Strive for Unity
This is one place where it looks like Paul isn't following his own advice. Paul starts on the one end saying, don't get involved in following controversies that are divisive, and then turns around and tells us to divide from people that do this! What is going on? Paul is a careful writer, and the Holy Spirit is behind him, so this isn't some mistake he has made. It represents something that we have to think through carefully and apply with wisdom.
As we get into this passage, we will see that once we understand what the terms are, we have a much better idea about how to apply this. We want to defend unity with all we have, but it has to be a unity based on a shared understanding of the truth of the gospel.
Avoid worthless divisive controversies
What constitutes a foolish controversy or quarrels about the law?
The word for "controversies" here is related to the word "seek." This makes sense because, in ideal settings, we use the tools of debate to seek out what is true and correct. We can look at a place like Jude that calls us to contend for the faith, so Titus here isn't condemning the act of strongly fighting for the right thing. The problem comes in when we are fighting pointedly for the wrong thing or a thing that is just not worth fighting over. We want to use our ability to seek truth through debate well. If we are using it for worthless things, we are misusing the tool.
I remember when I was a kid, I was fascinated with my dad's branch loppers. These things would have a sharp blade and a dull metal claw to grab and slice branches. But when I was a kid, I could get relatively distracted to an embarrassingly late age, and I have this memory of sticking the loppers in the dirt and opening and closing the tool. All the dads in here recognize what I'm doing! I'm getting dirt all in the wrong places, and I'm dulling the blade!
Using the tool for the wrong purpose doesn't get anything done and just damages the tool. We can pretend that we are sharpening our arguing skills by getting into worthless debates online, but if we are practicing on things that don't matter, are we really improving? Paul says we are not.
The same thing applies to the genealogies and the quarrels about the Jewish law. One scholar noted that some Jews at the time thought that your family tree had some religious significance (Knight III, 353), and obviously here Paul shoots down that idea. The same can be said for questions about the law.
So why do we do it?
We get a little hint as to what Paul might be on about in 1 Tim. 6:4-5. This is a picture of the false teacher. He is prideful and loves controversy for its own sake. He wants to fight about words that produces sin. Why might someone do something like this? Verse 5 gives us a hint. He is imagining that godliness might be a means to gain. He is supposedly known as a fighter, but he is doing it because it brings in gain, money, dare we say, clicks. Today, being able to destroy your enemies with facts and logics can win you an online following but little else. In fact to get into fights about things that don't matter is given a value from Paul" unprofitable and worthless." You're not gaining anything, and what you do get is empty.
Christians have better things to do. Now, there are a lot of debates going around these days, so what is worth our time to get involved?
A good way to know whether what we are talking about or even listening to constitutes "arguing over words" is to ask, "Is the gospel or the ability to share it threatened here?" It isn't arguing over words if some are saying, "Eh, we don't think Jesus is divine." This isn't a worthless debate if we are talking about political issues the impact our ability to easily spread the gospel. As always there are areas that require wisdom about whether to jump in or not. It might be a debate worth having, but you might not be the person to lead that debate at least in this season.
When we step into issues today, we want to argue from the perspective that these earlier verses gives to us. We don't fight over political issues to advance "our side" but to advance God's perspective on the world, the truth. It's perfectly fine to have opinions about non-essential things, even strong ones, but we cannot use those opinions to drive a wedge between people for whom Christ died. We also remember when things get heated, we remember what God has done for us, that we were once this way, and we don't want to be that way again.
Avoid already warned divisive people
What constitutes a divisive person? And why is this person so dangerous that he only gets three strikes?
Let me start with the second question. Notice that this is a divisive person that is unrepentant in their divisiveness. They just keeping coming back to it despite being warned once than twice. I think Paul has the procedure of Church discipline in mind. Two or three people have dealt with it, and now church leadership has gotten involved. This is someone who is truly committed to their divisiveness. Because of that, they are put out of the church. This sounds overly harsh but it is meant to 1) protect the peace and purity of the church and 2) is meant to communicate to the divisive person that this sin is serious and needs to be dealt with.
The hope is that the sinner repents! We welcome back any sinner who is truly repentant. There may be some consequences that are long lasting for some sins, but a repentant sinner is welcome at The Table.
The other thing we have to recognize is that this isn't just a person who is criticizing leadership about font size on the bulletin. According to to one scholar (Verbrugge), this word is actually referring to heretics who divide up the body of Christ by denying the truth about him (21). The word heretic in this context is someone who is teaching something about Jesus or the Bible that is so wrong people are believing in the wrong thing to get to heaven. Mormons who deny that Jesus was always God and actually if you are a good enough mormon, you get to be a god one day over your own planet fit into that category! This is way bigger than poking each other about Auburn vs Alabama. This is someone who is lying about who Jesus is and trying to start a cult within the Church. That is a very serious thing! That's why they need to be warned and if unrepentant, separated from.
The word that Paul uses here for "warning" has a shade of meaning that is important here. This isn't just giving people new information. It isn't like someone explained the Trinity wrongly because they just didn't know that was a bad analogy, Patrick. This is someone who is needs their wills or feelings changed. That is what this warning is trying to do. Someone has bad motives or wrong emotions behind their choices, and they need to be warned.
Teaching sober high school students about the chemistry of alcohol is giving information (didaskilas). Warning an alcoholic what will happen if they get behind the wheel again is what we have here. This is moral instruction. How that instruction is given varies from person to person. One thing you learn in ministry is that there is no one size fits all counseling. There is only one source of truth I can give, but there are a million ways to approach it. Some need tough love and others needs a gentle hand.
However you approach your warnings, we don't just write off a person after one or even two swings at this. But if they come at it a third time, they are to be removed. That doesn't mean that we don't give them the gospel. It just means we don't pretend that everything is ok. This person is self-condemned, and we can't just not do something about that.
What can we take away from this? The big message we have from this passage is the importance of unity in essentials. We do not want to needlessly divide ourselves and waste our time over things that don't matter. That is a double tragedy. The devil wins when we waste our time, energy, and relational capital on worthless stuff. Not only is there needless division, but time that could have been spent on better things, profitable things, wasn't spent there. Pick your battles carefully.
That said, when we have something that truly matters, we don't hide behind "unity" as a reason not to deal with something! Unity that is false is not real unity. This is why the PCA split from our former denomination the PCUSA. The PCUSA insisted that the Bible was not an infallible source of truth and therefore way too many doctrinal essentials were up for debate. We couldn't pretend that we were unified on something like that, so we had to separate. This isn't separating over non-essential issues like carpet color or music style. This is the difference between heaven and hell. It would be unkind, lying even, to say that we are all going to heaven when we have serious doubts about the person next to us. It is also equally lying to insist others aren't going to heaven because of non-essential issues.
Bryan Chappell put it well when he said, "there is a difference between needing to divide and loving to divide." (364).