“When Jesus confronted the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in their false teaching, he rebuked them sharply with seven woes, saying, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves”
(Dan Crabtree – The Cripplegate) In Titus 1:13, the apostle Paul tells his apostolic legate, Titus, that because the false teachers in Crete match the vile reputation of the island, “Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.”
We know what rebuke means – to expose sin and command repentance. But sharply? Like, with biting rhetoric, smoke in the eyes, vinegar in the teeth? Like, tear into them? Lambast them? Shame them? Deride them?
No, not that. What, then, does rebuking “sharply” mean? Permit me a word study paragraph to clarify.
CRN has compiled a list of false teachers and several other professing Christians we’ve warned you about over the years. The list also contains those we must keep an eye on plus movements, organizations and “frauds, phonies and money-grubbing religious quacks” to mark and avoid as per Romans 16:17-18