Not Every Platform is a Pulpit
On April 12th, Pastor Michael Grant released a live podcast on his YouTube channel titled, “What Does It Mean To Mark & Avoid?” in reference to Justin Peters and Jim Osman for hosting Gabe Poirot on Justin’s YouTube channel. Grant’s argument was straightforward. Romans 16:17-18 and 2 John 9-11 prohibit the kind of extended, on-camera engagement Justin and Jim gave Gabe. By providing Gabe two and a half hours to speak, even for the purpose of rebuke, Justin violated the plain meaning of both passages and set a dangerous precedent for the wider discernment community.
I watched the full podcast, and I’ve worked through his reasoning carefully. I want to engage his argument seriously because I believe Pastor Grant is a sincere brother who takes Scripture’s authority with the seriousness it deserves, and because the question he raises matters to how the church handles false teaching in the public square. But I also believe Grant’s argument rests on a hermeneutical failure, and that failure is worth walking through in detail because it’s the same failure, methodologically, that enables the heavenly tourism industry I’ve spent the last two weeks writing about in my own work on Gabe Poirot. What Grant does to Romans 16 and 2 John is the same kind of move Gabe Poirot does to 2 Corinthians 12. Both men claim to be reading the text “plainly” while skipping the interpretive work that faithful reading of Scripture actually requires. And the result, in both cases, is a conclusion the text won’t support when it’s examined with care.
Grant said something important in his podcast that I want to honor throughout this piece. Multiple times across his broadcast, he invited correction from Scripture. His exact words, near the end of the program, were,
“I’m willing to change my view, but you got to explain it to me using the scripture. I’m just saying I haven’t seen that.”
— Pastor Michael Grant, What Does It Mean To Mark & Avoid?
I’ve taken that invitation seriously, and what follows is an attempt to do exactly what Grant asked for. Using the scripture, engaging it grammatically and historically, and showing the work at every step so the argument can be evaluated on its biblical merits.
Let me state Grant’s position as fairly as I can, using his own words where possible, so there’s no question about what I’m responding to.
Grant argued that Justin Peters was wrong, biblically, to host Gabe Poirot for a two-and-a-half-hour conversation on his YouTube channel, and that this misjudgment was clear from a plain reading of the two aforementioned passages.
He quoted Romans 16:17-18,
“Now I urge you brethren note those or mark them who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you learned and avoid them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the simple.”
He then quoted 2 John 9-11,
“Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.”
Grant’s explicit claim was these texts mean what they appear to mean on the surface, and the surface meaning prohibits the kind of engagement Justin conducted. His exact quote was,
“I think they mean exactly what they say. But apparently, we need to explain this in detail and what this looks like today in our internet age.”
— Pastor Michael Grant, What Does It Mean To Mark & Avoid?
Later, he said,
“I take it at face value.”
— Pastor Michael Grant, What Does It Mean To Mark & Avoid?
Grant acknowledged the text doesn’t prohibit saying hello to someone in the grocery store, and that John MacArthur’s own commentary notes the passage is primarily about hospitality and aid rather than a casual greeting. But he maintained that Justin’s warm introduction of Gabe and the extended dialogue that followed crossed the line the text draws.
Grant also argued, citing MacArthur’s commentary on Romans 16, that Paul’s model wasn’t debate or dialogue with false teachers but rebuke, and the Apostle Paul,
“did not provide a platform for those who professed Christ but taught a false and perverted gospel.”
— Pastor Michael Grant, What Does It Mean To Mark & Avoid?
Grant’s conclusion was that Justin’s format gave Gabe control of the narrative, and the overall effect was to benefit Gabe rather than to expose him.
That’s the argument. I want to respond to it directly, but the response has to begin with a prior question that Grant’s argument never actually takes up.. the question of what it means to read a biblical text responsibly in the first place.
The phrase Grant uses repeatedly throughout his podcast is some version of
“The text means what it says and says what it means.”
