Titus 3:10
Titus 3:1010Reject a divisive man after a first and second admonition,
Watchtower commentary uses ("a man who promotes a sect") as a key proof-text for the disfellowshipping and shunning of those who depart from the organisation. The rendering "promotes a sect" is read as describing apostates — those who advocate doctrines contrary to the Watchtower's teachings or who form factions outside its authority. After two admonitions, such persons are to be rejected, which the organisation interprets as comprehensive social severance including from family.
Paul addresses Titus, a pastor — telling him to stop engaging with someone causing factions in the Cretan churches. The Greek hairetikon anthrōpon means "factious" or "divisive" person — someone actively splitting the church, not someone changing their mind on a doctrine after honest study. And Paul's instruction is "reject him" — Titus stops debating; the verse does not extend to family severance. The Watchtower's leap from "a pastor stops debating him" to "his adult children stop speaking to him for life" is a journey the text does not make. And even where 1 Corinthians 5 supports a stronger discipline, Paul's stated purpose is restoration (2 Cor 2:6-8 records the discipline working — the church received the man back lovingly). The Watchtower's permanent shunning of family members for doctrinal disagreement reads against the text's restorative scope.
The NWT renders hairetikon anthrōpon as "a man who promotes a sect" — consensus reads "a person who stirs up division" (ESV/NASB) or "a divisive person" (NIV) or "heretick" (KJV). "Promotes a sect" concretises the Greek into a specific institutional category that, in JW literature, strongly implies leaving the organisation. The rendering loads the verse for disfellowshipping application — specifically targeting former Witnesses rather than the active church-splitters Paul originally addressed.