1 But Titus, you have to teach people the properly good things, so they will live the right way.

2 You have to teach the older men to control themselves. They have to do good things so that people will respect them. They have to keep on believing in Jesus strongly. They have to love other people. And, if they get trouble, they have to never give up following Jesus.

3 You also have to teach the older women to do the things that make God happy. Tell them not to say bad things about people, and not to drink a lot of grog, but they have to teach people good things. 4 Then the old women can teach the young women to love their husbands and their kids, 5 and to control themselves, and to only sleep with their own husbands, and not to do what married people do together with anybody else. And they can teach them to work hard at home, and to do good things, and to think about what their husbands want and agree with them. So people will see the things that the young women do, and they will not be able to say anything bad about God’s message.

6 You also have to teach the young men to control themselves. 7 You too, you have to always do good things. Then the young men will see you, and they will do good things too. You always have to teach the true message, and remember, your job is important. 8 The message you teach has to be right, so that nobody can rubbish it. Then your enemies can’t say anything bad about you. Anyone that says bad things about you will shame themselves.

9 And now I want to talk about workers and their bosses. Workers have to do what their bosses say. They have to make their bosses happy. Tell them, “Don’t talk back to your boss, 10 and don’t ever steal from your boss, but show your boss that they can always trust you.” Then people will say that those workers are good. And people will respect that message from God about Jesus, and they will want to know more about him.

11 It’s like this. God has shown us that he is very good to us. He made a way to save everybody. 12 He teaches us to say no to the bad things of this world. He tells us not to live a wild life. He tells us to control ourselves. He tells us to do good things that make him happy. 13 He tells us to do these things now, while we wait for Jesus Christ to come back. He is our God, and he is the one that saves us. He will come back, and he will show everybody in the world that he is really great. Then we will be very happy.

14 Jesus died to save us from all the bad things of this world. He did that to change us into his own special people, like he properly cleaned us inside, and now we don’t want to do anything bad, but we only want to do good things.* Psalm 130:8; Exodus 19:5; Deuteronomy 4:20; 7:6; 14:2; 1 Peter 2:9

15 So you have to teach these things to all the Christians there, and teach them in a strong way. Tell the Christians to keep going strong for Jesus. And if they do anything wrong, tell them to stop it. Make sure they take notice of you.