1 Timothy

1 Timothy 1:3-7


1 Timothy 1:3-4

This verse is appealing to a historical event. Paul was urging Timothy previously to do something. He was urging him to stay at Ephesus for the purpose of doing 2 things laid out in verses 3-4. Those 2 things are: 1) instructing certain men not to teach strange doctrines
2) intructing them not to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies

The time that Paul’s request took place was recorded in Acts 20. From this passage we can see that Paul loved the Ephesian church, and that they in turn loved him. Their hearts were closely bound together. He left Timothy there as a safeguard for the church, so that they would not wander into bad doctrine, and thereby suffer the effects of believing untruths.

urge - παρακαλεω - to urge strongly, appeal to, urge, exhort, encourage
Paul did not command him to do this, although he could have. Instead he asks him in a way that gave TImothy an understanding of how important it was for him to stay on and fulfill this role. If we are leaders in the church, sometimes it’s easier for us to just boss people around and tell them what to do. It is better for us to appeal to people, and let them know how important the role they should fulfill is to the church.


Timothy’s role

Timothy was to be in charge of looking after the doctrine of the church. He was in charge of making sure that everyone was on the same page in Ephesus as far as their beliefs about Christ. Apparently there were some in Ephesus who were prone to dwell on new teachings, and ‘fresh’ approaches to old ones. This was a serious threat to the health of the church. Timothy was to instruct men first of all not to teach strange doctrines. I can remember when I was about 12 or 13 going to church and hearing a message about why the NIV was a poor translation, and only the KJV should be used in our church. A man in our church actually used the privilege of being allowed to speak God’s Word to God’s church from the pulpit to teach this doctrine which was certainly not biblical, and could only cause division. He was dealt with afterwards by the elders of the church who I guess reprimanded him. The elders of the church were in charge of maintaining sound doctrine and did so by confronting the man after he had abused the position granted Him by God. Timothy was in charge ofmaking sure that only sound doctrine would be preached at the church in Ephesus. But is this verse saying more? Is he only in charge of keeping the preaching pure? No, he is in charge of making sure that no impure doctrine is taught at all in the church. Translated to today, this would mean that no man given the privilege to teach within the setting of the church - be it sunday school, or an outreach program, or conference - is to teach a contra-biblical doctrine.

How was Timothy able to fulfill this charge given him by Paul? He would have first needed to be aware of what the truth of Scripture is. He cannot guard against strange doctrines unless he was aware of proper and true doctrine. This seems to be the role of theology in the believer’s life, especially of the church leader. We should have some understanding of how the Bible works together, and this is the function of theology, to bring the teachings of the Bible into one consistent worldview. To unify the whole of Scripture. This doesn’t mean that we should spend all our time studying theology. Far from it, we should spend the majority of our time poring over the Scriptures, but we should have an understanding of certain theological issues, and how the passages of the Scriptures relate to one another.

Timothy was not only to look after the doctrines that people were teaching, but he was also to know what people were thinking about. I’m not saying that he was to be some sort of thought police out of the pages of 1984, but that he was to be in a position where he knew what people were thinking about, and steer them in the right direction. How would he have done this? I believe that Timothy would have had to remain in close contact with everyone in the church, and be of the disposition that people would come and ask him the questions that they had. He would have had to have been available to everyone in the church and he would have had to have been relatable to everyone in the church. Thus, I believe that two important factors in being able to guard against false doctrine in the church is accessibility and relatability. He was not to guard against false doctrine with an iron fist like the Inquisition, rather to be accesible to the church and instruct them in right thinking.

He was to see that people weren’t spending undue time discussing extra-biblical stories about Jesus, for example the childhood of Jesus, or the discussion of endless genealogies, for example the proof of the world being 6000 years old by the genealogical record first put forward by the JEWISH scholar Ibn Ezra in the 10th century AD. These things are of no benefit to the church. While it is okay to determine whether things we encounter are truth or not, it is not a good thing for us to maniacally devote our time to finding new, obscure teachings and creating dogma from it. Timothy could not have possibly been able to know exhaustively everything that he would have encountered in the church, so he would have had to have devoted himself to the study of the Scripture, and know the truth of the Scripture. When we really know what the Scripture has to say about subjects, it’s easy to see the falsity of things by how they don’t agree with the Bible. We must make sure though, that our understanding of doctrine and theology comes from the Scripture and not extra-biblical sources.