— Pastor Michael Grant, What Does It Mean To Mark & Avoid?
He treats this phrase as though it settles the interpretive question. It doesn’t.
Every biblical text was written in a specific language, by a specific author, to a specific audience, at a specific historical moment, addressing a specific situation. The Reformers called the method of reading Scripture with attention to those specifics the grammatical-historical method.
Grammatical-historical interpretation requires three things at a minimum. First, the text must be understood in its original language, attending to the grammatical structures the original author used. Second, it has to be located in its original historical setting, with attention to the cultural practices and the specific occasion the author was addressing. And third, any application to the present has to be bridged carefully, accounting for what’s changed between the original setting and the modern one, while protecting the fundamental principle the author was articulating.
Grant’s argument skips the second and third steps entirely. He reads Romans 16 and 2 John as though Paul and John were addressing modern podcast hosts. He doesn’t ask what cultural practices were being addressed or what the specific occasion of the letter was. He simply takes the English translation and applies it directly to a modern platform that the original authors couldn’t possibly have anticipated. The interpretation sounds literal, but it’s actually acultural. It treats the text as though it stands alone.
That same hermeneutical failure is what causes Gabe Poirot to read 2 Corinthians 12 as biblical precedent for his own 29-chapter book. He’s making the same move Grant makes. He takes the text at surface value and applies it directly to his own situation as though no exegetical work were required between the first century and the twenty-first. The result is an interpretation of 2 Corinthians 12 that’s wholly inaccurate. Gabe reads the text “plainly” and concludes it justifies his book. Grant reads Romans 16 and 2 John “plainly” and concludes they prohibit Justin’s interview. Both conclusions are equally unsupported by the texts when the texts are examined properly.
The method is the problem.
The Romans 16 Work
Paul wrote Romans from Corinth sometime in the winter of AD 56 or the early months of AD 57. The letter was written to a church he hadn’t yet visited, a mixed Jewish and Gentile congregation meeting in multiple house churches across Rome.
Chapter 16 is the closing section. The bulk of the chapter consists of personal greetings to twenty-six named individuals Paul knew in the Roman church. The warning in verses 17-18 sits between the greetings to specific Roman believers (verses 1-16) and the closing greetings from Paul’s co-laborers at Corinth (verses 21-23). In other words, it’s a pastoral warning to a specific church about a specific kind of threat, delivered at the close of a letter that spent fifteen chapters developing a theology of the gospel.
The immediate context of the warning is the pastoral situation Paul addressed in chapters 14 and 15. Those chapters deal with tensions in the Roman church between Jewish and Gentile believers over matters of food and the observance of special days. Paul pleaded for unity and laid out the theological grounds for common acceptance. As he closed the letter, he turned to a specific concern. Some might enter the Roman congregations and take advantage of existing tensions by introducing teaching contrary to what the believers had already learned, creating division (dichostasias) and laying stumbling (skandala) blocks within the body.
The Greek verb Paul uses in verse 17 is skopein, meaning "to watch closely.” The command is skopeite, present imperative, and it’s directed to the gathered church. The object of the watching is tous tas dichostasias kai ta skandala... poiountas, “those who are causing divisions and occasions of stumbling.” The participle poiountas is present tense, signifying ongoing activity. These aren’t hypothetical teachers. They’re people actively causing divisions among the Roman congregations.
The verb Paul uses in the second half of verse 17, translated “avoid” or “turn away from,” is ekklinete, from ekklinō. The word means to steer away from. It carries the idea of refusing to go down the path these teachers are on and refusing to give them the hearing they want.
All of this is happening in the context of the local gathered church. Paul’s speaking to the house churches in Rome and telling them that when such teachers show up in their gatherings, they’re to identify them publicly, and keep them from gaining a foothold in the body. That’s what the command means in its original setting.
