Titus is the shortest and most tightly organized of the three Pastoral Epistles, written to a colleague left behind on the island of Crete "to put in order what was left unfinished" and to appoint elders in every town. Its opening chapter lists qualifications for elders nearly identical to the overseer qualifications in 1 Timothy, evidence to most readers that the two roles substantially overlapped in the early church's still forming vocabulary for leadership. The letter is notably blunt about its setting, quoting an unflattering line from the Cretan poet Epimenides, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons," and instructing Titus to rebuke the local church sharply because of it, one of the New Testament's rare direct citations of pagan literature.
Chapter 2 lays out instruction by age and status, older men, older women, younger women, younger men, and enslaved people, each given specific counsel on conduct, all oriented toward making "the teaching about God our Savior attractive" to outside observers rather than toward abstract doctrine for its own sake. The letter closes, like the other Pastorals, with personal travel instructions, naming Artemas, Tychicus, Zenas and Apollos, and a final warning to avoid "foolish controversies" and factious people after a second warning has failed.