1:9
   • A bishop must hold fast the trustworthy word that accords with the teaching he was given.
   • The purpose is that he be able to exhort by sound doctrine.
   • The purpose is that he be able to refute those who contradict.
10. 1:10
    • There are many insubordinate people.
    • There are many empty talkers.
    • There are many deceivers.
    • Those of the circumcision are especially such people.
11. 1:11
    • Their mouths must be stopped.
    • They overturn whole households.
    • They teach things they ought not to teach.
    • They do this for the sake of dishonest gain.
12. 1:12
    • One of the Cretans themselves said this.
    • That man was a prophet of their own.
    • He said Cretans are always liars.
    • He said Cretans are evil beasts.
    • He said Cretans are lazy gluttons.
13. 1:13
    • That testimony is true.
    • For that reason Titus is to rebuke them sharply.
    • The purpose of the rebuke is that they may be sound in the faith.
14. 1:14
    • They are not to give heed to Jewish myths.
    • They are not to give heed to commandments of men.
    • Those men turn away from the truth.
15. 1:15
    • To the pure all things are pure.
    • To the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure.
    • Their mind is defiled.
    • Their conscience is defiled.
16. 1:16
    • They profess to know God.
    • They deny God by their works.
    • They are abominable.
    • They are disobedient.
    • They are unfit for every good work.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

KJV "servant" translates the Greek doulos, which means a slave, a person owned by another; Paul uses it as a title of belonging rather than an admission of low status. In "the acknowledging of the truth," acknowledging means coming to recognize or know something, and "after godliness" means according to, or leading to, a life turned toward God.

1:2

"Before the world began" renders a Greek phrase that reads literally "before times eternal," an idiom for the most remote past imaginable, before there was measured time at all.

1:3

"Preaching" here translates a word for the work of a herald: a public announcement delivered on someone else's authority. It does not mean a sermon in the modern sense, and the stress falls on the message being entrusted to Paul rather than invented by him.

1:4

Titus was a Greek convert who traveled and worked with Paul; he was not Paul's biological son. "Mine own son" renders a phrase meaning "genuine child," a normal way of describing a pupil a teacher had brought up himself. The greeting joins a play on the ordinary Greek salutation (chairein, "greetings," becomes charis, "grace") to the standard Hebrew greeting, shalom, "peace."

1:5

Crete is a large island in the Mediterranean, south of mainland Greece, with many separate towns, which is why elders are needed in each. "Ordain" in 1611 English meant simply to appoint or install, without the ceremonial weight the word now carries. "Elders" translates presbyteroi, literally "older men," a title already in use for the men who governed Jewish synagogues and many Greek towns.

1:6

"The husband of one wife" is literally "a one-woman man," and what it excludes was debated even in antiquity: having more than one wife at a time, remarrying after divorce or after a spouse's death, or simply being unfaithful. "Faithful children" is ambiguous in the same way, meaning either children who believe or children who are trustworthy. "Riot" does not mean a public disturbance; in 1611 it meant wild, dissolute living.

1:7

"Bishop" translates episkopos, "overseer" or "supervisor," an everyday word for a manager or inspector; it did not yet mean a cleric set over many congregations. The letter shifts from "elders" in verse 5 to this word without signaling a change of subject. A "steward" was the manager of a large household, often a trusted slave, who ran the property and the accounts on the owner's behalf. "Not soon angry" means not quickly angered. "Filthy lucre" means shameful profit; lucre is an old word for money or gain.

1:8

Several of these words have shifted meaning. "Sober" in 1611 meant level-headed and sensible, not merely not drunk; "temperate" meant self-controlled; "just" meant upright and fair in dealings with others; "holy" here translates a word for devout or reverent. "A lover of good men" renders a single Greek word that can mean a lover of good people or a lover of what is good.

1:9

"Sound" doctrine is a medical image: teaching that is healthy, as against teaching that is diseased. "Convince" in 1611 English meant to refute or prove wrong, not to win someone over. "Gainsayers" are people who speak against, who contradict.

1:10

"Vain talkers" means empty talkers, people whose speech carries no substance. "They of the circumcision" is shorthand for Jews, or for Jewish followers of Jesus, named for the cutting of the foreskin that marked Jewish males from infancy; in Paul's letters the phrase usually points to people pressing non-Jewish converts to take on Jewish law.

1:11

"Houses" means households: the whole domestic unit of family, dependents and slaves under one roof, which was also the unit in which a church normally met. "Subvert" means to overturn or upend.

1:12

The line is credited to Epimenides, a Cretan poet and seer of roughly the sixth century BC. Cretans had a proverbial reputation for dishonesty across the Greek world; there was even a verb, "to cretize," meaning to lie. "Slow bellies" is a literal rendering of "idle stomachs," gluttons too lazy to work. "Cretians" is the King James spelling of Cretans.

1:13

"Witness" here means the testimony itself, the statement just quoted, not the person who made it. "Sound in the faith" carries on the medical image from verse 9: healthy rather than sick.

1:14

"Fables" translates mythoi, meaning stories or legends, probably speculative tales spun out of scripture rather than fiction as such. The clause "that turn from the truth" is grammatically ambiguous and can attach either to the men who make the rules or to the commandments themselves.

1:15

The dispute behind this verse is about ritual purity: the rules marking certain foods, objects and contacts as clean or unclean. Calling all things pure to the pure is a claim about that system, not a statement about conduct in general. "Conscience" translates a word for a person's inward awareness of his own actions.

1:16

"Abominable" means detestable, something to be recoiled from. "Reprobate" in 1611 English meant failed after testing, the word used of coins or metal assayed and rejected as false; the sense here is proved unfit for the purpose rather than condemned.