Illuminated Coptic sanctuary banner

Titus 1:5-9 - Put What Remains in Order

14 min read

Jump to chapter (8)
TitusSelect a chapter to jump directly
Intro1:11:51:102:12:113:13:9
Audio narrationAlso in your podcast app

The Gospel had reached Crete, but the work was unfinished. Local churches still needed tested shepherds, ordered care, and protection from teaching that would soon be shown overturning households. In five verses, St Paul gives Titus a city-by-city charge and then refuses to separate office from character: the one appointed must be credible at home, governed by positive virtue, and held firmly by the word he will teach. Christian authority begins here, under command, under examination, and under the God whose household it serves.

Set in Order What Is Lacking (Titus 1:5)

5 For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you—

“For this reason” joins the charge to the letter’s opening. Paul has just spoken of the truth that accords with godliness, the word entrusted through preaching, and Titus as a true son in the common faith. That same truth must now take durable form among local communities. Titus is left in Crete with a defined apostolic responsibility: recognize what remains unfinished, repair it, and appoint elders city by city.

Crete was not one compact congregation. Strabo names Cnossus, Gortyna, and Cydonia among the island’s prominent ancient cities, and Pleiades identifies Gortyna as a Roman provincial capital.1 The phrase “in every city” makes the pastoral point. Churches spread across a substantial island needed local shepherds who could be known, tested, and held accountable among the people they served. Acts describes the same pattern when Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church and commended the believers to the Lord with prayer and fasting (Acts 14:23).

Language insight: repair with a city-by-city shape

“Set in order” translates ἐπιδιορθώσῃ (epidiorthōsē), a rare verb with the sense of putting further into order what remains deficient or unfinished. The phrase κατὰ πόλιν (kata polin) gives the appointments a distributive shape: city by city.2 Paul is not asking Titus to invent a church from nothing. He is charging him to continue a work already begun and to address its real deficiencies.

That distinction keeps order close to pastoral care. A church may confess the true faith and still leave people poorly taught, correction inconsistent, responsibility confused, or vulnerable households exposed to persuasive voices. Repair begins when such needs are named truthfully. It continues through patient formation and accountable service, not through a burst of administrative activity that leaves the underlying weakness untouched.

The final words, “as I commanded you,” also matter. Titus has real authority, yet he exercises it as one entrusted with a received charge. His task is neither self-appointed reform nor imitation of Paul’s personality. He serves the apostolic Gospel already named in verses 1-4, and the elders he appoints will likewise stand beneath the faithful word.

This verse also corrects the temptation to live at a distance from the Church. “City by city” brings faith close to ordinary people and ordinary needs. The Christian life is learned in a concrete community where someone knows our name, receives our questions, notices danger, teaches the word, and answers before God for the care given. Apostolic unity does not erase local responsibility. It gives local responsibility its truth and direction.

Gems from the Fathers 💎: Care brought close

St John Chrysostom hears a practical mercy in “every city”: “he did not wish the whole island to be entrusted to one”.3 Dividing the charge lets each shepherd give his people greater attention. Paul can entrust the work to Titus because he is “free from all envy,” concerned for the disciples’ good rather than his own honor.4 The purpose of order is the good of Christ’s people. A ministry becomes distorted when preserving a leader’s importance matters more than repairing what the flock actually lacks.

Blameless Stewards in Household and Character (Titus 1:6-8)

6 if a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination. 7 For a bishop must be blameless, as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, 8 but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled,

Paul moves immediately from the appointment to the life of the man appointed. “Blameless” appears in verses 6 and 7, framing both household integrity and public ministry. The Greek ἀνέγκλητος (anenklētos) describes one who is not open to a sustainable charge, unreprovable or unaccused.5 This is not sinlessness. It is a life whose settled pattern does not give scandal a home. Influence, intelligence, family reputation, and eloquence cannot make up for a character ruled by anger, appetite, money, or dishonesty.

“The husband of one wife” requires marital and sexual integrity, and the Church has received it in her canons on who may be ordained. The Greek πιστά (pista) in “faithful children” can carry the sense of believing or of faithful and trustworthy; the following words emphasize public accusation of reckless dissipation or insubordination.6

The candidate’s nearest relationships must not expose a double life. Public ministry cannot compensate for habitual neglect, manipulation, violence, or refusal of responsibility at home. Family suffering or an adult child’s choices do not automatically prove parental hypocrisy or make a household’s pain material for public judgment.

Verse 7 explains the seriousness of that examination: the bishop is “a steward of God.” Paul names elders in verse 5 and then speaks of the overseer or bishop in verse 7, closely relating the terms in this qualification. The controlling image here is οἰκονόμος Θεοῦ (oikonomos Theou), God’s steward, a person entrusted with another’s household and affairs.7 Paul also calls the apostles “stewards of the mysteries of God” and says that a steward must be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4:1-2). The Church is not the minister’s possession; even the mysteries he serves are entrusted gifts. The office is received from God, exercised for His people, and answerable to Him.