What does he mean by the administration of God which is by faith? The word οικονομια usually means responsibility of management, arrangement, order or plan. Here it probably means program of instruction, or training. So the force of the verse would be something like this: make sure people aren’t teaching false doctrine and spending there time discussing obscure things as if they’re biblical, because it hinders the training that God gives through faith. When we spend our time talking about obscure things, we tend to lose the ability to really guard our convictions, our faith. And so as a result we lose the teaching of God in our own lives, because we’re really not looking to hear what He’s saying to us, but instead concerned with understanding the truth of peripheral things.

1 Timothy 1:5

While our focusing on obscure doctrine and ideas hinders the training of God in our lives through faith, the attention to true doctrine has the practical goals of fostering love from a pure heart, good conscience and sincere faith. Paul is telling Timothy that his role of guarding doctrine and studying truth is not meaningless. It is not some abstract activity which has no translation in real life. The opposite holds true. The study of truth leads us to very practical ends. Doctrine develops love. The more we know of the Bible, and believe it, the more we will love. Because when we really study the Bible, we are really working to develop a pure heart, and a good conscience and a sincere faith. This is surely by the work of the Holy Spirit in our life, that as He teaches us the truth of the Word of God, He convicts us as to how we are to respond to it. (John 16:7-15) Christ has promised us that the Spirit will disclose the things to us that we could not know otherwise. He convicts us and teaches us. So our study of the Scripture and our quest for a pure and true doctrine works in us because the Holy Spirit uses it to work in us. Our understanding of the Scripture allows us to worship Christ in truth, which is what He is looking for, worshippers who worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:23-24).

The three things that the Spirit cultivates in us are a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith. A pure heart is so important for us. It enables us to see God (Matt 5:8). When we have a pure heart we know who God is, and we know what He wants us to do. When we have a pure heart, we can love purely, without impartiality, without hidden motives. The word purity indicates that there is nothing hidden. For something to be pure it is free from impurities. For our hearts to be pure they will be free from impurities such as selfishness, greed, anger, malice, and so on. We can be humble only when we have a pure heart. So having a pure heart is a prerequisite to being able to love people in a godly way.

The second thing that the Spirit cultivates in us is a good conscience. This good conscience is not found in liars who pay attention to false doctrine. They are seared in their conscience (4:1-2). Paying attention to truth cultivates a good conscience. A good conscience really seems to be one of the things that Paul is concerned about in this book. He mentions it again at the end of this chapter in verse 19. We can see the impact that having a good conscience has in our own lives. It is extremely difficult for us to be active in church when there is something that we have between us and God. It’s hard for us to pray when we have something that is bothering us about our own actions or thoughts. We feel like hypocrites and so, as said in chapter 4, our conscience is seared. A bad conscience weighs heavy on us, and paralyzes us from being able to serve God properly. It also keeps us from being able to love the way that we should, since we have something keeping us from having a good relationship with God. This is why the doctrine of the propitiation of Christ is so important to us. We saw in our study of 1 John that Christ’s sacrifice for us was for our sin. Our sins have been paid for in Christ, and we were told in 1 John 1:9 that if we confess our sins He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness, based on the propitiation of Christ. So our understanding of doctrine allows us to come freely to God with the admission of our guilt before Him, know that we are forgiven and function with a clear conscience based on our standing in Christ. This clear conscience allows us to serve properly in the church, and to really love our brothers and sisters in Christ.

The third thing that doctrine works to develop is a sincere faith. This is pretty self-evident, since it’s hard to believe in something that we know nothing about. As we learn more about Christ and God through the Scripture, it’s easier for us to believe because we have a fuller understanding of the truth. Not only that, but the study of theology helps us to see a consistent truth in the Word, and makes it even easier for us to believe. But the idea here is not just of our belief growing, but our faith growing more sincere. As we learn more about the truths of Scripture, our faith tends to permeate all aspects of our lives. The more I know about the Word of God, the more I understand of how it applies to my life. This knowledge will be a sort of guide as to how I respond to situations that I encounter. Having a sincere faith based on Scripture will show me the importance of prayer, for example, and so I can love those around me by praying for them with confidence that God hears me in my prayers. Our understanding of true doctrine cultivates a sincere faith through the administration of God by the Holy Spirit, enabling us to love more wholeheartedly.

