Gag Orders and Dirty Minds Text: Titus 1:10-16
Introduction: The Necessity of Spiritual Pest Control
The Christian faith is not a delicate flower to be kept under glass, away from the harsh realities of the world. It is a robust and muscular faith, a fighting faith. And a central part of that fight involves identifying and dealing with infections within the body of Christ. Paul left Titus in Crete to set in order what remained, and a significant part of that ordering is spiritual pest control. The church is God's household, God's garden, and it must be tended. This means not only planting and watering but also weeding and dealing with vermin.
We live in an age that despises confrontation. Our culture equates niceness with godliness and considers any form of sharp rebuke to be uncharitable, unloving, and probably a form of hate speech. But the Apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, did not get the memo. He instructs Titus to engage in a necessary work of spiritual sanitation. There are some mouths that simply must be stopped. There are some teachings that are not just mistaken, but toxic. And there are some men who, despite their religious professions, are a clear and present danger to the flock.
This passage is a bucket of cold water in the face of our effeminate, conflict-averse evangelicalism. It is a divine command to be discerning, to be courageous, and to protect the household of faith from those who would subvert it from within. Paul is not talking about a polite disagreement over secondary matters. He is addressing a full-blown infestation of rebellious, empty-talking deceivers who were turning the grace of God into a business opportunity, and in the process, were destroying families. The health of the church in Crete depended on Titus's willingness to obey these hard commands. And the health of the church today depends on our willingness to do the same.
The Text
For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of dishonest gain. One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but by their works they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and unfit for any good work.
(Titus 1:10-16 LSB)
The Diagnosis of the Disease (vv. 10-11)
We begin with Paul's description of the problem. He doesn't mince words.
"For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of dishonest gain." (Titus 1:10-11)
Notice the three-fold description. First, they are "rebellious men." The Greek word speaks of insubordination. These are men who will not submit to lawful authority. They are spiritual anarchists, accountable to no one but their own appetites. They refuse to line up under the authority of the elders Titus was to appoint. This is the root of the problem. All heresy begins with a rebellious heart that says, "I will not have this man rule over me."
Second, they are "empty talkers and deceivers." Their teaching has no substance. It is all sizzle and no steak. It is religious-sounding chatter that is disconnected from the apostolic gospel. And because it is empty, it must be deceptive. They are masters of the bait and switch, using pious language to cover their corrupt motives. They are spiritual con men. They talk a lot, but they say nothing of value.
Paul identifies the primary source of this trouble: "especially those of the circumcision." These were the Judaizers, men who were ethnically Jewish and who insisted that Gentile believers must adopt Jewish customs, like circumcision and dietary laws, to be truly saved or truly sanctified. They were adding to the gospel of grace, which is another way of saying they were subtracting from the sufficiency of Christ. They were peddling a gospel of Christ-plus-works, which is no gospel at all.
The diagnosis is clear, and the prescription is severe: they "must be silenced." The Greek here is blunt. It means to have a muzzle put on, to be gagged. This is not a suggestion for a friendly debate. This is a command for church discipline. Their platform must be removed. Why? Because the stakes are incredibly high. They are "upsetting whole families." This is not a theoretical problem. Their teaching was a home-wrecker. They were leading entire households astray, disrupting the peace and order of the Christian family with their legalistic nonsense and creating division within the church.
And their motive is laid bare: "for the sake of dishonest gain." They were in it for the money. They had turned religion into a racket. This is a constant warning in the New Testament. False teachers are almost always driven by greed (cf. 2 Peter 2:3). They see the flock not as sheep to be fed, but as sheep to be fleeced.
The Corroborating Witness and the Sharp Rebuke (vv. 12-14)
Paul then does something remarkable. He quotes a pagan source to validate his assessment of the cultural landscape.
"One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.' This testimony is true." (Titus 1:12-13a)
The "prophet" Paul quotes is likely the Cretan philosopher Epimenides from the 6th century B.C. Paul is engaging in a bit of cultural analysis. He is saying, "Look, even your own poets know what you people are like." The Cretans had a terrible reputation in the ancient world. Their name was synonymous with lying. To "Cretanize" was to lie. Paul is not being racist; he is being realistic about the raw material Titus has to work with. The gospel doesn't come into a cultural vacuum. It comes to real people in real places with real, ingrained, sinful habits.
And Paul affirms the testimony: "This testimony is true." This is the cultural water these new believers were swimming in. This was their default setting: dishonesty, brutish behavior, and lazy indulgence. The false teachers were simply giving a religious gloss to these old pagan vices. They were offering a form of Christianity that didn't require them to stop being Cretans.
