Titus 1:10 Commentary and Bible Study

These verses of warning continue to the end of the chapter, and you might think negative in essence, and yet they are very constructive. That is their goal, and we see Christ, even in these negative warning verses. It is extraordinary that there should be so many people described as vain talkers. It is only around AD 62 when Paul writes, and since the Day of Pentecost the church has really only been going some thirty years, and yet congregations are being penetrated by people who are described as unruly and vain talkers and deceivers. They surely are a minority in the church of Crete to which Paul writes, but nevertheless they are in position, and they are teaching wrong things, heresies. Foremost among them are the Judaizers, people who thought they were converted, but they couldn't let go of the rites and the ceremonies of the Old Testament. They attached to those rites and ceremonies, efficacy. If you performed them, and you did things exactly as they were laid down, it stood to your credit before God. Through those ceremonies, your sins were literally forgiven, and you were seen by God as righteous. Instead of seeing them as symbols and lessons and prophecies of what Christ would achieve, they trusted in the symbols as efficacious. When it came to belief in Christ, it was not proper, belief. ‘Oh he is a good man; he is sent of God, he is a prophet, he did mighty things, but he is not enough. You Gentile converts to Christ, you must become as Jews also, as proselytes, and you must be circumcised. They are in mind when the apostle Paul speaks of those who are unruly and vain talkers and deceivers. Some of them maybe were truly saved, and could be corrected, because you find verse 13: ‘Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.’ So there is an element of hope for some of them. They had wrong ideas, but their hearts were better than that, and they could be corrected. But probably the majority were not converted. But there were others too, beside the Judaizers, who made things up, who were very free in their interpretation of Scripture. They would take passages of Scripture and extend them, and invent fables about biblical characters, and they were great storytellers. In an age when there was no such thing as radio and television, storytellers were of course very attractive to people. They were their entertainment, and crowds clustered wherever there was a good storyteller, and there were some people who were more storytellers, than they were Christians, and they played fast and loose with the Scripture and made things up. So this is going to be an exhortation to hold to the truth, and to protect it at all costs.‘Unruly’ translates the Greek, which means they will not come under the authority of Scripture. They don't understand: this book is authoritative. It is God's inerrant word. It is exactly what he said, and as believers, we are under God's authority, and under the Scripture. They are not afraid to distort or twist the Scripture, so they go on after ideas that are really not Biblical. They are ‘insubordinate’ is the meaning of the original; ‘unruly’ is perfect. ‘And vain’, futile. They make up things which won’t lead people either to Christ or to any deeper appreciation of him, or fill their hearts with love for him, or help them in the conquest of sin. These are vain things. ‘Vain talkers and deceivers.’ Again the Greek word is interesting. The full word means ‘mind deceivers’, literally. That adds a little more to the word deceivers, because some of these people come up with some ingenious constructions which appeal to the mind, ‘I've never heard that before, never heard it put that way. ‘That is an intricate kind of idea and system’, and so they believe it for its intricacy. They are mind misleaders; they mangle the minds. They don’t just make statements, but they make very attractive statements alluring statements which intrigue and fascinate the mind, and they are very good at that type of thing. But they not true believers. ‘Specially they of the circumcision.’ These are the Judaizers, but they are not the only ones; there are others too.