That is why the negative list is so searching. The self-willed man makes his preference the measure of every decision. The quick-tempered man forces others to anticipate his reactions. Wine, violence, and greed place appetite above the good of the flock. None of these remains private once a person is entrusted with souls. Each changes who can speak honestly, whose needs are heard, how correction is given, and whether the weak are protected.

Christ places authority under His own pattern of service (Matthew 20:25-28), and St Peter commands elders to shepherd without acting as lords over those entrusted to them (1 Peter 5:1-4). The steward’s faithfulness is measured by the Lord whose people he serves, not by how completely he gets his own way.

Verse 8 turns decisively from danger to virtue. Paul begins with ἀλλά (alla), “but,” and names active habits: φιλόξενον (philoxenon), hospitable; φιλάγαθον (philagathon), loving what is good; σώφρονα (sōphrona), sober-minded; δίκαιον (dikaion), just; ὅσιον (hosion), holy; and ἐγκρατῆ (enkratē), self-controlled.8 Avoiding disqualifying behavior is only the threshold. The shepherd’s life must have been trained toward the good.

Hospitality makes room for the stranger instead of arranging every relationship around convenience. Love of what is good shapes what the leader admires and rewards. Sober judgment refuses panic and impulse. Justice gives each person honest treatment rather than favoring those who are useful. Holiness orders life toward God. Self-control keeps desire, speech, anger, and appetite from seizing command. These virtues make authority trustworthy because they give people room to encounter the care of Christ rather than the unmanaged passions of His servant.

The test reaches every Christian with responsibility, not only the ordained. Parents, teachers, managers, deacons, ministry servants, and mentors all exercise forms of entrusted care. Paul asks whether those nearest to us meet the same person others praise in public, and whether our habits make it easier or harder for them to tell the truth. Grace does not call us to manage an appearance of blamelessness. It calls us to repentance deep enough that practiced virtue becomes visible where performance is hardest.

Gems from the Fathers 💎: Authority that can receive counsel

St John Chrysostom makes the danger of self-will unmistakable. A ruler who insists on his own will and shares counsel with no one, he says, “makes his presidency tyrannical rather than popular.”9 His point is not that a shepherd must please everyone. It is that a man who cannot govern his own temper is not ready to govern others. The virtues Paul names must be practiced before responsibility multiplies the occasions for anger.

Holding Fast the Faithful Word (Titus 1:9)

9 holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict.

The final qualification gathers the passage into one sentence. Before the elder teaches, he must hold fast. Before he answers contradiction, he must be answerable to what he received. His authority does not arise from novelty, force of personality, or the speed of his reply. He clings to the faithful word and lets that word form both his convictions and his manner of speaking.

Language insight: held by healthy teaching

The verb ἀντεχόμενον (antechomenon) means holding firmly, clinging to, or being devoted to. The Greek phrase is more explicit than an isolated appeal to personal instruction: the elder holds to “the faithful word according to the teaching.” The expression translated “sound doctrine” uses health language, ὑγιαίνω (hygiainō), to be sound or healthy.10 Doctrine in Titus is exact because persons and households can be either healed or harmed by what the Church teaches and tolerates.

Paul names two capacities: to exhort, strengthening people in faithfulness, and to convict, exposing contradiction and answering what opposes the truth. The character tested in verses 7-8 governs both. The person who speaks must be hospitable, just, holy, and self-controlled; he must not be self-willed, quick-tempered, or violent. A man ruled by anger cannot make his anger holy by calling it doctrinal zeal. Verse 9 joins doctrinal fidelity to a life disciplined by grace.

The need for conviction becomes concrete in False Teaching and False Profession (Titus 1:10-16): teachers are overturning households for dishonest gain. Here Paul establishes the prior test. The shepherd must be able to strengthen the faithful and answer contradiction without contradicting the healthy teaching by his own character.

Gems from the Fathers 💎: The strength of a physician

St John Chrysostom describes the teacher as a healer whose response to injury cannot imitate the injury: “The teacher is the physician of souls.”11 He goes on to describe a physician healing the very person who struck him. The image binds verse 9 to the required character of verses 7-8. The elder must be strong enough to protect the flock and self-controlled enough not to retaliate.

Chrysostom asks for strength rather than verbal display: “of strong minds, of skill in the Scriptures”.12 The elder has been tested in life, has received the teaching, and is holding fast to the word. His speech must therefore show both biblical fidelity and the virtue the word has formed in him. There is a difference between knowing how to win attention and knowing the word well enough to nourish someone else’s faith.

