Titus 3:10

Ver. 10. A heretical man, after one and a second admonition, shun. The word αἱρετικὸν only in part corresponds to our term heretical; perhaps schismatical or factious would more nearly approach to it. It denoted one who set himself to make a αι ̔́ ρεσις or party, separate from the community of the faithful. In the history of the Acts the designation is applied to the sectional divisions among the Jews the sects (as the word is rendered) of the Pharisees and the Sadducees (Acts 5:17; Acts 15:5). On one occasion Paul applies it to himself, and his former co-religionists, in a good sense; he spoke of it as a thing creditable to them that they formed “the strictest sect of their religion” (Acts 26:5). This, however, might be called an exceptional use; for, shortly before, Paul himself confesses that, in a way which his countrymen called heresy (αἱρέσιν), he worshipped God, and was stigmatized by his accusers as a ringleader of the Nazarene heresy or sect (Acts 24:5; Acts 24:14). Also in St. Paul's own writings the expression is similarly used Galatians 5:20; 1 Corinthians 11:19; the latter of which passages especially throws light on the import of the word in the apostolic church. In the preceding verse he had mentioned with grief that he heard there were schisms or divisions among them; and then he adds, “for there must be also αἱρέσεις among you, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you.” It is clear that the persons who taught the αἱρέσεις were just those who caused the schismatical divisions formed some kind of separate interest by unduly elevating a human mode of teaching, or teaching what was in itself at variance with the principles of the gospel. I conclude, therefore, with Campbell ( Preliminary Dissertations on the Gospels, ix. 4), that the heretical man of our text “must mean one who is the founder of a sect, or at least has the disposition to create sects in the community, and may properly be called a factious man. The admonition here given to Titus is the same, though differently expressed, with what Paul had given to the Romans when he said, ‘Mark them which cause divisions, and avoid them'” (Romans 16:7). (The dissertation on this point is in general good, but carries to an extreme the idea of false doctrine having nothing to do with heresy in the gospel age. False or erroneous teaching must certainly have been an element.) A person of this conceited, opinionative stamp Titus is counselled not summarily to cast off, but to deal with him as an offender against the peace and good order of the church to give him one and even a second admonition; and then, if these failed to reclaim him from his waywardness, to shun him as an evil-doer. The apostle does not carry the matter further; he does not advise formal excommunication, the course he had himself adopted in the case of others (1 Timothy 1:20); but the kind of shunning or avoiding enjoined was a virtual excommunication, as it plainly involved a resolution not to recognise him as a Christian brother so long as he pursued his divisive and factious course. And the reason given in the next verse for the action recommended confirms this view.