The Last Word on Relationships
Titus 3:9-15
Open your Bible to Titus chapter 3. We come now to the final message in our study of this wonderful power-packed condensed epistle of Paul to his young son in the faith ministering on the island of Crete. And we're going to be looking at the final verses, verses 9 through 15, just some closing remarks by the Apostle Paul, having already given the full argument of the book itself. He has some final things to say. And listen as he speaks beginning in verse 9.
"But shun foolish controversies and genealogies and strifes and disputes about the law for they are unprofitable and worthless. Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning being self-condemned. When I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, make every effort to come to me at Nicopolis for I have decided to spend the winter there. And diligently help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way so that nothing is lacking for them. And let our people also learn to engage in good deeds to make pressing needs that they may not be unfruitful. All who are with me greet you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all."
If I was the leader responsible for many church congregations as Paul was for there were many cities and many congregations on the island of Crete, if I was responsible to lead and guide and direct and equip a young man to oversee those young and fragile churches, if I was responsible to strengthen a church in the midst of a very violently pagan culture, if I had the responsibility to arm them against false teachers and ungodliness and confusion and evil authority, if I had the task of trying to lead them to purity and holiness and virtue and maturity, if it was my responsibility to make sure that they were insulated from the evil of the world around them while at the same time reaching that evil world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, if all of that was my task I think I would have written a longer letter. I might have written a book. I might have written many books. And it amazes me that with all of that as responsibility, the Apostle Paul has wrapped this whole thing up in three chapters, brief chapters at best.
He was so brief and yet he was so direct. And he focused on the needful matters. And again this demonstrates the mind of the Spirit of God who with an economy of words can say everything that needs to be said. As I told you at the very beginning when we started this study many many months ago, this is a...this is a condensed epistle and when you mix it with the water of exegesis it begins to expand and expand and expand and it's taken us months to go through this, to expose ourselves to the almost unending riches that are found here.
But if we were to sum up this whole epistle in just one statement we would probably have to select the statement in chapter 2 and verse 10 where the Apostle Paul says, "The purpose of believers living is to show all good faith so that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect." While directed particularly at Those who are bondslaves, it certainly captures in one statement the essence of responsibility for every believer within the church and that is that we are to so live that the world can see that our God saves sinners. The supreme responsibility is to adorn the teaching of Scripture about God's saving power by demonstrating what saved lives look like. We are to live so that the Word of God is not dishonored. We are to live so that the critics of the Christian faith are silenced because they have nothing to say negatively about us. We are to live so that that teaching which says God saves sinners from their sin is made visibly verifiable by our lives.
So really this is an evangelistic letter, it is telling the church how to win the world and it wins the world around it by its own purity. And so the greatest teaching on evangelism is teaching on holiness and virtue and integrity and purity and honesty in Christian living. If the church is to effect the lost world but be unaffected by it, it pursues holiness which keeps it pure and which gives it its impact in terms of its testimony.
Now just boiling that concept down it basically comes down in this epistle to relationships...relationships. In chapter 1 you have the relationship that is necessary between the people and their God and that is going to be directed and led by the appropriate Christian leadership. The Apostle Paul says in chapter 1 that it is crucial to the life sustenance and testimony of the church that it have elders who are above reproach, one-woman men with believing children, not accused of dissipation or rebellion, overseers who are above reproach as God's steward, not self-willed, quick tempered, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, men who hold fast the faithful Word in accordance with the teaching who are able both to exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict. The point is godly virtuous men who set the example of how everyone in the church is to be related to God. That's the essence of it.
