1 Timothy

Philip Graham Ryken

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781596380493
• eBook ISBN: 9781596384521
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

A commentary on 1 Timothy, emphasizing the defense of the faith. Other themes include qualifications of elders and deacons, care for church members, and proper conduct of public worship.

1

A TRUE SON IN THE FAITH

1 Timothy 1:1–11

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Tim. 1:1–2)

When I left for college my father gave me a copy of Louis Berkhof ’s Manual of Christian Doctrine, a small classic in the tradition of Reformation theology. The book was inscribed with these words: “For Philip upon entering college, in the hope that your theology will remain Reformed.” My father wanted me to remain true to the biblical and evangelical doctrines defended during the Protestant Reformation, doctrines like the authority of Scripture and justification by faith alone. In other words, he wanted me to remain a true son in the faith.

A TRUE SON

Paul had the same desire for Timothy. He considered himself to be the young minister’s spiritual father, so he addressed his first Pastoral Epistle “To Timothy, my true child in the faith” (1 Tim. 1:2). At the time he wrote this, Paul was coming to the close of his world-changing ministry. He was the great missionary of the New Testament, God’s evangelist to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15). He was also an apostle, a messenger or ambassador for God. And as an eyewitness of the risen Christ (Acts 9:3–6), he was a man appointed to teach God’s people with divine authority.

Paul was not a self-appointed apostle, or even an apostle commissioned by the church. On the contrary, he had been chosen, called, and commissioned directly by Jesus Christ. His apostleship thus came “by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope” (1 Tim. 1:1). Not only is this a strong claim for Paul’s authority, but it is also a strong claim for the deity of Jesus Christ. A command from the Father is also said to be a command from the Son, and vice versa. Therefore, the Son must be equal in power and authority to the Father. Jesus is God.

Already it is evident that this letter is full of profound teaching about the attributes and activities of God. “God our Savior”—this phrase looks back to the salvation God accomplished through Christ; “Christ Jesus our hope”—this looks forward to the day when Christ will return in power and glory. So, as John Stott explains, “Paul locates his apostleship in a historical context, whose beginning was the saving activity of God our Savior in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, and whose culmination will be Christ Jesus our hope, his personal and glorious coming, which is the object of our Christian hope, and which will bring down the curtain on the historical process.”¹ Not bad for a return address! Paul’s opening lines mention virtually everything God has done and will do to save his people.

Like his return address, Paul’s greeting is full of profound theology. He offers Timothy “grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” (1 Tim. 1:2). The apostle starts with the traditional Greek salutation of grace (charis), ends with the traditional Jewish greeting of peace (shalom), and inserts mercy (eleos) to make a distinctively Christian blessing.² From the very beginning, therefore, this epistle is full of Christ. It is full of the hope that Christ will return in glory, the grace Christ offers to sinners, the mercy Christ gives to the needy, and the peace Christ has made with God through his death on the cross. The letter brings grace, mercy, and peace from Christ to Timothy, Paul’s spiritual son.

Timothy was a true son in the faith in several respects. Paul first met the young man when he passed through Lystra on his second missionary journey. Perhaps he introduced Timothy to Christ in the first place. In any case, Paul heard of his excellent reputation and invited him to join his missionary team (Acts 16:1–3). Timothy began his ministry under the apostle’s tutelage. He seemed like a son because he was relatively young. This is why Timothy is such an excellent model for young ministers. He was probably in his thirties by the time this letter was written, yet Paul still tells him not to let anyone look down on him because he is young (1 Tim. 4:12; cf. 2 Tim. 2:22).

Paul also considered Timothy a son because of their close personal relationship. They traveled together to Thessalonica (1 Thess. 3:2), to Corinth (1 Cor. 4:17), and to Jerusalem (Acts 20:4). Timothy stayed at Paul’s side when he was imprisoned in Rome (Phil. 2:19). They also collaborated to write six books of the New Testament. The letters of 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon come from Paul and Timothy, with Paul of course serving as the primary writer. Timothy also served as Paul’s pastoral representative, the church leader delegated to lead the church that Paul had planted in Ephesus.

After all they had been through, it is not surprising Paul considered Timothy his spiritual son. He uses a term of affection: teknon, meaning “dear child.” He showed the same fatherly feeling when he wrote to the Corinthians and called him “Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord” (1 Cor. 4:17). Later, when he was in prison, he wrote, “I have no one like him. . . . But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel” (Phil. 2:20, 22).

A TRUE FAITH

Paul’s purpose in 1 Timothy is to help his spiritual son remain true. In the opening verses of the letter he exhorts him to hold on to the true faith (1 Tim. 1:2), to defend the true doctrine (1 Tim. 1:3–4), to uphold the true use of the law (1 Tim. 1:6–11), and to cherish a true love (1 Tim. 1:5).

First, then, Timothy had true faith. The important thing about him was not that he was Paul’s child, but that he was God’s child. He was a true child in the faith. So the relationship between these two men was spiritual as well as personal. Their family ties were bound by their common faith in Christ. Timothy was a true son of Paul because he was a true son of God.

Perhaps Paul called God “Father” at the beginning of his letter to remind Timothy that he was God’s dear child. This is every believer’s great privilege. As the apostle John exults, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). Everyone who is born again by God’s Spirit is a son or a daughter of God, with a right to all of God’s fatherly care and affection. The phrase Paul uses for “true child” (gnēsio teknō) refers to natural childbirth. Since Timothy’s mother was Jewish, but his father was Greek (Acts 16:1), orthodox Jews would have considered his birth illegitimate. Yet Timothy was a genuine Christian, born of the Spirit, and thus he was Paul’s legitimate spiritual heir.

