Keep Your Guard Up

Romans 16:17-18

English Standard Version (ESV)

Final Instructions and Greetings

¹⁷ I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. ¹⁸ For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites,^[a] and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.

In Romans 16:17-18, Paul is leaving his final thoughts and instructions to the Romans. Here Paul is warning them to be cautious of false teachers. False teachers can and will come amongst our churches. And their goal is to cause division in the families of Christ. They will come with their own agenda and they will twist up the ideas of doctrine that we have been taught. So we need to be aware that these people exist and may already be trying to infect our church body.

John Piper says that there are usually two kinds of people in the church. There are those who want to emphasize doctrinal purity and there are those who want to emphasize relational unity. We either fully love truth or we fully love people. We need to find a balance of these two. Throughout history we have seen these two types of people raise division in the church. Especially in today's church it is hard to hold one hundred percent to doctrine. When we preach the truth some aspects get hard for people to accept and they feel like they are being attacked or not being shown love. But when we focus on loving people over doctrine, then we can end up tolerating sin. It is not easy to balance these two out but we must in order to avoid division.

It is the hope of Paul that this warning will free us from any kind of bondage to one way over the other. He tells us to be cautious of those who cause divisions amongst the church. Paul is promoting unity in the church body. We are to stay unified as a family of Christ. He tells us to avoid them. These people that are trying to break our families, are to be cut off from the church because they are dangerous. We break them off so the church stays unified and together.                        

In order for us to remain unified we must be aware of our doctrine. We need to know what believe in so we can discern what is true and what is false. We need to not be swayed by pastors only because they are popular or seem well spoken. Remember Jesus was not a popular preacher; He spoke in both absolute truth and absolute love. And people certain people didn’t like this. This is where the balance comes. For us to stay together, we must know what we believe so we can cut off those who divide us.