Churches have split right down the middle over things that never had anything to do with the gospel. The color of the carpet. The style of the music. I read an article that listed 25 silly things churches fight over that Thom Rainer posted, and it had real things that people had told him online. [1] I’m not going to read all of them, but some of them are: Argument over the appropriate length of the worship pastor’s beard. Fight over whether or not to build a children’s playground or to use the land for a cemetery. A 45-minute heated argument over the type of filing cabinet to purchase: black or brown; 2, 3, or 4 drawers. A big church argument over the discovery that the church budget was off $0.10. Someone finally gave a dime to settle the issue. Two different churches reported fights over the type of coffee. In one of the churches, they moved from Folgers to a stronger Starbucks brand. In the other church, they simply moved to a stronger blend. Members left the church in the latter example.
Those really are silly. Some fights within the church do matter. There are times when the truth is on the line and the church has to say something, even when it’s hard. So how do you tell the difference? How do you know when to let something go and when the church really needs to step in? That’s exactly what Paul deals with in the last verses of Titus.
Last week we saw one of the clearest pictures of the gospel in the whole Bible. God saved us “not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.” He washed us and made us new. Then Paul told Titus, “I want you to insist on these things.” Today he turns right around and tells him what not to give himself to. And then he ends the letter the same way he started it, with grace. This is our last week in Titus.
Titus 3:9–15
Did you notice the first word of verse 9? “But.” Verse 8 said the truths of the gospel are “excellent and profitable for people.” Verse 9 says these other things are “unprofitable and worthless.” Paul is setting the two side by side on purpose. There are things that build up a church, and there are things that tear it down, and God’s people have to know the difference.
Avoid fights that profit nothing. (9)
Verse 9 says, “But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.” That word “avoid” has the idea of stepping around something, turning away from it, shunning it. Think about walking a trail and coming up on a copperhead coiled up in the path. You don’t stop and study it, and you sure don’t poke it with a stick to see what it’ll do. You step around it and keep moving, because if you don’t, you’re going to get seriously hurt. Some arguments you don’t have to win. You need to just walk around them. Completely avoid them.[2]
Now that doesn’t mean Christians should never argue about anything. Remember back in chapter 1, Paul told Titus that false teachers “must be silenced” and rebuked sharply. Some things are worth fighting for. So Paul isn’t banning every controversy. He’s banning “foolish” ones. That’s the word we get “moron” from. It means dull, empty, pointless.[3] These are arguments that don’t go anywhere and don’t make anybody more like Jesus.
So what were they arguing about? “Genealogies” and “quarrels about the law.” I think this is the same crowd we saw in chapter 1, the ones Paul called “the circumcision party,” who were teaching “Jewish myths.” They were digging through the family trees in the Old Testament and building speculations on them, and they were fighting over the intricacies of the law. And notice that word “quarrels.” It’s the word for a battling. It was used of physical combat. There’s a story I read about two seminary students who got so heated arguing over the doctrine of sanctification that it ended in a fistfight.[4] Two men studying to be pastors, arguing about how God makes people holy, and then fighting each other over it. That’s what foolish controversy does. You get so wrapped up in winning that you stop acting like the very thing you’re arguing about.
Paul says these inward fights are “unprofitable.” That’s the exact opposite of the word he used in verse 8 for the gospel. The gospel changes people. It is profitable. It washes people and makes them new and sends them out to do good. These unprofitable arguments don’t do one good thing for anybody. They’re “worthless.” You can spend a whole evening arguing and walk away with nothing to show for it but hurt feelings. Some of us have gotten good at arguing about the Bible and not very good at obeying it. At living out the good works part.
So how do you tell if you are one of these people? We should always be looking inward, right? Bryan Chapell gives one of the best tests I know. He says, “There is a difference between needing to divide and loving to divide.”[5] A person who loves the peace of the church might have to stand up for the truth, but they do it rarely, and they hate having to do it. They stay unbiased and honest, and they grieve that it ever had to come to that. The person who loves the fight is different. They’re always in the middle of something. Somebody is always not happy with them or they’re always not happy with someone else. And the problem is always with someone else, never them. Be honest with yourself here. When was the last time you argued about something at church and walked away more like Jesus? If you love the fight, or you’re always in the middle of a fight, something’s wrong.
Lovingly discipline those who divide. (10–11)
Now Paul moves from divisive issues to divisive people. Verse 10 says, “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.” Behind that phrase “a person who stirs up division” is the Greek word we get “heretic” from.[6] But back then it didn’t mean the same as what it means to us today. It described somebody who takes sides and forms a party. A schismatic person. It’s a person who picks what they want to believe and pulls people along with them. They’re not happy unless there’s some sort of faction, and they’re the one leading leading the charge. “I need to get people on my side.”
