Unbiblical Teaching
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Have you ever said that? You probably said it while wiping away tears or while trying not to cry as a little kid or last week after a meeting. But that’s the point, isn’t it? There are words that do hurt and injure. There are words that we need to protect ourselves from and others from.
Last week we ended with verse 9, where Paul says an elder has to “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught” so that he can do two things. He has to be able to teach sound doctrine, and he has to be able to rebuke those who contradict it. Today Paul tells us why he has to do both of those. Our passage today starts with the words, “For there are many...” There were many what? There were many people in these churches teaching things that weren’t true. And harmful teaching harms people. So we need to see what to do with this.
Their teaching is unbiblical.
Verse 10 says, “For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.” Paul starts out with the content and character of their teaching. He calls them “insubordinate.”[1] That word has the idea of refusing to submit to authority. I think of a little kid who puts their hands on their hips and stomps their foot down and shouts, “No!” That’s how they act in contrast to God’s authoritative Word.[2] Because it’s the exact opposite of the elder in verse 9 who, as it says, “holds firm to the trustworthy word as taught.” The faithful teacher puts himself under the authority of God’s Word. The false teacher puts himself over God’s Word. The false teacher decides what he’ll accept or reject or add. It’s what he or she feels or thinks over what God’s Word says. The basis of good teaching must always be, “Thus says the Lord.”
That’s the clearest sign of unbiblical teaching. It shouldn’t be whether somebody is interesting or gifted or popular or even whether they use the Bible. What matters is whether what they’re saying is actually biblical. Anybody can quote a Bible verse. Satan quoted Scripture to Jesus.[3] When approaching scripture we need to consider whether we’re willing to let the God’s Word direct us and correct us instead of using God’s Word to support what we already want to say.
in Verse 10 Paul also calls them “empty talkers.”[4] They said a lot, but there wasn’t anything nourishing in what they were saying. This word brings the idea of useless or fruitless speech. That is completely contrary to the “sound doctrine” in verse 9, because remember, we talked about sound doctrine is literally “healthy teaching.”[5] It feeds people and strengthens people. It produces godliness and bears fruit in people’s lives. Empty teaching may sound good and get people emotional. It might entertain people. But if it doesn’t give you the truth and depth of God’s Word, it has no substance. It’s empty. There’s no real nourishment.
And then in the same verse, Paul also says they’re “deceivers.” Their teaching isn’t just empty. It leads people away from the truth. That’s what deception is. It’s falsehood. It is a leading away from truth. That’s what makes false teaching so dangerous. If every false teacher stood up and said, “I’m about to lie to you,” or “I’m about to distort God’s Word like Satan does,” nobody would listen. Deception works because it looks enough like the truth to be believable. They use Christian language, and it sounds good. They talk about Jesus and faith and blessing and obedience and even the Bible. But within it they change the message of the gospel.
Paul says this was especially true in their case for “those of the circumcision party.” These people were teachers who were bringing Jewish rules and practices into the gospel. Verse 14 talks about “Jewish myths” and “commands of people who turn away from the truth.” The problem wasn’t circumcision itself. Paul had Timothy circumcised for the sake of the gospel.[6] The problem was taking something other than Jesus and making it necessary for our standing before God.
That’s why getting this right matters so much. It’s as Danny Akin said: A Jesus plus theology is always a Jesus minus theology. Add to Christ and you subtract Christ. If I say Jesus saves you, but you also need this ritual or this rule or some secret knowledge or this work to truly be accepted by God, I’ve completely changed the gospel. Ephesians 2:8-9 says,
“8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
We don’t improve the gospel by adding something to Jesus. We completely lose the gospel.
Their motives are impure.
Verse 11 says they were “teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.” Their doctrine was wrong, but Paul also looks beneath the doctrine to the reason they were teaching it. They wanted something out of it. Their ministry had become a means of gain. It had become about themselves. It wasn’t about God and others. This connects directly to what Paul said about elders back in verse 7. An elder must not be “greedy for gain.”
A faithful teacher asks, “What does God say, and what do these people need to hear?” An unfaithful teacher starts asking, “What will this get me?” Then God’s truth becomes a mechanism for getting something for yourself.
Paul makes the same connection in 1 Timothy 6:3-5. He says,
3 If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, 4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.
Bad doctrine and bad motives have a way of finding each other. If my goal is to get something from people, eventually I’ll be tempted to tell them what helps me get it.
That’s why we have to be careful about judging teaching only by its success. A large crowd doesn’t mean what someone says is true. A lot of views on a YouTube clip or podcast doesn’t prove something is true. A “successful” ministry doesn’t prove everything being taught is true. Truth is measured by God’s Word, not by numbers.
Their lifestyle contradicts the gospel.
Paul doesn’t stop with what they teach or why they teach it. He looks at their lives. In verses 12–13 he quotes one of Crete’s own writers, Epimenides, who said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” Paul says about it, “This testimony is true.” He isn’t saying every single Cretan was like this. But Titus was appointing godly Cretan elders in these churches to counter this. He’s showing that these false teachers reflected the worst parts of the culture around them instead of being changed by the gospel.