Timothy learned this true faith at his mother’s knee. In his subsequent letter to Timothy, Paul wrote, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well” (2 Tim. 1:5). Timothy was a true son in the faith, not only to Paul, but also to his own believing mother.

True Christian sons and daughters often learn the faith from their mothers. Augustine wrote how his mother Monica travailed in prayer for his salvation. In the Confessions that he made to God, Augustine testified to her faithfulness:

My mother, your faithful servant, was weeping for me to you, weeping more than mothers weep for the bodily deaths of their sons. For she, by that faith and spirit which she had from you, saw the death in which I lay, and you, Lord, heard her prayer. You heard her and you did not despise her tears which fell streaming and watered the ground beneath her eyes in every place where she prayed; indeed you heard her.³

Or consider J. Gresham Machen, the defender of Christian orthodoxy at Princeton and Westminster seminaries during the first decades of the twentieth century. It was his mother, Mary Gresham Machen, who instructed him in the Bible, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and the Pilgrim’s Progress.⁴

The influence of mothers holds true for ordinary Christians as well as for great heroes of the faith. I think of my own mother, who was convinced that maternity was the better part of her life’s work. She did not always find it easy to be at home with her children, but she prayed that God would bless her spiritual investment in their lives. To that end, she often took the prayer of Moses and made it her own: “May the favor of the Lord my God rest upon me; establish the work of my hands for me—yes, establish the work of my hands” (Ps. 90:17 NIV). Mothers who devote their maternity to the Lord are often blessed, in the end, with sons and daughters like Timothy: true children in the faith.

THE TRUE DOCTRINE

If a true son becomes a minister, he must teach true doctrine. This is the first thing Paul says in the body of his letter: “As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith” (1 Tim. 1:3–4; cf. 2 Tim. 2:14, 16, 23).

This command helps put the entire epistle in context. Timothy was in Ephesus, a city Paul visited at least twice, once briefly (Acts 18:19–21) and once for more than two years of extended teaching (Acts 19:10). Perhaps 1 Timothy was written shortly after Paul’s second visit, although it is more likely the letter was written sometime after Paul was released from his prison in Rome. In any case, Timothy was in Ephesus, the center of Paul’s church-planting strategy for Asia Minor.

As it happens, Paul’s first letter to Timothy was actually his second letter to the Ephesians. It was not private correspondence. The benediction at the end of chapter 6 is given in the plural (1 Tim. 6:21), indicating that like the rest of Paul’s epistles, this letter was for the whole church. This means that 1 Timothy can and should be read on several different levels: as a personal communication from an apostle to a minister delegated to lead a local church; as a pastoral letter from a church planter to the congregation he loves, with instructions for their ongoing work; and as a general statement of principles for life, ministry, and worship in the family of faith. Paul offers his purpose statement for the letter in chapter 3: “I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God” (1 Tim. 3:14–15).

Timothy was to remain in Ephesus in order to “charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:3). The word Paul used to describe “different doctrine” is one he may have invented: heterodidaskalein (cf. 1 Tim. 6:3). In his letters Paul often condemned those who preached a different Jesus, a different Spirit, or a different gospel (2 Cor. 11:4; cf. Gal. 1:6). Any doctrine which is different from the true doctrine is a false doctrine. There is only one right theology; every other theology is wrong. There is only one orthodoxy; everything else is heterodoxy, although of course the church must give answers to the new questions and challenges that arise in every age. John Calvin put it well: “We therefore teach that faithful ministers are now not permitted to coin any new doctrine, but that they are simply to cleave to that doctrine to which God has subjected men without exception.”⁵

Who were the heterodox teachers of the Ephesian church? Paul did not name any names. Instead, he ominously referred to them as “certain persons.” No doubt Timothy knew exactly whom he was talking about! We might even imagine the sidelong glances that were cast at these men by other leaders in the church.

What were these men teaching? They were obsessed with myths and endless genealogies.“Myths” sounds like the stories or Gnostic philosophies of ancient Greece. Plato, for example, used this term to refer to the legends and fables of antiquity.⁶ However, even though there was some Greek influence on the church (especially since Ephesus was the home of the goddess Diana),“myths and endless genealogies” more probably refers to the teaching of certain Jewish rabbis (cf. Titus 1:14: “Jewish myths”). In this connection, it is noteworthy that the false teachers in Ephesus desired to be “teachers of the law” (1 Tim. 1:7).

Two ancient Jewish texts shed further light on Paul’s meaning. One is entitled The Book of Jubilees, written around 125 BC. Another was written after AD 70 and is called The Biblical Antiquities of Philo. These books retell the Old Testament story from a Pharisaic point of view and include extended genealogies. The...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Introduction
• Preface
• 1. A True Son in the Faith (1:1–11)
• 2. Mercy for the Worst of Sinners (1:12–16)
• 3. Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise (1:17)
• 4. Fight the Good Fight (1:18–20)
• 5. The Great Intercession (2:1–7)
• 6. Men and Women at Prayer (2:8–10)
• 7. What Paul Really Said about Women in the Church (2:11–15)
• 8. Qualifications for Elders (3:1–7)
• 9. Qualifications for Deacons (3:8–13)
• 10. The Great Mystery of Godliness (3:14–16)
• 11. Where Bad Theology Comes From (4:1–5)
• 12. Minister in Training (4:6–10)
• 13. A Portrait of the Minister as a Young Man (4:11–16)
• 14. House Rules (5:1–8)
• 15. Pure, Unadulterated Religion (5:9–16)
• 16. What Sheep Owe Their Shepherds (5:17–25)
• 17. Yes,Master! (6:1–2)
• 18. The Christian Attitude toward Money (6:3–10)
• 19. Rules of Engagement (6:11–16)
• 20. The Ultimate Investment (6:17–21)
• Index of Scripture
• Index of Subjects and Names