1This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
2A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
3Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
4One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
5(For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)
6Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.
7Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
8Likewise must the deacons be grave, not doubletongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre;
9Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience.
10And let these also first be proved; then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless.
11Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.
12Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.
13For they that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.
14These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly:
15But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
16And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
About this edition & resources
Optional section headings follow the King James Bible Online book outlines, credited there to OpenBible. Overlapping parent headings are omitted in favour of more specific passages. Headings are editorial aids, separate from Scripture. Every verse remains available; gaps in the source outline show a reference without an invented title. Source, reference corrections and selection rule.
The KJV text follows the 1769 tradition. Text and verse-linked Strong’s tags are provided by Scrollmapper / CrossWire KJV. Historical KJV text is public domain in many countries; publication rights in the United Kingdom are administered under the Crown’s prerogative.
The optional 1611 text preserves the original spelling and wording in the aruljohn/Bible-kjv-1611 transcription. Its 66-book, 31,102-verse structure has been validated against this reader’s references.
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge: historical cross-references credited to SoulLiberty / MetaV in the digital source edition. The imported references preserve the source’s direction and are shown using this reader’s KJV text. Attribution and source notice · Download reference data.
Strong’s dictionaries: James Strong (1890); digital editions by Open Scriptures and Ulrik Petersen, licensed CC BY-SA as described in the original notices. The transformed lexicon and verse tags are available in the dictionary dataset and verse-tag dataset. Dictionary text is preserved; application import normalizes numeric IDs and groups words by verse.
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary: historical text, digital source Lyteword (CC0). Commentary is organized into verse ranges. Source manifest & verification counts. Curated topics and stories are navigation aids, not additional Scripture.
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