Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ, according to [the] command of God our Saviour, and of Christ Jesus our hope,
Paul opens this letter with a claim of authority. Before he gives one instruction, he names God as Saviour and Christ as our hope. Those three notes shape all that follows about order in God's house.
Paul's other letters open in different ways, and the wording here is deliberate. One writer traces the difference:
The character of the letter explains how it opens. In Romans, Paul is a "called" apostle. In 1 Corinthians he is an apostle "by the will of God." His other letters use other forms again. Here he is an apostle "according to command of God."
That wording settles how we should read the letter. This is not a senior man passing private opinions to a younger one:
Paul's apostleship is no light matter here. His call did not depend on the other apostles at all. It came "according to the command of God." So we are not free to treat his letters as his own convictions. We must recognize them as what God required him to write. They carry the supreme authority of God.
Paul at once calls this God our Saviour. The title is rare, and where it appears tells us something:
The expression "God our Saviour" is found only in the First Letter to Timothy and in the letter to Titus. (See 2:3; 4:10; Titus 1:3; 2:10; 3:4.) It shows that God's character towards the world is that of a Saviour, through the work of His Son. His grace, which brings salvation, has appeared to all men. That is a different thing from what was true under the law.
This was not always how God presented Himself:
Here God takes up, in a special way, the character of a Saviour-God toward the world. This principle matters greatly for how we live in the world and how we deal with people. We represent in our religious character a God of love. This was not the case in Judaism. He was indeed the same God; but there He took the character of a Lawgiver.
You might expect a letter about order in God's house to open with an official title. It does not, and one writer sees weight in that:
A shallow mind might have thought a church title would fit better here, since rule in that sphere fills so much of the letter. But it is not so, and God is as good as He is wise. His authority works through instruments He desires and chooses, and He would have the world see His character as Saviour. Not that all people are saved, of course. Believers are saved, and all are now called to believe on the Lord Jesus and so be saved.
The command and the saving title belong together:
If His authority is affirmed first, it is still not bare authority. It is the authority of the One who is Saviour, in matchless goodness, grace, and compassion.
Paul does not point to an event or a benefit here. He points to a Person:
Yes, it is Christ — Christ Himself, who is our hope. As individual believers our hope is not death, or the state of happiness that follows it, real and blessed as this is. Our hope is the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to swallow up death in victory.
Salvation already known is not the whole of it. Something still lies ahead:
But salvation known even now and here is not all. We have Him by whom it came as "our hope," even Christ Jesus, who will present us in the glory of God to match His salvation. Oh, how that blessed hope has been lowered!
The letter goes on to deal with bishops, deacons and church order. Naming God and Christ first keeps hope from resting on any of them:
When decline sets in, it is good for us to know a living God as our Preserver. We should centre our hope not on churches, bishops, deacons, or on any man at all, but on the Lord Himself.
- Command. Paul is an apostle "by command of God," so the letter carries God's authority, not one man's private opinions.
- Character. The same verse calls Him Saviour. In Israel He took the character of Lawgiver; toward the world He now shows Himself as Saviour.
- Reach. "God our Saviour" appears only in 1 Timothy and Titus. It marks out grace that has appeared to all men, not to one nation.
- Balance. The authority behind the letter is never bare authority. It belongs to the One who is Saviour, in goodness, grace and compassion.
- Hope. The hope is not death, nor a recovered church, nor any man — it is Christ Jesus Himself, who will present us in the glory of God.
to Timotheus, [my] true child in faith grace, mercy, peace, from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul opens his first letter to Timothy not with orders but with a name and a blessing. He calls Timothy his own child in the faith and asks God for grace, mercy and peace for him — and that middle word is one he drops when he writes to a whole church.
The word Paul chooses points to how Timothy came to God, not to how much he resembled his teacher.
Timothy was Paul's "true child in the faith," a real convert of his. So Paul trusted him enough to speak his heart with no evident reservation. The word here is "child," not "son." It speaks of actual spiritual birth, not the dignity of a position. Timothy had not merely copied Paul's character. "In Christ Jesus" Paul had given him birth through the gospel.