Chapter 1 is concerned about the relationship of the people in the church to the Lord of the church. And it demands godly leadership unlike much of the false teachers that surrounded the church who are described, as we shall see later in the second half of chapter 1. Chapter 1 then really focuses on the church's relationship to the Lord as modeled and exemplified in its leadership. Chapter 2 then talks about relationships among believers with each other. Chapter 3 talks about the relationship that believers have with the unregenerate society in which they live. Those three crucial areas of relationship between us and God, between us and us, and between us and them on the outside. All of that has been covered with the genius of the Holy Spirit in these three brief chapters. But now as we come to the final section which I just read to you, we have Paul's few closing comments. And really, you know what it is? It's the last word on relationships. If I could title the message, that's what I would title it...the last word on relationships. Paul is going to say his final comments with regard to the important relationships in the life of the church that lead to effective testimony.
Now I've learned a few things just by hanging around long enough to get old or older. I've learned some things by listening to people and kind of walking through life and being a part of the ups and downs of their life. And one of the things that I've learned in my years of many many conversations that the Lord has allowed me to be involved in is usually when you're having a conversation with someone and they come to you and approach you and have something to share with you that's really on their heart, they will filter through some important things but generally speaking the last thing is of greatest concern. So now you know if you come to have a conversation with me I'll be listening intently for the last thing you say. I have learned that much of what comes first is sort of setting you up for the kill which whatever is going to be comes last in the conversation. And it's not a bad ploy, I think it's one that we find even used often in Scripture by the writers of Scripture. Certainly Paul has done that. He frequently starts off with some ingratiating amenities and then comes to the main point.
If I may, I would like to suggest to you that you will learn to be a good listener when you learn that lesson because it will keep you tuned in to the end. Sometimes people take a long time getting to the end and maybe listening becomes more difficult as the conversation lengthens but it's important for you to hang in there because until they get to the end you probably haven't heard what's most important. Can we give Paul the benefit of the doubt here and assume that maybe something like that is working in his own heart as he closes out this letter? He has had some crucial things to say, some preeminent things to say, certainly some eternally important things to say but he really isn't done until he's done. And he has a few last words that he wants to leave, sort of the final very practical, very personal and very significant ending to this wonderful letter. The last word on relationships as Paul closes out his teaching to this church, these churches really on Crete who are going to have to live as God's children in the wicked and perverse world where they're to shine as lights holding forth the Word of life.
As he does give us the last word on relationships, he does it in four distinct categories. The last word on relationships with false leaders, with factious people, with fellow servants and with faithful friends. They're the four groups that I see identified in these final wonderful verses.
Let's hear his last word on false teachers. Verse 9, "But shun foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the law for they're unprofitable and worthless." Now the Cretan Christians had been over-exposed to a number of men who said they represented the Lord, they said they were His servants, called, ordained, set apart. They said they were the bearers of divine truth but they were liars. In fact, that conflict that they were having with false teachers was creating so much chaos and so much confusion that it generated the very reason for which Paul calls on Titus, chapter 1 verse 5, to appoint elders in every city. The church needs strong spiritual leadership. And in verse 9 he says they must be men who hold fast to the faithful Word in accordance with the teaching, the revealed content of divine truth and they're able to wield that truth both for exhortation and sound doctrine and refutation against those who contradict. Godly pastors, godly elders, godly leaders are needed as defenders and protectors of the purity of the doctrine of the church. If the church is going to have any witness in the world, it must maintain pure doctrine, pure doctrine being the foundation for pure living and so it is crucial that these false teachers be confronted and dealt with and the church be insulated from them.
You will notice in verse 10 that there is a rather lengthy discussion of them indicating that they were a formidable group. He says there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, specially those of the circumcision. Rebellious indeed, not willing to be under biblical or divine authority. Empty talkers, they are fluent know-nothings. They are deceivers leading others into error, particularly this group of them was identified with self-righteous Jewish legalism. They were probably another of the group known as the Judaizers with which Paul deals in Galatians chapter 2. They were going around espousing that righteousness was by means of circumcision and the law, along with another crazy and bizarre and mystical and allegorical things. And there were many of them, he says in verse 11. They must be silenced. They are upsetting whole families. They are teaching things they shouldn't teach for the sake of sorted gain.
