Six Themes in 1 & 2 Timothy Everyone Should Know

Thomas G. Long, Eva Stimson

• Publisher: Geneva Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781571532398
• eBook ISBN: 9781611649260
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The six themes explored in the books of 1 and 2 Timothy enable us in the church today to hear the gospel as expressed to those early Christians. We need to concentrate on worship, be led by faithful leaders, stay strong i nthe faith, love God more than wealth, hear and live God's Word, and serve faithfully in the church. These themes can strengthen our lives of faith as well as the church's witness and service to Jesus Christ. This ovlume includes material for participants as well as outlines and guides for leading all six sessions.

The Six Themes Everyone Should Know series introductes biblical books and their main themes. Each volume consists of six chapters that present major biblical themes; each chapter contains an introduction and three major sections:

• What does the biblical theme mean?
• What is the meaning of this biblical theme for the life of faith?
• What does the biblical theme mean for the church at this point in history for action?

Introduction to 1 and 2 Timothy

The books of 1 and 2 Timothy, tucked away near the end of the New Testament along with Titus, are called the “Pastoral Epistles.” They have been seen as letters written by Paul—or, today, most scholars believe, a “pastor” who writes in Paul’s name and continued Paul’s views—to encourage and strengthen churches that were seeking around the end of the first century to establish order, discipline, and theological fidelity.

Yet, the two letters to Timothy are not highly used by Christians and not frequently preached on by pastors. They address issues of controversy and difficulty in early congregations. These folks were trying to institute ways of ordering church life so they could live the lives to which they were called by Jesus Christ: “Do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share” (1 Timothy 6:18). They are told that through all church squabbles and disagreements, faithfulness to the gospel should be primary so Christians “may take hold of the life that really is life” (6:19).

The six themes explored here enable us in the church today to hear the gospel as expressed to these early Christians. We need to concentrate on worship, be led by faithful leaders, stay strong in the faith, love God more than wealth, hear and live God’s Word, and serve faithfully in the church. These themes can strengthen our lives of faith as well as the church’s witness and service to Jesus Christ.

The last words of 1 Timothy are a blessing for us as well: “Grace be with you” ( 6:21).

Biblical Backgrounds to 1 and 2 Timothy

Author and Date

“Although some New Testament scholars think that 1 Timothy was written by the actual apostle Paul, and probably near the end of his life, most scholars take a different position. They see this letter as written by an unknown author and as coming from late in the first century, probably after Paul was dead (which is the position taken in this [study]). So this is the signature not of the historical Paul the apostle but a literary ‘Paul.’”

—Thomas G. Long, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. Belief: A
Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 20.

Major Concerns

“The Pastoral Letters belong to the postapostolic age and are addressed to the concerns of second-generation Christianity. No longer were Christians convinced that the world-order would soon pass away with the glorious return of the Christ. The spiritual vigor that characterized the Pauline missions was replaced by an equally serious mandate: to establish the church as ‘the pillar and bulwark of the truth’ (1 Tim. 3:15).”

—James L. Price Jr., “Timothy, the First and Second Letters of
Paul to, and Titus, the Letter of Paul to,” in Harper’s Bible
Dictionary, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, Publishers, 1985), 1075.

Importance

“To read these documents as Scripture does mean recognizing that the church has included them in the canon of Scripture because, through the centuries, it has heard gospel in them and found its life formed by them more fully into the pattern of Jesus Christ.”

—Long, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, 8.

Worship is not one of the activities of the church; it is the central activity of the church.

Chapter 1

Worship at the Center
of the Christian Life

Scripture

1 Timothy 2:1–15 A church in the middle of strife and conflict is reminded that worship is central to the life of the Christian faith and that a congregation vital and faithful in worship will be healthy in the rest of its life.

Prayer

O God, you are the center of our life and the One whom we adore. In our worship, keep us from being distracted by the baubles and bright lights of this world. In our praying, keep us focused on you, and draw together all our thoughts with the tether of your will. As we worship, let us open our hands to your presence, our minds to your teaching, and our hearts to your mercy, through Jesus Christ, who gave himself for all. Amen.

Introduction

1 Timothy is one of three brief New Testament letters known collectively as the “Pastoral Epistles” (the other two are 2 Timothy and Titus). They are called “pastoral” because they present themselves as letters written by an aging pastor, the apostle Paul, now nearing death (see 2 Timothy 4:6–9), and they are addressed to young pastors, Timothy and Titus, giving wisdom about how to conduct their ministries in the face of difficult challenges.

Today we sign letters at the end, but in the ancient world writers signed their names at the beginning of letters, and all three Pastoral Epistles are “signed” in the very first verse by Paul (1 Timothy 1:1, 2 Timothy 1:1, Titus 1:1). Even so, most biblical scholars (but not all) are persuaded that these letters were written in the name of Paul by a later writer whose identity we do not know (we will call him “the Pastor”). The pastorals were written probably in the late first or early second century, almost certainly after Paul’s death. There are three main reasons to think that the pastorals postdate Paul:

The “Paul” in these letters doesn’t sound quite like the Paul of Romans and Corinthians. His tone is a shade sterner, and he evidences a deeper concern for church discipline and right doctrine than does the apostle Paul.