Paul says to “warn” that person. And notice Paul doesn’t say to throw them out the first time they cause trouble. Warn them once. Then warn them again. Give them room to repent. That’s the same pattern Jesus gave us in Matthew 18. Go to them yourself. Then take one or two others with you. Then bring it to the church. And if at any point they repent, the discipline stops and the restoring starts. The goal of discipline is never to get rid of somebody. It’s to get them back. Grace drives the whole thing.
But if they won’t listen, Paul says, “have nothing more to do with him.” Now what does that look like? Paul doesn’t spell it out. I think it means what Jesus said in Matthew 18, removing them from the fellowship of the church. Excommunication. Baptists used to call church discipline one of the marks of a true church, right alongside the Word rightly preached and the ordinances. We don’t talk about it much anymore. But Dietrich Bonhoeffer helps us see the need clearly. He wrote,
“Nothing can be more cruel than that leniency which abandons others to sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than that severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.”[7]
Ten years ago this month, a small fire started up on the Chimney Tops in the Smokies. For four days it barely grew. It went from about an acre to around ten acres. One night it looked so small that the crews were released for the night. By the next morning it was hundreds of acres. Then on November 28 the winds came through gusting up to 87 miles an hour, and they carried that fire down the mountain into Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Fourteen people died. More than 2,500 homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed.[8] And you know what? It all started with a fire that didn’t look like much. That’s what division does in a church. It smolders. There’s a little smoke, yeah. But it doesn’t look like much. It looks manageable. And then one day the wind picks up. And it can burn the whole thing down.
Then verse 11 tells us why Paul takes this so seriously. “Knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.” “Warped” means twisted, turned inside out.[9] And “sinful” is in the present tense. It’s not one bad day. It’s a settled pattern of sin. Then Paul says they are “self-condemned.” Notice Paul doesn’t say the church condemns them. They have condemned themselves through this. The person who has to keep proving they’re right is trying to justify themselves. But remember verse 7? We are “justified by his grace.” Winning an argument and being justified aren’t the same thing. To be justified means God the Judge looks at guilty people like us who trust in Jesus and declares, “Not guilty!” When you would rather be right than living by grace, you’ve cut yourself and others off from the grace of God you’re meant to demonstrate with your life.
Devote yourselves to good works that meet real needs. (12–14)
Then Paul starts wrapping things up. Verse 12 says, “When I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there.” We don’t know anything else about Artemas. But Tychicus shows up all over the New Testament, and in Ephesians Paul called him a “beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord.”[10] Paul wasn’t going to pull Titus off Crete and leave those churches with nobody. He was sending a faithful man to take his place. Nicopolis was on the west coast of Greece, and Paul planned to wait out the winter there, when ships didn’t sail. But Paul’s plans didn’t work out the way he hoped. Not long after this he was arrested again and taken to Rome, and that time he was put to death. Paul made plans, but he held them loosely, and he kept training other people to carry on the work. The gospel continues on long after we’re gone.
Verse 13 says, “Do your best to speed Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way; see that they lack nothing.” Zenas was most likely an expert in Roman law. Apollos was the great preacher from Alexandria we read about in Acts. It’s likely these two men carried this very letter to Crete. And now Paul tells the church to send them on. That phrase “speed… on their way” meant more than waving bye at the door. It meant sending them off with everything they’d need for the trip. “See that they lack nothing.” The church is supposed to take care of the people who minister the gospel.
Southern Baptists know more about living out this verse than we might think. In 1887 a missionary in China named Lottie Moon wrote home and asked Baptists to take up an offering for missions the week before Christmas. She had been writing letter after letter pleading for more workers and more support. And you know what? Baptist women did it. Likewise, Annie Armstrong wrote a thousand letters by hand, and that first offering brought in a little over $3,300, enough to send three more missionaries to work alongside her. Lottie Moon stayed in China almost forty years. During a famine in 1912 she gave away her food and her money to the starving people around her. By the time they carried her onto a ship to send her home, she weighed about fifty pounds. She died on Christmas Eve in the harbor at Kobe, Japan.[11] Every December, Southern Baptist churches still take up an offering in her name to send missionaries out and see that they “lack nothing.” That’s Titus 3:13 right there.
Then verse 14, “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.” Paul still isn’t done with good works. Notice the word “learn.” It’s the word that goes with being a disciple. Good works don’t come naturally to us. We have to learn them, and that takes practice. Then Paul says “devote themselves,” the same phrase he used last week in verse 8. We must make it a habit.