The reason this matters for Grant’s argument is that the first-century gathering was the only platform available to false teachers. There were no podcasts or YouTube channels. If a teacher wanted to spread his teaching, he did it by traveling from city to city, arriving at a local church, being given the opportunity to address the assembly, and using that opportunity to introduce his teaching to the body. Paul’s command is addressed to that reality. Don’t grant the platform of the assembly to teachers whose teaching contradicts the gospel you’ve received. Watch for them and refuse to give them access to your body.
Connecting that command to the twenty-first century requires asking what the functional equivalent of the first-century assembly is today. The answer is the local church. The command still has a direct and original meaning when applied to the modern church. A church shouldn’t give its pulpit to a false teacher. A pastor shouldn’t extend the platform of the gathered body to someone whose teaching contradicts the gospel. An elder board shouldn’t invite Kenneth Copeland or Joseph Z to address the congregation. That’s exactly what Paul forbids.
But the functional equivalent of the first-century assembly isn’t a discernment podcast, because a discernment podcast isn’t the gathered church, and doesn’t operate according to the purposes of the gathered church. A discernment podcast is clearly designed to examine and publicly refute false teaching. Bringing a false teacher into that format for the stated purpose of cross-examining him is the categorical opposite of giving him the platform of the assembly. It's close to what Paul himself modeled on Mars Hill in Acts 17, where he stood among the Athenian philosophers and refuted them publicly in their own hearing. Paul didn't give the Epicureans and Stoics a pulpit in a church, he engaged them in a public forum, and he used that forum to proclaim the truth against their error. That's the category Justin's interview belongs in.
Grant’s reading breaks down this distinction. He treats any extended engagement with a false teacher as equivalent to giving him the platform of the church. The grammatical-historical method won’t support that interpretation. Paul’s addressing a specific cultural practice, and the modern equivalents of that practice are things like pulpit invitations and joint ministry partnerships that effectively legitimize a false teacher as a brother. Those are the actual modern violations of Romans 16:17-18. A discernment ministry's YouTube interview isn’t one of them.
The 2 John Work
2 John was written by the Apostle John near the end of the first century, likely between AD 85 and AD 95, from Ephesus. The letter is addressed to “the chosen lady and her children,” which most faithful commentators understand as a local church and its members, though some read it as addressed to a specific Christian woman and her household. Either way, the setting is a local congregation in Asia Minor facing a specific pastoral situation.
The situation John addresses is evident in the letter itself. Verse 7 names the problem.
“Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” (2 John 7)
The teaching John’s responding to is a system that denied the genuine incarnation of Christ. The teachers promoting this doctrine were traveling through the churches of Asia Minor and seeking to set themselves up through standard first-century Christian hospitality.
Christian hospitality, in the first century, wasn’t just normal, common courtesy. It was a moral and social obligation. Traveling teachers depended on it. When one would arrive in a town, the expectation was a believer in that town would receive him into his house, give him food and a place to stay, and also money to help with his traveling expenses when he left. But, while he was there, it was typical to give him the platform of the household to address the family and the larger local assembly. The entire infrastructure of the first-century church relied on this practice. Paul’s own ministry depended on it, and 3 John, in fact, is a letter commending the practice toward faithful traveling teachers like Demetrius.
2 John addresses the same practice in reverse. When the traveling teacher is a false teacher, the command is to refuse him hospitality that the culture would otherwise require. Verse 10 reads, ei tis erchetai pros humas kai tautēn tēn didachēn ou pherei, mē lambanete auton eis oikian kai chairein autō mē legete.
“If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not speak to him a greeting.” (2 John 10)
Three grammatical characteristics of that verse matter for a faithful interpretation.
First, the phrase lambanete auton eis oikian.. “receive him into your house.” The noun oikia in this context is the household, not a hotel room for casual lodging. In the first-century context, the home was the center of early church life. Churches met in homes, and meals were the main expression of Christian fellowship. The verb lambanō here is the verb for taking someone in and making him part of your home.
