The Cost of Answering Divisive Men
By Andy Webb
health-related matters.
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How do men who want to be good shepherds and husbands avoid falling into that trap? Well, while the technology we use to facilitate arguments with divisive men in the church may be new, arguments and divisive men in the body of Christ are not. In the closing exhortations of Titus 3:8–11, Paul turns from counseling Titus about preaching and teaching the sovereign grace of God that saves and sancti- the peace, purity, and unity of the church. By doing so we Paul reminds us that ministers are not only called to preach the gospel in the abstract but to order the life of the church in such a way that the gospel is not constantly drowned out by that drain the church’s strength while giving the appearance of zeal. that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. - that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned” (Titus 3:8-11). It is striking that Paul does not merely warn about false doctrine in the for-
hairetikos. The older KJV translation rendered it “an heretick,” but the Greek word hairetikos originally carried the idea of a party-maker, a faction-builder, a man who draws disciples after himself. The connection to Paul’s earlier rebuke of Corinthian factionalism in 1 Corinthians 3 is obvious. There the disease appears in seed form — “I am of Paul… I am of Apollos… I am of Cephas.” In Crete the seed has
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f you’re a pastor today, you live in a strange age. A pastor can sit at his theological brawl that can consume literally hours of time that could have
matured into a personality around which disputes perpetually orbit. The issue is not merely mistaken teaching but self-willed teaching, opinion el- evated above the common confession of Christ’s church.
This is why Paul ties the divisive man to endless controversies: gene- alogies, quarrels, and speculative dis- putes. These discussions do not exist they exist because the discussion it- self has become the aim. Calvin un- derstood the psychology perfectly: “Although it is necessary to seek,
seeking, that you may understand what is useful to be known, and, the truth, when it has been known. Those who inquire curiously into ev- erything, and are never at rest, may be truly called Questionarians” [Calvin, John. Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Translated by William Pringle, Calvin Translation Society, 1856, p. 339.] Such a man is never satisfied with the ordinary means of grace because those means produce stabil- ity, and stability ends the argument.
The Associate Reformed Presbyterian
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