He says further about them in verse 16, they profess to know God but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed. And since good deeds are the essence of evangelistic impact, since that's what demonstrates transformed lives, they can't possibly do that because their lives haven't been transformed at all. He is deeply concerned then that these churches on the island of Crete are being assaulted by demon doctrine, espoused by seducing spirits, pumped out through these rebellious empty talkers and deceivers who are associated with some kind of legalistic ceremonial righteousness, rather than the truth of the gospel. They produce in the church the opposite of what is good and profitable for men, as chapter 3 verse 8 says, they produce what is evil and what is unprofitable.
Chapter 2 carries on the same kind of emphasis when in verse 1 Titus is told to speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine. And then at the end of the chapter in verse 15, to speak and exhort and reprove with all authority and let no one disregard him. The battle for truth rages in Crete and Titus must defend the church by building up godly leaders and silencing false teachers. That is part of his responsibility. And so we know the background there from chapter 1.
Now go back to chapter 3 verse 9, and here's the last word. The last word is a verb, it's a verb in the form of an imperative or a command, shun...shun. The sense here is as a continual practice. The verb literally means to treat someone with indifference, with contempt, to turn your back on them and go the other way actually, to turn oneself around for the purpose of avoiding someone or something. And the responsibility that we have to false teachers is to turn our back and walk away, shun them. That's the last word.
He categorizes them in four different categories giving us some components of their error. First of all, he talks about foolish controversies. The word for foolish is the word from which we get the English word moron, moronic debates, moronic arguments...shun them, turn your back and walk the other direction. These false teachers always want to attack the truth. They always want to attack the theology of the church. They always want to attack what is historically true and affirmed and traditional. With their controversial teaching and their novel insights, they want to attack this solidly based truth and lead poor victimized believers into confusion and into sin. This was so common in Paul's time, by the way, that he wrote almost the same kind of thing to Timothy about the same kind of false teaching. And if you read carefully through 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, you will hear an echo of precisely of what you see here in Titus.
For example, 1 Timothy 6:4 talks about false teachers who have morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words which arise out of...out of which, I should say, arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth. This is nothing new. They would come in and with their novel personal supposedly scholastic erudite divinely received intuitively ascertained mystically-gained insights, they would attack the Word of God. What they were really doing was espousing demon doctrine. They were ignorant, says Paul, in that passage in 1 Timothy 6, they were untrained, they were ungodly. They spent senseless hours arguing and debating about their speculations as over against the truth of God with the purpose of stirring up questions which cannot be answered, confusion and ultimately defection from the faith. That kind of teaching, Paul says, eats like gangrene, it makes shipwreck of the faith. It is devastating. Shun it, that's the last word.
Once it is exposed for what it is and confronted for what it is, you give it no platform. You do not listen to it as if it were truth being taught by those who represent God, you turn your back and you walk away.
As I was thinking about that I was meditating on the thought...I wonder if God is keeping any kind of record of how many hours and how many years and how many life times of Christians have been lost to real Kingdom purposes, to real redemptive activity, to real evangelism, discipleship and spiritual ministry while they debate fools and their lies, often calling it scholarship, academia when the souls of men go begging to hear the gospel? In 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 14, Paul giving much the same kind of direction to Timothy says, "Solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers." In verse 16, "Avoid the worldly and empty chatter, it only leads to further ungodliness." In verse 14 it leads to ruin, in verse 16 it leads to ungodliness, in verse 17 it becomes gangrenous. And then down in verse 23, "Refuse foolish and ignorant speculation, they just produce quarrel." If you want quarrel and diseased gangrenous kind of error that produces ungodliness and the ruin of its hearers, then get in a debate with people espousing that which isn't true. And yet the church has wasted who knows how many countless lives in a debate with the folly of these kinds of speculations and useless meaningless controversies. Shun foolish controversies.
