Making a Difference

by Bill Robinson

Two Kinds of Men Who Teach Error

Text: Jude 17–23; Galatians 2:4–5

Every congregation that holds the truth will eventually face someone teaching against it. The question isn’t whether. The question is what faithfulness looks like when it happens, and Scripture’s answer is more careful than either of our instincts. One instinct wants peace at any price and calls it love. The other wants war at first contact and calls it soundness. Jude and Paul, writing under the same Spirit, correct both.

A Command to Discriminate

Jude spends most of his short letter describing certain people who “have crept in unnoticed” (Jude 4), and then, near the end, tells the faithful what to do.

“And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh” (Jude 22–23).

An honest word about the text itself. The Greek manuscripts of these two verses differ more than almost anywhere else in the letter. The older Alexandrian witnesses behind the ESV describe three groups: mercy for those who doubt, urgent rescue for others, and mercy mixed with fear toward a third. The text behind the older English versions describes two, and the KJV renders the command memorably as showing compassion while “making a difference.” Faithful students differ on the original reading, and I won’t overstate certainty. But notice what no manuscript tradition permits: a single, uniform response. Every form of the text commands differentiation. Discrimination between cases isn’t a compromise of conviction. It’s the command itself. The shepherd who treats the wandering lamb and the wolf identically has disobeyed this passage in one direction or the other.

Paul shows us the other pole. In Jerusalem there were “false brothers secretly brought in” who “slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery” (Galatians 2:4). Paul’s response:

“To them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you” (Galatians 2:5).

Two Different Men, Two Different Words

Look closely at Paul’s vocabulary, because he chose it deliberately. These are false brothers, secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy. That last word is a military term. It describes reconnaissance, an agent inside the camp serving another cause. Their goal wasn’t understanding but slavery. And Jude’s men match the profile: they crept in unnoticed, they “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (Jude 4), they are “grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires” (Jude 16), “worldly people, devoid of the Spirit” (Jude 19). Mark this well: in both letters, the deliberate false teacher’s doctrine serves his appetite. The error isn’t an honest miscalculation on the way to truth. It’s a tool. Peter says the same: “In their greed they will exploit you with false words” (II Peter 2:3). The teaching exists to get something, whether indulgence, gain, or a following.

Now set Apollos beside them. He was “competent in the Scriptures,” “fervent in spirit,” and “he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John” (Acts 18:24–25). He was teaching incompletely, and people were hearing it. Yet Priscilla and Aquila didn’t denounce him. “They took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26). Privately. Patiently. And he received it and became a mightier servant than before. Same category of problem, a man teaching what wasn’t fully so, and a completely different response, because he was a completely different kind of man. His error ran ahead of his knowledge, not ahead of his conscience.

The Principle, and What It Asks of Us

So the two texts together give the principle: the response is calibrated to the man, not merely to the error. To the honest errer, compassion, instruction, patience. To the deliberate deceiver, not even a moment of yielding.

Hold both halves of that, because each of us naturally drops one. The brother wired for peace must accept that Galatians 2:5 is inspired, that there are men to whom love for the flock says no without an hour’s negotiation, and that his gentleness toward a wolf is paid for by the sheep. The brother wired for battle must accept that Acts 18 is inspired too, that Apollos was reachable and was reached, and that if Priscilla and Aquila had treated him like a false brother, the church would have lost one of its mightiest voices to a fight nobody needed. Two inspired responses, both born of the same love. One rescues a man. The other rescues a church.

Which raises the question everything depends on: how do we tell which man is in front of us? We can’t read hearts, and Scripture never asks us to. It asks something more practical, and it gives us the marks.