Second, the term chairein was the formal greeting that indicated “you’re welcome here as one of us.” The word served a social function closer to what we’d now call an endorsement. When you expressed chairein to a traveling teacher, you were saying to everyone watching that you stood behind him and that your household would provide for him. To refuse chairein was to withhold that endorsement, not to ignore the person’s existence.
Third, the phrase koinōnei tois ergois autou tois ponērois.. “shares in his evil deeds.” The verb koinōneō means to participate in. John’s point is giving hospitality to a false teacher was, in effect, a partnership in his ministry. The teacher depended on the hospitality to continue his work. The host is actively enabling the spreading of the false teaching.
All of this is what John is addressing. He’s telling the churches of Asia Minor not to participate, through the cultural system of hospitality, in the spread of teaching that was circulating among some traveling preachers.
John MacArthur’s commentary on the passage, which Grant himself quotes, explains the historical situation correctly. MacArthur writes false teachers in John’s day “were typically itinerant preachers who needed aid and support,” and that “having established themselves in homes, the false teachers hoped to eventually worm their way into the churches.” MacArthur understood the text addresses a specific practice and that restriction is against participating in the spread of false teaching through that system. What MacArthur doesn’t do is apply the restriction as a blanket ban on all forms of engagement, regardless of format and purpose.
Bringing this into the twenty-first century means asking what first-century hospitality looks like now. Once you ask that question, the answer becomes fairly plain. The modern equivalent of the hospitality John forbids would be things like promoting a false teacher’s books, inviting him to speak at your conference, funding his ministry, or giving him your pulpit. It would also include the kind of public friendliness that presents him to others as a trustworthy Christian voice. Those are the practices that place a modern believer in the role of the first-century host who received the traveling teacher and stood behind him. Those are the kinds of things the text forbids.
A public, adversarial examination of a false teacher’s claims on a discernment ministry’s YouTube channel isn’t the modern equivalent of first-century hospitality. It’s actually the exact opposite of first-century hospitality. Gabe wasn’t being welcomed as a brother, and his ongoing ministry hasn’t been supported. He was brought into a setting where his claims were challenged, and his errors were exposed in his own words.
That’s not lambanete eis oikian. It’s much closer to Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. Elijah didn’t shrink back from the conflict, he actually brought it into public view so the lies could be seen for what they were before the watching nation. That’s not what 2 John forbids. What 2 John forbids is giving false teachers the kind of hospitality that would treat them as brothers and advance their ministry.
Grant’s breakdown at this point gets to the heart of his hermeneutical failure. He reads the English, “receive him into your house nor greet him” as though it forbids any verbal engagement at all, then admits that a casual greeting in a grocery store doesn’t fall under the command. Once that’s admitted, the issue’s settled. The text deals with a specific cultural practice, not with every form of verbal acknowledgment. Faithful application, then, requires identifying the modern equivalent of that practice.
Grant doesn’t do that work. He applies the text broadly, then makes exceptions for situations he considers reasonable. That’s not grammatical-historical interpretation.
One of the clearest ways to test an interpretation is to ask whether it ends up condemning practices the church has long recognized as faithful. Grant’s reading of Romans 16 and 2 John, if applied consistently, would put almost every major act of apologetics and discernment in the church’s history under suspicion.
Athanasius debated Arius publicly at the Council of Nicaea and spent decades in steady written communication with Arian theologians. The entire post-Nicene controversy unfolded as an extended dialogue between orthodoxy and heresy. Augustine devoted a large part of his ministry to ongoing public dialogue with the Manichaeans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians, debating Faustus the Manichaean in person, writing lengthy essays against Donatist bishops, and corresponding with Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum.
Luther debated Johann Eck at the Leipzig Disputation in 1519. Luther also engaged Erasmus in print with The Bondage of the Will. Calvin engaged Servetus, Osiander, Bolsec, and other false teachers in public exchanges.