Later Paul will say that Jesus Christ “gave Himself for us” to redeem and purify a people for His own possession (Titus 2:11-15). That self-giving Lord is the center of ordered ministry. The churches are repaired because they belong to Him, leaders are tested because His people are precious, and the faithful word is guarded because it forms His life in the Church.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

On Nasie 2, the Departure of St Titus the Apostle, the Liturgy Gospel is Luke 6:12-23, as on September 7, 2026. Before choosing the Twelve, the Lord “continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12); at daybreak He called His disciples and chose the apostles.13 Read beside Titus’s charge, that night of prayer gives appointment its proper beginning. Before anyone is named for service, he is brought before the Father. Discernment is not merely finding someone available or impressive; the Church asks whom she can entrust to the work of Christ.

The full readings for the commemoration appear in The Truth That Forms Godliness (Titus 1:1-4). Titus’s work of appointing elders belongs within that larger witness: truth received, grace proclaimed, and people called into the Lord’s service.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

Bring one neglected place into the light. We often rename what remains unfinished so that repair can wait. Neglected prayer becomes “a busy season.” A broken promise becomes “poor communication.” An unresolved ministry failure becomes “something we will revisit.” Titus begins by naming what is lacking. Choose one area where delay has become avoidance, bring it plainly before God, and take one verifiable step this week: make the call, keep the promise, seek confession, ask for help, or finish the responsibility already given.

Let private integrity carry more weight than public usefulness. Service can become a refuge from repentance at home. A person may be patient in a meeting and sharp with a spouse, generous in public and secretive with money, available to parish needs and absent from a child who needs attention. Paul does not command family perfection, and his words must never shame a wounded household. He does require truth. If those nearest to you bear the cost of the person others admire, begin repair with an honest apology, a changed habit, and accountable help where needed.

Practice the virtue opposite your recurring danger. Paul does not stop after forbidding anger, violence, greed, and excess. He turns to hospitality, love of good, sober judgment, justice, holiness, and self-control. If irritability narrows your attention, practice patient listening. If self-protection closes your home or schedule, welcome one person who cannot repay you. If appetite repeatedly makes decisions for you, choose a concrete fast with prayer. Grace trains the heart not only to refuse evil but to become ready for good.

Let character govern correction. Contradiction can awaken insecurity, anger, and the pleasure of winning. Verse 9 places reception and tested character before response. Read the relevant Scripture carefully, pray until self-will and quick temper have loosened their grip, and seek counsel when another person’s safety or reputation is involved. When real harm is present, firm action may be necessary; the person acting must still remain hospitable, just, holy, and self-controlled.

Pray for local shepherds, and become easier to shepherd. City-by-city care requires clergy and servants who know their people, teach the received faith, welcome correction, and answer to God. Pray for their households, self-control, courage, and fidelity to Scripture. Support healthy local responsibility instead of building parish life around distant personalities. Receive sound teaching with humility, raise serious concerns through accountable channels, and offer your own gifts for the repair of what remains lacking.

Footnotes

  1. Strabo, Geography 10.4.7, LacusCurtius; Pleiades, Gortyn(a). ↩

  2. Titus 1:5 Greek interlinear and the lexical entry for ἐπιδιορθόω. ↩

  3. St John Chrysostom, Homily II on Titus, on Titus 1:5, New Advent. ↩

  4. St John Chrysostom, Homily II on Titus, on Titus 1:5, New Advent. ↩

  5. Titus 1:6 Greek interlinear, Titus 1:7 Greek interlinear, and the lexical entry for ἀνέγκλητος. ↩

  6. Titus 1:6 Greek interlinear, with lexical entries for πιστός, ἀσωτία, and ἀνυπότακτος. ↩

  7. Titus 1:5 Greek interlinear, Titus 1:7 Greek interlinear, and the lexical entry for οἰκονόμος. ↩

  8. Titus 1:8 Greek interlinear. ↩

  9. St John Chrysostom, Homily II on Titus, on Titus 1:7, New Advent. ↩

  10. Titus 1:9 Greek interlinear, with lexical entries for ἀντέχομαι and ὑγιαίνω. ↩

  11. St John Chrysostom, Homily II on Titus, on Titus 1:7, New Advent. ↩

  12. St John Chrysostom, Homily II on Titus, on Titus 1:9, New Advent. ↩

  13. Coptic Katameros, Nasie 2, Liturgy, Gospel Luke 6:12-23, September 7, 2026; Coptic Synaxarium, Nasie 2, the Departure of St Titus the Apostle. ↩

Reading statusLoading your browser-local progress
Saved only in this browser

Created: | Updated:

Related Studies & References

Referenced in Other Studies