A Scriptural Answer to Incorrect Doctrine

Acts 18:24-28
    What do you do when someone doesn’t agree with you? When you try to change someone’s mind on any topic. It is true that you can not take over someone’s will and make them change their mind. Even our Lord and Savior couldn’t change the mind of certain people (Mark 6:1-6). But what is your first response to resistance? In Acts 18:24-28 Aquila and Priscilla, husband and wife, came across a Jew named Apollos. The scriptures are polite to him but, he was teaching incorrect things about Jesus. He had only been acquainted with the baptism of John and not the one saving baptism (Eph. 4:4; Matt. 28:18-20). Thankfully, Aquila and Priscilla didn’t simply write him off, rather they “explained to him the way of God more accurately.” This was probably added by the fact that Apollos was “mighty in the Scriptures.” The same Scriptures that Paul used to teach the Jews (Acts 17:1-2). These are the same scriptures he continued teaching that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 18:28). Had Aquila and Priscilla given up, written him off, decided in the hearts that “his mind was already made up and there was no teaching him,” Paul never would have been able to pen, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6). The scriptural response to someone teaching incorrect doctrine, is to try to teach them correctly. I do not want you to be uninformed though brethren, there comes a time to stop. There comes a time when we are giving what is holy to swing (Matt. 7:6). There comes s time when one must “shake the dust off” (Matt. 10:14). I don’t know where to draw that line, but a time like that came in Acts 13:51. Those who were being taught were “contradicting the things spoken” and were blaspheming. They had closed their hearts off to the truth, so Paul and Barnabas had to shake the dust off their feet. But this should be a last resort. The first answer isn’t to give up, rather it is to teach. I love you all!

In His service,
Steven Hugley