And what are those good works for? “To help cases of urgent need.” Not busywork to make us feel useful, but real needs for real people. Then Paul says, “and not be unfruitful.” That word means barren. Paul doesn’t want a church that looks healthy and feeds nobody. It has energy and entertainment and nobody’s growing. And do you see how this ties back to verse 9? The church that’s always fighting has no time left to help anybody. It has no time to grow. If it won’t extend grace outwardly and inwardly, it won’t help anybody, even itself.
Grace has the final word. (15)
Verse 15 says, “All who are with me send greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all.” Paul wasn’t alone, and neither was Titus. The people standing with Paul wanted Titus to know they were with him in a hard job. And notice who Paul tells Titus to greet: “those who love us in the faith.” What holds the church together isn’t that we all agree on every little thing. It’s the faith we share in Jesus Christ.
Then comes the very last line. “Grace be with you all.” That “you” is plural. The actual translation should be this: “Grace be with y’all.” That’s the Tennessee version. Paul isn’t just talking to Titus anymore. He’s talking to every believer on Crete who would hear this letter read out loud in church. Y’all, that includes us! I don’t think it’s an accident that grace gets the last word in Titus. Paul could have ended this letter with one more warning. But he ended it with grace.
Think back over this letter with me for a minute. In chapter 1 Paul set the church in order, with godly elders who hold to the Word and stand against false teachers. In chapter 2 he came into our homes and our daily lives, older and younger, and even slaves, and told us “the grace of God has appeared” and is training us. In chapter 3 he sent us out into the world, devoted to good works, because God washed us and made us new. That’s why we called this series “Saved to Serve.” All the way through, Paul never lets what we believe come apart from how we live. John Stott put it this way: “Doctrine and duty are married; they must not be divorced.”[12] If grace hasn’t changed how we live, we haven’t really understood grace.
So let me ask you something. Are you somebody who builds up this church, or somebody who keeps it stirred up? Is there a fight you’ve been holding on to? Is there somebody you’ve been talking about instead of talking to? And when was the last time you did something for somebody in real need?
Maybe God has put His finger on something today. Maybe you’ve been the one stirring things up, and you’ve been warned before, maybe more than once. Repent of it. Go to whoever you need to make it right with this week. Or maybe you’ve watched sin go on in somebody’s life and kept quiet because confronting it would be uncomfortable. Ask God for the courage to love them enough to warn them, and to do it gently.
And if you’re here today and you don’t know Jesus, hear this. The last word of this letter is grace, and grace is exactly what you need. You can’t argue your way into heaven, and you can’t work your way there. Our only hope is the grace and mercy of God. Verse 11 talks about the person who is “self-condemned,” and without Christ that’s every one of us. We stand guilty before a holy God, and because of our sin we deserves Hell. But Jesus lived the perfect life we haven’t lived. He died on the cross for our sins, and He rose from the dead. If you’ll turn from your sin and trust in Him, God will save you, wash you, and make you new. Don’t leave here today without placing your faith in Him.
[1] https://churchanswers.com/blog/twenty-five-silly-things-church-members-fight-over
[2] https://explorethebible.lifeway.com/uncategorized/3-ways-to-recognize-empty-arguments-session-13-titus-31-11
[3] https://biblehub.com/greek/3474.htm; Charles R. Swindoll, Insights on 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Swindoll’s New Testament Insights (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), on Titus 3:9.
[4] https://biblehub.com/greek/3163.htm; Swindoll, Insights on 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, on Titus 3:9.
[5] R. Kent Hughes and Bryan Chapell, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: To Guard the Deposit, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), 364.
[6] https://biblehub.com/greek/141.htm
[7] Daniel L. Akin, David Platt, and Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2013), on Titus 3:9–15; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 105, quoted in Akin, Platt, and Merida, Exalting Jesus in 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, on Titus 3:10.
[8] National Park Service, “Chimney Tops 2 Fire,” Great Smoky Mountains National Park, https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/chimney-tops-2-fire.htm; “Chimney Tops 2 Fire,” Incident Summary, 100 Fires Project, https://wffoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Chimney-Tops-2025.pdf.
[9] https://biblehub.com/greek/1612.htm
[10] Ephesians 6:21; see also Acts 20:4; Colossians 4:7–8; 2 Timothy 4:12.
[11] Chantal Parker, “Lottie Moon (1840–1912),” New Georgia Encyclopedia, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/lottie-moon-1840-1912/; International Mission Board, Experience Lottie Moon’s Life and Legacy: A Leader’s Guide (2024), https://www.imb.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Experience-Lottie-Moons-Life-and-Legacy_A-Leaders-Guide-Digital-1.pdf; International Mission Board, “Lottie Moon,” Missionary Profiles, https://www.imb.org/175/missionary-profiles/lottie-moon/.
[12] John R. W. Stott, Guard the Truth: The Message of 1 Timothy & Titus, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 212–13.
