Disagreement is something we’re pretty used to here at Living Out. In many ways, that’s no surprise: the topics on which we’re seeking to offer equipping – sexuality, gender, identity – are all important, complex and contentious. We, like lots of Christians, have to think through how we respond to disagreements: Do we engage or do we ignore? If we engage, how do we do so? And how much energy should we give to disagreements? I think we find some really helpful biblical principles for these questions in Titus 3.
Titus is a letter in the New Testament, written by the Apostle Paul to one of his co-workers, Titus.1 Paul had left Titus on Crete to help the island’s recently-planted churches become fully and healthily established (Titus 1:5). In the final chapter of the letter, Paul gives one of the Bible’s most rich and beautiful summaries of the Christian gospel (Titus 3:3-7), after which he gives some final exhortations to Titus (and, by extension, to us).
Paul exhorts Titus to insist, avoid and warn, three principles that can help us to navigate disagreements in our own day.
Insist
‘I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for all people’ (Titus 3:8).
Paul gives a strong charge: ‘Insist on these things’. What are ‘these things’? They are the core truths of the gospel that Paul has just outlined. Titus is to insist on them because they are the centre point of the Christian faith and hope. To compromise on those is to fail to be truly Christian, to lose the glorious truth of what God the Father has done in the sending of his son and his spirit.
We too must insist on the gospel. We must be unwilling to budge from what Scripture teaches about it.
This is an important principle for us. We too must insist on the gospel. We must be unwilling to budge from what Scripture teaches about it. This is true for those in church leadership, but it’s true for all of us. There are disagreements where we should not and cannot just agree to disagree. Truths which we can’t just ‘let go’. When a disagreement revolves around central gospel truths, it falls into this category.
This is why the core biblical teaching on sexuality – the fact that sex and marriage are reserved for lifelong unions of a man and a woman – is not something on which we can agree to disagree. We must insist on these things because they are gospel truths. In a biblical, Christian understanding, sexuality and marriage are about the gospel. They tell the story of the gospel, pointing us to the future eternal union of Christ and the Church (see, for example, Hosea 2:19-20; Ephesians 5:31-32; Revelation 19:6-7). This gospel-shaped reality underpins the Bible’s sexual and marriage ethics. ‘Insist on these things.’
Avoid
‘But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless’ (Titus 3:9).
Paul’s second exhortation is the opposite of his first: avoid some disagreements. Which disagreements should be avoided? Clearly, given the previous exhortation, it can’t be those which are about gospel truths. Paul describes the disagreements to be avoided as those that are ‘unprofitable and worthless’ – they don’t do any good and have no real benefit. He gives some specific examples which may well reflect what he knows was going on among the Christians on Crete (see also Titus 1:14).
I think Paul’s would include here what theologians have come to call disputable matters. This is topics which aren’t central to the gospel and on which Scripture doesn’t speak clearly enough to give us a one-size-fits-all answer. In these circumstances, the New Testament tells us to settle in our own conscience how we believe is right for us to act and then to choose not to divide with others who reach a different position.2
Matters which might fall into the avoid category include whether to attend a same-sex wedding, using pronouns that don’t match with biological sex, and debates around language used to describe different experiences of sexuality and gender. It’s not wrong for us to have perspectives on these questions. It’s not wrong for us to discuss them. But Paul encourages us to avoid getting too caught up in them when we can legitimately agree to disagree on these topics and when endless discussion of them is likely to prove unprofitable and worthless.
Warn
‘As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned’ (Titus 3:10-11).
Paul’s final exhortation is to warn. Those who do encourage and create division should be warned and given multiple opportunities to change their behaviour, but if they fail to do so, should be put out of relationship with the church.
Part of the role of the senior leaders of a church is to protect the church by both teaching what is right and opposing what is wrong.
Who is this about and who is responsible for giving this warning? Presumably it’s about those who stir up division over central gospel truths (by insisting on wrong teaching) and those who stir division over unhelpful disagreements (those that should be avoided). The primary responsibility for giving this warning falls to church leaders. Paul is writing to Titus, in part to charge him with appointing elders to lead and guard the churches (Titus 1:5). Part of the role of the senior leaders of a church (‘elders’ in Paul’s language here) is to protect the church by both teaching what is right and opposing what is wrong (Titus 1:9).
But there may be times when those of us as church members also have to apply Paul’s principle. That may be by leaving a church where the leadership are failing to be faithful to biblical teaching (for example, by giving approval to same-sex sexual relationships), or withdrawing from those who are being divisive and are negatively impacting our efforts to follow Jesus faithfully.
Insist. Avoid. Warn. Three exhortations from Paul that can help us when we face disagreements in the church. Which do you find most challenging? And what would it look like for you to put them into practice?
- I’m aware that some contest the claim that Paul wrote Titus. I don’t think there’s any good reason to say he didn’t, but here’s not the place to unpack all of that!
- The most extensive New Testament teaching on disputable matters is found in Romans 14:1-15:13. A helpful introduction to the concept can be found in D.A. Carson, ‘On Disputable Matters’, Themelios.