R.C. Sproul repeatedly engaged in public dialogue with Catholics, while James White has built a significant portion of his ministry around public debates.
The pattern is evident. Grant’s reading of Romans 16 and 2 John, applied consistently, would condemn a large portion of historical apologetics and public theology. It would’ve forbidden Athanasius’s challenge of Arius, Augustine’s engagement with Pelagius, Luther’s debate at Leipzig, Calvin’s answer to Servetus, and Sproul’s dialogue with Catholics. A reading that produces those conclusions can’t be the correct reading of the text.
What the text actually prohibits, when read in its original context, is the extending of the church’s platform and the endorsement of false teachers in ways that approve of them as brothers. That restriction has power in our modern context, and faithful shepherds need to apply it vigilantly. But the restriction doesn’t forbid the public examination or the cross-examination of false teachers in settings designed for discernment. If it did, the church would’ve lost every significant theological battle it has ever fought, because every significant theological battle has required exactly that kind of public engagement.
Grant said near the end of his broadcast,
“I’m willing to change my view, but you got to explain it to me using the scripture.”
— Pastor Michael Grant, What Does It Mean To Mark & Avoid?
I’ve taken that invitation seriously across this piece, and I want to close by addressing him directly.
Pastor Grant, if you read this, I want you to hear it as a brother engaging you in the same spirit you’ve said you welcome. I believe your concerns about the state of discernment ministry in contemporary American evangelicalism are legitimate and important. The decline of marking-and-avoiding has produced weak-kneed Christians who refuse to call a false teacher a false teacher when the moment demands it. Those are problems, and you’re right to name them. I’ve written about the same problems from a different angle in my own work, and I’d stand shoulder to shoulder with you in addressing them.
But the argument you made against Justin and Jim doesn’t hold. The interpretive method you applied to Romans 16 and 2 John 9-11 is a method the Reformers rejected when they recovered grammatical-historical interpretation from the allegorical tradition. Taking the English translation at face value and applying it directly to a modern format, without asking what the original author was addressing in the original setting, isn’t the plain meaning of the text. It’s a flattening of the text that skips the exegetical work faithful reading requires.
The texts you cited address real sins. The affording of the church platform to false teachers, and hospitality that endorses the spreading of false teaching. Those sins are real, and they deserve the rebuke you’re trying to deliver. But they aren’t what Justin did. Justin brought a false teacher onto a platform specifically designed to cross-examine him and expose his errors in his own words. That’s the opposite of the sins the texts are addressing.
Your call to apply Scripture carefully is a call I honor. But applying Scripture carefully means doing the grammatical and historical work to locate the text in its original setting, and then faithfully connecting it to the present. The result of that work, in this case, is that Justin didn’t violate the texts. He exemplified what the texts would’ve required of him if Gabe had sought a platform in his local church. And he added to that the additional service of publicly documenting Gabe’s errors in a format that will now serve the church for years as a case study in how false testimony collapses under faithful cross-examination.
I’m grateful for your willingness to name false teachers publicly when many wouldn’t. And I’m grateful that you invited correction from Scripture at the end of your own broadcast, because that invitation is the ground rule that makes brotherly engagement possible. You said you wanted to be shown from the Bible. I hope this piece has done what you asked. And I trust, because of the character you’ve displayed in your own work, that if the argument is sound, you’ll receive it in the spirit it’s offered.
In His Service,
I talk about Jesus and the Bible a lot. Sometimes on the radio, sometimes to people who willingly show up to listen. Occasionally, I write things down.
Before You Go
Word of mouth predates every distribution platform ever built and still outperforms them. When someone sends you an article, you’re more likely to take it seriously because you trust the person who sent it. So, you’re not starting from scratch.. you already have a reason to give it your attention.
Most of the people who read this got here that way. Passing something along like that is still the most helpful thing you can do.