Correcting False Teachers? ...By Name?!

Correcting False Teachers and Church Discipline in Matthew 18

In Matthew 18, Jesus gave the church guidelines for correction. If a brother sins against you, first go and tell him his fault just between the two of you. If he does not listen to you, take one or two others along.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen to the church, consider him faithless and crooked. So when someone is a false teacher, this is how we're to correct them, right?

We confront them one-on-one, then do an intervention, and then we take it before the church, yes? No, these are instructions on confronting sin between brothers and sisters in Christ who are part of the same gathering.

You can't take someone before a church you or they are not a part of. How did Jesus confront false teachers? Did he go to the Pharisees and correct each one privately? Did he take a few disciples along before taking it to the church?

No, he rebuked the false teachers of the temple in front of everyone. He called them serpents and vipers, sons of hell, who produced more sons of hell. And get this, he did it in love. Eternal souls were at stake here.

The teachers needed to know their own souls were in danger. And Jesus warned the people to avoid such men. One of the qualifications of a pastor is to hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also rebuke those who contradict it.

Naming False Teachers and Apostolic Warnings

And sometimes those false teachers need to be named. Examples include the seven sons of Sceva, Hymenaeus and Alexander, Simon the Magician, Demas, Diotrephes, the Nicolaitans. They must be silenced, the apostles tell us, for they upset entire church families teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach when we understand the text.