Because this is the case, the remedy must be potent. "For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith." The rebuke must match the hardness of the heart. A gentle suggestion will not do. Titus is to rebuke them "severely," which means sharply, cuttingly. This is not about being mean; it is about being loving enough to use the surgeon's knife to cut out the cancer. The goal is not to destroy them, but to heal them: "so that they may be sound in the faith." The word "sound" is where we get our word "hygiene." The goal is spiritual health. Tough love is true love when spiritual life and death are on the line.
And what does this spiritual health look like? It means "not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth." He is referring to the extra-biblical traditions, the legalistic loopholes, and the man-made regulations that the Judaizers were trying to bind on the conscience of the believers. These were distractions from Christ. They were the commandments of men who had fundamentally "turned away from the truth" of the gospel. To be sound in the faith is to be centered on Christ alone, not on fables and human traditions.
The Defiled Conscience (v. 15)
Paul now lays down a foundational principle that exposes the inner corruption of these false teachers.
"To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled." (Titus 1:15)
This is a profound statement about the nature of reality and perception. For the one whose heart has been purified by faith in Christ, the created world is received as God's good gift. Food is just food. Days are just days. They are not invested with a magical power to defile you. The pure man, walking in faith, can eat a ham sandwich with thanksgiving and his conscience is clear before God. He is not enslaved to external regulations because he is governed by an internal principle of love and faith.
But for the false teachers, the opposite is true. Because they are "defiled and unbelieving" on the inside, everything they touch becomes defiled. Their problem is not external, it is internal. Their very "mind and their conscience are defiled." Their thinking is twisted, and their moral compass is broken. They see impurity everywhere because they carry it within themselves. This is why legalism is so insidious. The legalist, obsessed with external rules about food or ceremony, projects his own inner filth onto the created order. He thinks that avoiding certain foods will make him clean, but he fails to see that his heart is a cesspool of unbelief and pride. Nothing is pure to him because his own heart is impure.
The Ultimate Contradiction (v. 16)
Finally, Paul delivers the knockout blow. He reveals the fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of their ministry.
"They profess to know God, but by their works they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and unfit for any good work." (Titus 1:16)
Here is the final test. They talk the talk, but they do not walk the walk. They make a verbal "profession" of knowing God. They likely sounded very spiritual. But their "works," their actions, their character, give them the lie. Their lives are a practical denial of the God they claim to serve. As Jesus said, "You will know them by their fruits."
The verdict is damning. They are "detestable," or abominable. This is strong language, the kind of word used in the Old Testament for idolatry. They are "disobedient," which goes back to the rebellion mentioned in verse 10. And they are "unfit for any good work." The Greek word is adokimos, which means disqualified, worthless, reprobate. Despite all their religious activity and their focus on man-made rules, when it comes to genuine, Spirit-empowered good works that glorify God, they are utterly useless. Their religion is a dead thing, producing only dead works.
The Gospel Cure for the Cretan Heart
This is a grim picture, but it is not a hopeless one. The reason Paul tells Titus to rebuke these men sharply is so that they might become sound in the faith. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, even for rebellious, greedy, lazy, lying Cretans. And it is the power of God for us.
Every one of us is born a Cretan. We are born liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons in our hearts. Our natural state is to profess to know God while denying Him with our lives. Our minds and consciences are defiled by sin. We are, apart from grace, unfit for any good work.
The Judaizers' error was that they tried to fix the Cretan problem with man-made rules. They tried to clean the outside of the cup. But the gospel does something far more radical. The gospel gives us a new heart. The gospel addresses the internal defilement that is the root of the problem.
When we come to Christ by faith, God does not just give us a list of new rules. He gives us a new identity. He washes our minds and consciences in the blood of Jesus. He declares us pure, not because of what we do or don't do, but because we are united to the one who is perfectly pure. "To the pure, all things are pure." This purity is not our own achievement; it is a gift, received by faith.
And on the basis of that gift, He begins the work of making our works match our profession. He makes us fit for good works, works that He prepared beforehand for us to walk in (Eph. 2:10). The Christian life is not a matter of trying to stop being a Cretan in our own strength. It is a matter of learning to live out the new identity we have been given in Christ. It is a process of our works catching up with our righteous standing before God.
Therefore, we must be ruthless with the remnants of the old Cretan in our own hearts. We must welcome the sharp rebukes of Scripture and the discipline of the church, knowing that their purpose is to make us sound in the faith. And we must reject every "Jewish myth," every man-made gospel, that would distract us from the glorious simplicity of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. For it is only in that true gospel that a lying, beastly, gluttonous sinner can be transformed into a son of God, zealous for good works.