What to Look For in a Man

Verse 5 says why Titus is where he is. Paul left him in Crete to set in order what was unfinished and to appoint elders in every town, and the verse adds four words that are easy to skim: as I directed you. Titus is carrying out instructions rather than inventing a policy. Two other things are sitting in that one verse. The work is described as unfinished, which Paul does not dress up, and the towns are plural, so this is a job with some distance in it.

Then comes the list of what to look for in a man, and it is not the list most of us would write. Verse 6 begins at home. An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, with children who are believers and who are not open to accusation of indiscretion or insubordination. Nothing there is about ability, and nothing is about how he comes across.

Verse 7 gives him a second title before it gives him a single requirement. He was an elder in verse 6 and he is an overseer here, and the sentence puts the title first.

As God's steward, an overseer must be above reproach—not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not greedy for money.

A steward looks after property belonging to somebody else, and the whole verse hangs on that one word. What follows are five refusals in a row: not self-willed, which is a man who has to have his own way, and then not quick-tempered, not given to drink, not violent, and not greedy for money. Every one of the five is about a man who has learned to say no to himself, which is a strange qualification for authority until you notice that he is minding what belongs to God.

Verse 8 turns the list over and gives six things he is to be instead: hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. Hospitable comes first of the six, ahead of everything more impressive, and it mostly means his door opens and people are fed.

Verse 5 opened with the work Titus was left to do, and verse 9 closes with the work an elder is for. Everything between them has been about the man.

He must hold firmly to the faithful word as it was taught, so that he can encourage others by sound teaching and refute those who contradict it.

As it was taught. He holds the word the way it came to him rather than the way he might improve it, and the verse gives that grip two uses. He can encourage people, and he can answer somebody who contradicts it. A man who could only do the second would be a fighter, and a man who could only do the first would have nothing to say when it mattered.