1 Timothy 1:6-7

Paul tells Timothy that some of the men in Ephesus have abandoned the desire to know for the sake of improving their daily lives. Their desire to learn was an end in itself. They no longer thought of knowledge as being a means to an improvement in their character, a means to godliness, rather they only sought the puffing up of their pride. What is fruitless discussion? It is something which has no purpose to it. Something which has no impact on how we live our lives. Something which does not cultivate a pure heart, good conscience and sincere faith. On Sunday my friend Joshua asked the question ‘What good is it to study philosophy and theology at the higher level?’ These two areas of studying have been a danger to many men who have studied them. A lot of people have engaged in these academic pursuits for the sake of knowledge. This is what Paul is talking about.

I was able to give Joshua some examples of how the pursuit of higher philosophy and theology have had huge impacts on our lives as Christians recently. One of the examples that I gave was the answer which the contemporary Evangelical philosopher Alvin Plantinga has provided us to the question of the problem of evil. The problem of evil could be stated like this: if God is all powerful, and all loving, then He could eradicate evil, but evil exists, therefore God does not exist. Many Christians have stumbled over this question, and it does indeed seem difficult to answer. Alvin Plantinga has given us this answer. That the conclusion to the problem is illogical. We don’t only believe that God is all powerful and all loving, but that He is all knowing. Therefore God could have a good reason for allowing evil to remain. It is impossible to show that God could not have a good reason for allowing evil, therefore it is impossible to prove that God does not exist through evil. Rather the fact that we recognize that there is something wrong indicates that we acknowledge an absolute moral ideal, and if there is an absolute moral ideal, then there must have been someone who gave us that absolute moral ideal. Therefore, the fact that evil does exist actually does more to speak of God’s existence then it does His non-existence.

This statement of Paul’s is not saying that pursuing the answers to serious questions which lie in the realm of higher philosophy and theology is wrong. Rather he is addressing the motivation for our pursuit of knowledge. We should pursuing knowledge, but our pursuit should be toward a pure heart, good conscience and sincere faith. In the example given, our faith is strengthened because we have a good answer to give to skeptics.

These men wanted to be teachers of the Bible, and Paul says that they speak confidently about things they have no understanding of. Their wrongly motivated pursuit of knowledge has given them the arrogance to think that they understand Scripture, when really they do not. We have seen this time and time again throughout the church’s existence. I’ve encountered many people who had a problem with Christianity based on the incorrect teachings of people who claimed to be Christians. Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses are often lumped in with Christians, and it’s clear that they teach false doctrine. But men like Pat Robertson and others who are associated with Christianity give weighty claims to their speculations about what the Bible teaches. This kind of teaching is what Paul is warning about. We should know the Bible well enough to be able to discern the falsity of their teachings.

In our day we have a new movement within Christianity. This movement is called the Emergent movement. There are many, many popular teachers that are coming from the ranks of the Emergent church. People like Rob Bell, Richard Kearney, and Brian MacLaren are having a huge influence on people within the Church, who are unable to understand the fallacies in their teaching because they are not familiar enough with the truths taught in Scripture. Rob Bell’s book Velvet Elvis was recommended me to my sister as a book I ‘had to read.’ In his book he makes the statement that Christianity is like a trampoline, and all the doctrine of Christianity are like springs on the trampoline. So the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the Resurrection are all like springs on a trampoline. If one of those springs breaks, he says, you can still keep jumping. In other words, you don’t have to believe in the virgin birth, the Incarnation, or the Resurrection of Christ in order to still be a Christian. My sister had no clue that he had made that statement, and didn’t realize that a lot of what he was proposing in his book was based off of that way of thinking. This is obviously not good teaching, and has no place in Christian thought. Unfortunately we are now living in the postmodern age, and the Church has begun to think in postmodern terms. One of my favourite bands Thrice has written a song which speaks of the dangers of believing false doctrine, and living in this postmodern mindset of downplaying truth. The song’s name is Lost Continent:

Was there a time that we knew peace;
when all the children had a place to sleep;
when rhetoric was not enough?

Was there a time we weren't at war;
when we knew what our hearts and hands were for?
I don't believe there ever was.

It's always been a lie,
a soothing lullaby;
we'll soon be swallowed by the sea.

Was there a time we looked around,
and do we really even want to know what's going down?
Well I think no one really does.

We'd rather close our eyes;
sing soothing lullabies.

It's always been a lie,
a soothing lullaby;
we'll soon be swallowed by the sea.

The water's rising now;
and we will surely drown,
if we don't turn around.


There is a real danger in not clinging to the truth of Scripture. There is a real danger in desiring knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Timothy is charged by Paul to guard against this in the church. We should be doing this in our own individual lives, seeking to understand the truth of Scripture so that we are able to avoid false teaching, for the purpose of cultivating a pure heart, good conscience and sincere faith.