It has been said that “doctrine divides.” That is correct. And the first thing that doctrine divides in the Pastoral Letters is true leadership from false leadership. A leader that cannot talk about this is not a true leader. A leader that will not reckon with this will not protect the church from false doctrine for very long. Such a leader who is doctrinally ambivalent may even find his own doctrine corrupting in his heart and his mind.

But how do we know the difference? Immediately after Paul sets forth the character qualifications of an elder, he does the same with doctrine. Titus 1:9 says, “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” Notice the three different relationships to the word. 

In short, an elder possesses, proliferates, and protects the whole body of Christian truth.

The Doctrine Possessed

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught. This is not regurgitation of information. It is not box-checking. First of all the WORD here is being used as a synonym for the whole body of Christian truth—not for some specific message that Paul had spoken on one or a few occasions, but the whole apostolic teaching. Sometimes “the faith” (Jude 3, cf. Eph. 4:5) is used as a synonym and sometimes “the doctrine” (Rom. 16:17). In the first few centuries of the church, the phrase “rule of faith” started to be used. Then in the Middle Ages there came the term “orthodoxy.” And then finally in the modern world we use the phrase “Christian worldview” or “biblical worldview.” But whatever exact terminology we use, what Paul is commending here to Titus is this: The overseer must, in a sense, get his head around the system of the word of God. He must see the great implication of the Psalmist—“the sum of your word is truth” (Ps. 119:160). 

To hold firm to the whole of this word means not only to see it as a whole, but to see it as a hierarchy. An overseer must know the difference between a doctrine that is essential for the Christian faith and one that is not. What follows are two exercises of this word. There is a positive and a negative use; and these structure the rest of the verse. Calvin gives a great, simple piece of imagery here:

“A pastor needs two voices, one for gathering the sheep and the other for driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means for doing both, and he who has been rightly instructed in it will be able both to rule those who are teachable and to refute the enemies of the truth.”1

The Doctrine Proliferated

This holding to the word is so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine. This ability means much more than possessing the right doctrine. Otherwise Paul would not have said “so that” he may do this other thing. It is another thing! The overseer must be “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2). This word Paul uses runs even deeper—παρακαλεῖν is the infinitive (“to instruct”) for a very diverse word that could also mean “to comfort,” “to encourage,” “to exhort,” “to invite,” and so on. In other words this is a very holistic view of teaching that is aimed at the overall shaping of Christian maturity. This ability consists in two basic elements, one being the knowledge of what is fitting for the church that is actually in front of him and the other regards gifts that match the task. We might call these two vision and oratory; or, in other words, curriculum-charting and rhetorical skill. The second hardly needs to be explained. In his Lectures to My Students, the great nineteenth century preacher, Charles Spurgeon had a lot to say about the right and wrong kinds of preaching specimens:

“Always speak so as to be heard … Always  suit your voice to your matter … Get a friend to tell you your faults, or better still, welcome an enemy who will watch you keenly and sting you savagely. What a blessing such an irritating critic will be to a wise man!”2

And he goes on and on to speak of the preacher’s physique, his mannerisms, and modulations of voice. Some of those things are naturally given; others are skills that can be improved with practice. 

As to curriculum, an overseer must be able to connect his sound doctrine with insight into where the church is at. Such a man is always asking: Where do they need to be instructed right now?

The answer is a convergence of two main factors: Where is their own trajectory moving outward? Where are the pressures of deception moving inward? The church’s learning capacities and needs make up a multi-faceted-moving-target. They may be mostly new believers. They likely have a very antinomian conception of God’s law, possibly even a very dispensational view of the relationship between the Old Testament and the New, or between Israel and the church.

And in a post-Christian culture, they are never ready for what just hit the church from the hostile world as they have been trained to resist instruction on such things on the ground that those are impractical, divisive, above and beyond us all. The shepherd-teacher must resist this decline into self-deception on demand, teaching what he knows the church needs to hear at this hour. And if he does not know, then he ought not teach. 

The Doctrine Protected

There is a negative application of the elder’s doctrine: and also to rebuke those who contradict it. There is a protection or a preservation of the gospel and biblical worldview: “guard the good deposit entrusted to you” (2 Tim. 1:14). This is not simply about wolves. Paul stood up to Peter in the Judaizer controversy. Peter was a genuine believer in Christ. And yet what did Paul say about his own motive for making that stand? “to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you” (2:5). He said, “I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” (v. 11) and “I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel” (v. 14).

To rebuke here means a combination of correction and warning. It is to give correction to someone about something they need to know is harmful to them and to others. In fact it is to expose the error as an error. Of course it must be done without belittling the person, as Peter says to the apologist: “with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15). On the other hand, this contrast or division between the truth and the error must be crystal clear.

John Stott commented about this requirement that, “to ‘refute’ people is not just to contradict them, but actually to overthrow them in argument.”3

Now that might seem petty at first glance. We sometimes hear, “We want to make a difference, not a point.” But that statement made a point and was designed to do so! But there is a final key word—contradict—literally an “anti-word.” This is a first clue to understanding the “factious man” in 3:10-11. In the Greek world the concept of hairesis, the word used in that text, simply meant a “party” or “school of thought.” To break up into “parties” or “sects” meant to have competing schools of thought.

When this happens in the church we have to ask, first of all, whether or not the competing view is getting essential doctrine wrong. But even if not, we have to ask, second of all, whether or not the competing way of thought is contradicting the official teaching of the church in this way. Is it creating rivalries or resentful sub-cultures in the church that endanger the church’s unity and peace? This was certainly happening in Corinth, which is why Paul had to urge them “that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10).

There is a coherence to this threefold doctrine of an elder. How can the man give out what he does not himself possess? And what is the use of any of it if it will not be preserved over time? So in order to care for the sheep, the shepherd must have a taste for the food. In fact, he must love it.

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1. Calvin, Commentaries, XXI:296

2. Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1954), 8.

3. John Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy & Titus, 178.