Guard Rails on Calling Someone Divisive

Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.

If you know me, you know I spend a lot of time thinking about what unity actually means within the body of Christ. And as I've written before, one of the most lamentable patterns I see is that we have displaced our expression of Christian unity from local churches onto parachurch ministries.

In Titus, Paul tells us to avoid foolish controversies. And then he turns to the harder case: what do you do when someone in the congregation refuses to? What do you do when a member becomes not just confused about secondary matters, but an active and persistent source of division?

First, note that Paul was not allergic to conflict — he was allergic to worthless conflict. This distinction matters enormously. The same Paul who wrote these words publicly rebuked Peter to his face when the gospel was at stake. He wrote Galatians — perhaps the most charged letter in the New Testament. He names false teachers. He urges Titus, earlier in this very letter, to "rebuke them sharply" so that they might be "sound in the faith." By some metrics, you might call Paul contentious. Even divisive. If you knew a man who called out people by name in his letters, you might wonder about him.

So before we get to Paul's answer, we need to be clear about who he is not describing. A divisive person is not someone who asks hard questions of leadership. Churches that label every internal challenger "divisive" are not reading Titus 3 — they are using it as a shield for self-protection. Honest, probing questions are part of how communities learn and grow. They may be uncomfortable. They may expose failures. But discomfort is not division. If you've been in a church or organization where any question is treated as disloyalty, you are likely under very insecure leadership or in a cult.

Nor is Paul describing the person who disagrees with a leadership decision, prefers a different worship style, or finds the sermons too long. Preference is not division. Paul knew this well — some in Corinth preferred Apollos, some Cephas, some Paul. He didn't move to discipline.

The person Paul has in mind is someone who actively and persistently unsettles others — who has not merely wandered into error but who recruits others into it, who makes their grievance the congregation's grievance, who cannot let it rest.

And even with that person, patience is expected. The response is not immediate expulsion, not quiet shunning, not a whisper campaign. It is a formal, personal, pastoral warning — given once, and then again.

We tend toward one of two failure modes when we encounter a divisive person: we either capitulate to preserve a fragile peace or we retaliate, meeting division with our own version of it. Paul allows neither. He prescribes patience with a spine.

Only then — after genuine and repeated attempts at restoration — does withdrawal follow. And that withdrawal is not punitive in spirit. It is evangelistic. When someone is put outside the community, it is not abandonment. It is the strongest possible signal that their soul is in danger. It is the church saying: We love you too much to pretend that what you are doing is fine.