Telling Them Apart, and Keeping Our Own Footing

Text: Jude 17–23; Titus 3:10–11

The Scripture commands two different responses to two different kinds of men who teach error. Jude 22–23 requires mercy toward those who doubt and urgent, careful rescue for others; whatever reading of the Greek text one follows, no manuscript tradition permits a single, uniform response. Yet the same Paul who patiently discipled the honest could write of false brothers who slipped in to spy: “To them we did not yield in submission even for a moment” (Galatians 2:5). The difference is embodied in two portraits. Apollos taught incompletely, was taken aside by Priscilla and Aquila, received correction, and grew (Acts 18:24–26). His error ran ahead of his knowledge. Jude’s infiltrators taught falsely because the doctrine fed their desires; their error ran ahead of their conscience, and it was a tool. The response, we concluded, is calibrated to the man, not merely to the error. There is a difference between the person who errs in the pursuit of the truth and the person who is morally deliberate in error.

That leaves the question everything depends on: how do we tell which man is standing in front of us?

How Do We Tell Them Apart?

Here’s where we need real care, because we can’t read hearts, and Scripture never asks us to. It asks us to read fruit: “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). And it builds the diagnosis into a process.

The first mark is teachability. This is the Apollos test. When shown the way more accurately, does he receive it, or does he retrench and recruit? Titus 3:10–11 gives the procedure: “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.” Notice the mercy hidden in that passage. There’s a first warning, and a second. The process isn’t a formality before a predetermined verdict. It’s how the category reveals itself. The man who hears and turns was never the man of Titus 3:10 at all. The man who won’t hear has, in Paul’s striking phrase, condemned himself. We didn’t have to read his heart. His response to correction published it.

The second mark is what the error serves. Honest error serves nothing; it costs its holder, and he abandons it with relief when shown better. Deliberate error always pays its owner something: license for the flesh, money, prominence, a faction gathered around his name. In other words, every false doctrine always appeals to one or more of the fleshly desires. Ask quietly: if this teaching were true, what would this man get? Jude’s men got their desires baptized.

The third mark is method. Jude’s men “crept in unnoticed” (Jude 4). Paul’s were “secretly brought in” (Galatians 2:4). The honest questioner raises his hand in the open Bible study. The false brother works the margins: private conversations, slow recruitment away from the light. Truth has no need of the back door.

One caution before applying any of this. Peter at Antioch (Galatians 2:11–14) reminds us the categories can blur in a good man. Peter was no false brother, yet fear drove him into public conduct that compromised the gospel, and Paul “opposed him to his face” because the fault was public and was carrying others away, Barnabas included. Yet Peter received it, and years later called Paul “our beloved brother” (II Peter 3:15). So even a sincere man may need a sharp public word when his error is public and spreading. The sharpness is measured to the damage. But the door stayed open, and Peter walked back through it.

The Rescuer’s Own Footing

Before Jude tells us how to handle anyone else, he gives four participles aimed at us: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (Jude 20–21). The order isn’t accidental. Congregations that neglect their own building become the mission field of the very men Jude describes. And men who confront error without keeping themselves in the love of God tend to become hard, suspicious, and eventually indistinguishable in spirit from what they fight.

Then the rescue itself, with its unforgettable clause: “save others by snatching them out of the fire” and “hating even the garment stained by the flesh” (Jude 23). Go into the fire for the man. Keep clear of what’s burning him. There’s such a thing as a rescue that drowns the rescuer, and mercy “with fear” means we take the danger of contamination seriously while we take the man seriously. Gentleness toward the deceived is commanded: the Lord’s servant must be “correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (II Timothy 2:25). And firmness toward the deceiver is equally commanded, and notice Paul’s reason for it: “so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.” He refused the false brothers for even a moment, not because he loved the fight but because he loved the Galatians. Firmness is what love for the flock looks like when a wolf is present. Softness toward the wolf is cruelty to the sheep.

Both Parts in One Sentence

So make the difference Jude commands. Sit long and patiently with the brother whose error outruns his knowledge; there may be an Apollos in him. Warn once, and twice, and let the process show you what the man is. And when it shows you a false brother, one whose doctrine feeds his flesh, who works in secret, who will not be taught, then yield in submission not even for a moment. Both responses come from the same love. One rescues a man. The other rescues a church. The Lord requires us to be the kind of people who can tell which hour we’re standing in.