The truth of the gospel is supposed to change us. We saw that in the opening verses of Titus. Paul talks about “the knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness.” Truth and godliness belong together. Sound doctrine should produce a sound life. Paul comes back to that in verse 16. “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.” That may be the most sobering line in this whole passage. They knew how to make a profession. They could say the right things about God. But their lives said something different. Their mouths said they knew Him, but their works denied Him. How many of us can that be said about?
Verse 15 gets us to the heart of their problem. “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.” These teachers were focused on external rules about what was clean and unclean. But Paul says the real problem wasn’t outside of them. It was inside. Their minds and their consciences were defiled. Their heart was unclean.
Jesus taught the exact same thing in Mark 7. It isn’t what goes into a person from outside that ultimately defiles him. Sin comes from the heart. We love external religion because it gives us things we can see and measure and check off. I didn’t eat this. I didn’t drink that. I did this. I didn’t go there. I did these things. I avoided those things. Check. Check. Check. Check. And we can do all of these things while our hearts are far from God.
That’s why godly behavior matters, but behavior alone isn’t the gospel. We don’t need Jesus to make the outside of us look better. We need Him to make us new from the inside out. We need a clean heart and a clean conscience. That’s something no rules can give us. Hebrews 9:14 says, “the blood of Christ” can “purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” The gospel changes us from the inside out.
We must have no part in unbiblical teaching.
Paul’s response to all of this is more harsh than some of us feel comfortable with. Verse 11 says, “They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.” The word translated “silenced” has the idea of muzzling.[7] Literally to put something over their mouth. To shut them up. Paul isn’t telling Titus to ignore it and hope it goes away. He’s telling him it has to be stopped.
Why is he so serious? Because false teaching hurts people. Paul says they were “upsetting whole families.” Bad doctrine doesn’t stay theoretical. Ideas have consequences. What we believe about God changes how we understand salvation, marriage, money, sexuality, suffering, forgiveness, eternity, and everything else. When the gospel gets distorted, people get hurt.
That’s why if we truly love the people around us, we can’t tolerate every teaching that comes along and they listen to. There are things Christians can disagree about. We don’t have to fight over every secondary and tertiary issue.[8] But when something contradicts the gospel or twists the clear teaching of Scripture, real love requires us to say it’s false. Think about it. If somebody was giving out poison to your family, you wouldn’t stand back because you didn’t want to seem unkind to them. You would stop them because you love the people who are about to drink the poison and harm themselves and possibly destroy themselves.
There are popular people and churches you shouldn’t listen to for the sake of your soul: Elevation and Steven Furtick; Joel Osteen; TD Jakes; Joyce Meyer; Bethel and anything that comes out of it; almost anything that’s on TBN…just to name a few. I can’t silence all of these voices at Paul is saying here, but there are some who are. I’m grateful for the work of a pastor named Mike Winger who is very faithfully and biblically doing this online.[9]
Paul says in verse 13, “Therefore rebuke them sharply.” That sounds harsh until you keep reading. He tells us exactly why. “That they may be sound in the faith.” The goal isn’t humiliation. The goal is restoration. It’s not about winning an argument. It’s about winning a to the truth.
The goal of the gospel is always to lead to redemption and restoration.
There are times when spiritual surgery is necessary. A surgeon cuts because something is wrong, but he doesn’t cut because he hates the patient. He cuts in order to cure. In the same way, biblical correction can be painful, but the purpose is healing. We reprove and refute because we want people to be “sound in the faith.” Remember, sound means healthy. Paul wants sick doctrine replaced with healthy faith and healthy families and a healthy church.
Before we start looking for false teachers everywhere else, we need to put ourselves under the same Word. Paul’s answer to false teaching isn’t that we become suspicious of everybody. It’s that we ourselves know the truth. Hold firm to the trustworthy Word. Know the gospel. Know your Bible well enough that when something doesn’t line up with it, you can recognize it.
But there’s one more thing we can’t miss. Every one of us has failed the tests in this passage in some way. We’ve believed things that weren’t true. We’ve had impure motives. Our lives haven’t always matched what we profess. We need the same thing these false teachers needed. We need to be made sound in the faith.
And that brings us back to Jesus. The answer to false teaching isn’t merely knowing more facts. It’s knowing the true Christ revealed in the true gospel. Jesus changes us from the inside out. He lived the life we haven’t lived. He died for our sin. He rose from the dead. We’re saved by grace through faith in Him, not by our rules, our performance, or anything we can add to Him.
[1] https://biblehub.com/greek/506.htm
[2] https://research.lifeway.com/2025/08/07/why-you-can-trust-the-bible-as-the-authoritative-word-of-god
[3] Matthew 4:5–6, Luke 4:9–11; cf. Psalm 91:11–12
[4] https://biblehub.com/greek/3151.htm
[5] https://biblehub.com/greek/5198.htm
[6] Acts 16:3 – Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
[7] https://biblehub.com/greek/1993.htm
[8] Read Gavin Ortlund’s book, Finding the Right Hills to Die On