The churches reflected in these letters seem to have developed beyond the infant Christian communities addressed by the apostle Paul. They are concerned with more developed matters such as the qualifications for bishops (see 1 Timothy 3:1–7), and “the gospel” has come to mean a fairly settled body of teaching (see 1 Timothy 1:10–11).

It is difficult to fit the places and events named in these letters neatly into what we know of the life and travels of Paul the apostle. Thus, the Pastoral Epistles were likely addressed to Christian communities in the late first or early second centuries. As is the case with most of the New Testament letters, they were probably read aloud in worship, and the original hearers of these letters surely knew that Paul was no longer around. News of Paul’s death would have traveled quickly and widely in the earliest churches. So, these letters were received as answers to the question, “What would the revered apostle Paul have said about the problems that face us now?” The problem under the spotlight in the passage before us is one of the most demanding in congregational life: faithful worship.

A Basic Theme: The Centrality of Worship

The church addressed in our passage is depicted as located in Ephesus, a significant port city in what is today Turkey, and Timothy is its pastor (1 Timothy 1:3). But the main thing to know about this church is that it was in trouble. Before 1 Timothy is done, a whole laundry list of congregational problems will have been addressed, from false teaching to bitter conflict to poor leadership, but at the top of this list is a concern about worship. This is not surprising. When there is conflict anywhere in the body of a congregation, the first symptoms usually show up in worship. When members of a congregation begin to grouse about the hymns, the sermons, or the style of the liturgy, or when bickering breaks out in the choir loft or in the worship committee, it is often the case that there is distress elsewhere in the life of the church. A struggle for power or control in the congregation can erupt as a dispute over old hymns versus contemporary music, over whether it’s good to have a children’s sermon, or if it’s permissible to applaud in the service.

The converse is also true. Harmony in worship generally signals harmony throughout the life of the congregation. The reason for this relationship between worship and the health of congregational life is that worship is not merely one of the many activities of the church. It is the central act of the church, pulsating out to every other arena of the church’s life.

Theologian Geoffrey Wainwright wrote, “Worship … is the point of concentration at which the whole of the Christian life comes to ritual focus.”¹ What this means is that every aspect of being a Christian, every ministry and expression of the church, can be found in microcosm in the rituals of worship. The sermon reverberates out into the whole church’s witness to the world. The Lord’s Supper stands at the epicenter of all other meals—the family dinner table, the church supper in the fellowship hall, the meals served in the homeless shelter, the love and fellowship of friends gathered around a common table. The prayers for those who are ill or grieving radiate into acts of compassion at bedside and graveside. The cleansing and renewing water of baptism finds expression in all ministries of reconciliation and in every attempt to point to the image of God in all humanity.

No wonder then the Pastor of 1 Timothy, concerned about the many problems of the church pastored by young Timothy, turns very early to the issue of worship. Like a physician placing a stethoscope over a patient’s heart, listening to the rhythm of heartbeat, the Pastor places his stethoscope over the heart of worship. When he hears an irregular heartbeat, he knows that a sickness in worship puts everything else about the life of the church at risk.

The Life of Faith: Standing in the Need of Prayer

A service of worship is essentially a long conversation between God and the worshipers. This is essential for the life of faith. Sometimes God speaks to the people, mainly in sermons and Scripture, and sometimes the people speak to God, in prayers, creeds, hymns, and ascriptions of praise. The fact that worship is a dialogue between God and the people is a sign that the whole of worship is prayer. There are specific prayers in the service of worship, of course, but in a larger sense the entire act of worship is prayer—speaking and listening in the context of a deep and trusting relationship with God.

First Timothy 2:1–7 is the lengthiest treatment of prayer in the New Testament.² The passage addresses some particular issues about praying rightly, but it soon soars into a powerful hymn about our relationship through Christ with the saving and merciful God (vv. 3–6). In other words, the details about proper prayer are nestled into the larger relationship with God that makes prayer possible.

Two specific prayer issues are addressed in this passage:

The scope of prayer. How big should we make our prayers? Very big, according to the Pastor. He urges that every kind of praying that we do—“supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings” (v. 1)—be done for everyone, not some or a few, but everyone. This counsel undercuts all attempts to narrow our prayer concerns. Our tendency is to pray for our loved ones but not those far away, our nation but not others, ourselves but not our neighbors, our church but not those unlike us. Quite pointedly, there is plenty of evidence that the church addressed in this letter was in deep and acrimonious conflict. That may be the hardest praying of all, to pray not only for yourself but also for the person i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Listing of Six Themes Everyone Should Know series
• Introduction to the Six Themes Everyone Should Know series
• Introduction to 1 and 2 Timothy
• Biblical Backgrounds to 1 and 2 Timothy
• 1. Worship at the Center of the Christian Life
• 2. The Importance of Faithful Leadership
• 3. Staying Strong in the Faith
• 4. Wealth and the Truly Good Life
• 5. God’s Word in Life, Story, and Scripture
• 6. The Endurance of the Church
• Group Gatherings
• Glossary
• Want to Know More?