The second aspect of this false teaching that he identifies is under the term "genealogies." You say, "Does that mean we're not supposed to read certain parts of Genesis? Or we're not supposed to read the genealogy of our Lord in Matthew or in Luke?" No, of course it doesn't mean that. What it has to do with was wild allegorical interpretations of Old Testament lists of names instead of just taking them at historical face value, so-and-so beget so-and-so, so-and-so beget so-and-so, as giving us a historical line so that we can draw certain conclusions about God's redemptive unfolding purpose, instead of looking at those genealogies at their historic face and literal value, there were those who looked at those and read into them all kinds of bizarre, wild, crazy, allegorical and mystical interpretations. They're associated with legends and myths that go along with certain fables, somehow read into those names of ancestors. Much of the rabbinic Haggada consists of such rewritten folly. There's an ancient called The Book of Jubilees which has many of these Jewish allegories and genealogical speculations where instead of just recognizing the fact that is there, a man is named who beget a man or whatever, there is read into it some bizarre speculation. And all of a sudden that secret elevated mystical truth becomes the real truth and they can spin fables and legends and out of concoct a whole religion that is generated out of hell itself.
Iraneus tells how ancestral lines of Genesis could be worked into myths. The early church historian Eusebius said that when the Apostles passed away, and I quote, "The conspiracy of godless error took its rise through the deceit of false teachers who endeavored with brazen face to preach their knowledge falsely so-called in opposition to the preaching of the truth," end quote.
Once the guardians, the Apostles, were gone, this thing escalated. But it had been around a long, long time. Apparently in Crete some of the same kind of stuff that was in Ephesus where Timothy was when Paul wrote 1 and 2 Timothy had come to the fore and was attacking the church and needed to be addressed...fanciful, mystical interpretations that fit only in to the category of stupid controversy and genealogy.
Thirdly he mentions strife, eris, rivalry, contention. Again this is reminiscent of 1 Timothy 6, "If anyone advocates...verse 3...a different doctrine and doesn't agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing but has a morbid interest in disputes out of which arise envy and strife and abusive language and evil suspicion and constant friction." Just constant friction and trouble...contention, constantly battling around the truth, trying to be divisive, conceited, proud men who attack the historic truth of God's Word and try to stir up battles which eventually are designed to destroy the confidence, the security, the sense of faith and rest that the saints have in the truth of Scripture. He says shun all that stuff.
And then he looks at it even in a more specific way in the fourth little category, disputes about the law...fightings literally about the law. You remember back in 1 Timothy chapter 1 that the Apostle Paul identifies some false teachers who wanted to be teachers of the law. They were involved in fruitless discussion, pointless argument. They wanted to be teachers of the law but they didn't understand either what they were saying or the matters about which they were making confident assertions. They were dogmatic about what they didn't know. Very common, apparently, in those times. They sought prominence as teachers. They sought by their novel subtleties and their distorted allegories and their legalism and their mystical interpretations to be exalted as those who had the elevated kind of knowledge, who had the inside scoop with God, from it they gained prestige, prominence, sexual favors even as well as money. They, however, were completely ignorant as the Scripture points out.
When you come across any of that stuff that attacks the Word of God, any of these foolish controversies, any of these mystical allegorical speculations, any of these things that are mere arguments and disputes about the things of God, he says shun it, turn your back and walk away. The same demons are behind it all. It is all demonic doctrine espoused by seducing spirits through hypocritical liars. He says turn your back and walk away. There is no virtue in staying around to hear what they have to say. It undermines, it ruins the faith, it eats like gangrene. It leads to ungodliness.
I don't know how many times that particular emphasis I have repeated from this pulpit through the years and warned young people as they choose a college and as they choose a seminary to go to that they make sure they are not in disobedience to this clear command of the Word of God. Because they'll go there and what will occur will be the very promised devastation. Don't descend to the level of their ignorance by bickering and arguing with them. Show the error, understand the error, go on to proclaim the truth...truth such as we studied last time in verses 4 through 7. Anybody who attacks that isn't worthy of being heard. Both the doctrinal errors and just the format of endless bickering is a waste of time and a waste of energy that distresses Paul.
