What is the context?
Paul contrasts useful good work with disputes that produce no good result. Titus is to avoid foolish controversies, genealogies and quarrels about the law, rather than let them consume the community’s attention.
A persistently divisive person is first to receive a warning and then another. If the pattern continues, Titus is to reject that person. The instruction addresses repeated destructive conduct after correction, rather than a sincere question or a single difference of opinion.
The Greek adjective hairetikos (high-reh-tee-KOS) describes someone factious or divisive, including a follower of false teaching. In this setting, the person’s own persistence makes his wrongdoing evident.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Wesley reads the instruction as a response to someone obstinately generating factions through pointless disputes. Calvin likewise warns against immediately branding everyone who disagrees as a heretic. He emphasizes that correction must precede rejection.
The shared reading recognizes both an opportunity to respond to correction and a boundary against ongoing damage. The instruction does not make every unresolved question an act of division or require endless repetition of the same fruitless controversy.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
1 Corinthians 1:10–13 confronts factions by bringing the community back to Christ, who is not divided. That gives a larger purpose for addressing divisiveness: the people belong together in Him, rather than becoming rival followings.
Ephesians 4:1–6 likewise joins humility, patience and bearing with one another to preserving unity in the Spirit. Titus’s warnings belong within care for that shared life, not a goal of making every person agree with a leader’s private preferences.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.