I can remember having a conversation with one of the professors at the Master's Seminary who said to me, "I came here because I wanted to train men in the Word of God for ministry, not argue with people who taught error." The positive approach is what the Scripture calls for.
So, the last word then from Paul on false teachers is shun. Secondly, on factious people...what's the last word? Verses 10 and 11, "Reject a factious man after a first and second warning knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned." Now this certainly could refer to those who teach unsound doctrine because they would be factious, that is divisive. They would separate. They would be a problem in the church. They would be a sectarian influence. But really it's beyond that. It goes beyond those who would engage in some wrong doctrine, those who would split the church over a doctrinal issue, it doesn't confine itself to that, it's anybody who tends to divide, to fracture the fellowship, to tear the seamless robe, as it were, of the garment of the unity of the church. The church, as you well know, has always struggled against false doctrine and always struggled to maintain unity. It will always be assaulted by people propagating lies and it will always be assaulted by people who try to divide it.
Truth in unity is the stock and trade of the church's evangelism. Sound doctrine and love expressed is what is our message. What makes our sound doctrine believable is the integrity of our unity as Jesus made so very clear in the time He spoke to His disciples in John 13 and said, "By this will all men know that you're My disciples if you have love one for another." So the church has not only always struggled against error, it has struggled against discord, division. You remember Paul wrote 1 Corinthians and the first several chapters clear into chapter 4 are all about trying to bring to that church the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. After all, there is one God, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism...we, Jesus prayed, would be one and we are in essence. We've all been baptized in to one body through the agency of the Holy Spirit, have all been made to drink of the same Spirit, there is a spiritual unity but there needs to be a real and visible one as well. We are called sacrificially to love each other.
In that 1 Corinthian epistle, chapter 1, I think Paul sums it up in verses 10 and following, " I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you all agree and there be no division among you but you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. I have been informed, concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you. Has Christ been divided?"
It was that very desire for unity that prompted him to write to the Philippians, only conduct yourselves, chapter 1 verse 27, in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent I may hear of you that you are striving together, standing firm in one spirit for the faith of the gospel. The unity of the church, absolutely crucial.
And that is that to which Paul addresses his attention in this second category. There are some people in the life of the church who are factious. They disrupt. They bring discord. They're divisive. Any of us at any point could do that if we're in sin. The term here for a factious man is hairetikos from which eventually our English transliteration heretic came. The term heretic to us means an apostate, someone who teaches something other than sound doctrine, someone who rejects the truth. We usually think of it in a doctrinal sense. And by the second century hairetikos had come to mean a heretic, or an apostate. But at this time those who study the Greek language tell us that the word really did not have that kind of connotation. It came from the Greek verb hairetomi(?) which simply means to choose, or to prefer...to take for oneself.
It could refer to the particular group that a person chose to belong to. It wouldn't necessarily have been a bad one. For example, it is used throughout the book of Acts and translated the sect of the Pharisees. It is even used in the book of Acts with reference to the sect called Christianity. It simply means a group, a choice. But we start to see its bad connotation, for example, in Galatians 5:20 where it is translated factions and it is shown as one of the expressions of the flesh, the unregenerate wicked fallen flesh.
Summing it up, it had the idea of someone who makes a resolute choice. It then started to mean someone whose choice is obstinate and against the truth. It is used here to mean one who had chosen an idea, one who had chosen a teaching, a doctrine, a viewpoint, a perspective, a course of behavior that was not acceptable to the church. It was not acceptable to the Word of God or it was not acceptable to the mind of the Spirit as revealed through the leadership. Literally, one who chooses for himself, he will not become a part of the consensus. He will not submit to the Word. He will not submit to the leadership. He will not become a part of that which is the mind of the Spirit revealed through the elders.
And later, as I said, by the second century it comes all the way to meaning a heretic and an apostate. But here we have someone who has chosen some unbiblical, some unacceptable way and he's gathering adherents and he's causing strife and division and factions in the church and will not move in to the area where truth resides and the testimony of the Spirit leads.
<