This warmth is not Paul's usual manner, and the reason lies in the moment he was writing.
We can easily see how such circumstances were bound to draw out a love that was always there. At such a moment that love would come out in a more fitting way. We find this in these letters. He writes to Timothy as his genuine child; it is not at all the usual way in the earlier letters. Here and now was the opening of that long pent-up heart. At the same time he was laying an important commission on a man God had raised up for the purpose. Timothy was still fairly young. Soon he would have to fight his way without the sympathy and support of one who had been such a blessing to him.
Each of the three words meets the same circumstances from a different side.
Paul wishes Timothy "grace," the divine favour that is enough to lift a person above whatever the circumstances may be. He wishes him "mercy," God showing compassion inside those circumstances. And he wishes him "peace," the calm of soul God gives, so that we pass through all circumstances in unbroken, unruffled communion with the Lord Jesus. Such blessing rests on the unity of the Father and the Son. It is found from no other source, but perfectly there.
Paul greets churches with grace and peace. To Timothy and to Titus he adds a word — and the difference is deliberate.
He does not say "mercy" to the assemblies. They stand before God as assemblies because of the mercy already shown them. However low their condition might be, God views them according to the nature in which they live by the Spirit. In that nature there is no question of mercy, because the nature is itself of God. Grace and peace are what they are to enjoy from God. But an individual is another matter. However godly or faithful he may be, he is both flesh and spirit. Part of his road still lies ahead and has to be provided for, so he always needs mercy. That is why the apostle wishes it to Timothy and to Titus. He knew how much they needed mercy. It was his own resource, what he had experienced for the comfort of his own soul.
The word matches what Timothy faced in Ephesus, where the pressure came from two directions.
It supposes the need, the constant wants, the difficulties, the trials and the dangers of individual believers. Timothy was in Ephesus. Fierce wolves came from the outside and false teachers from the inside. He needed mercy, so that he would be kept. The days grow darker. The departure from the faith becomes more pronounced. Individual believers need mercy upon mercy to stand and to withstand.
The names Paul uses for God and for Christ put teacher and pupil on the same ground. (The ESV reads "God the Father"; older translations read "God our Father".)
Turning to Timothy, as his own child in the faith, the Apostle desires grace, mercy, and peace for him. But he is thinking of Timothy as a believer, so he now says, "from God our Father" and Christ Jesus "our Lord".
If these three are already the believer's, why pray for them at all?
In the fullest sense the believer already owns God's grace, mercy, and peace for ever. They are his because Christ died for him. Yet Paul still wishes these things to Timothy, his child in the faith. Does this not teach us something? The believer constantly needs to take hold in practice of what is already truly his in principle. Take one example. We may know how precious peace with God is. That does not guarantee that we enjoy "the peace of God" all the time.
- Child. Paul calls Timothy a true child. The word marks real spiritual birth through the gospel, not a character copied from Paul.
- Need. Because an individual is still flesh as well as spirit, with a road still ahead, he always needs mercy.
- Supply. Grace lifts us above our circumstances. Mercy meets us inside them. Peace carries us through them.
- Source. All three come from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, and from nowhere else.
- Practice. We must still take hold each day of what is ours for ever. Having peace with God is not the same as enjoying the peace of God.
Even as I begged thee to remain in Ephesus, [when I was] going to Macedonia, that thou mightest enjoin some not to teach other doctrines,
Paul opens this letter by reminding Timothy why he is still in Ephesus: to guard what gets taught there. Behind that short appeal stand an old warning and one hard question — can a church with the best teaching still go wrong?
Paul had warned the Ephesian elders years before. Gaebelein traces what happened next.
Timothy was to remain behind to charge some that they teach no other doctrine. When Paul had met the elders of Ephesus at Miletus he had made this prediction: "For I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts 20:29-30). Then he went to Jerusalem, where he was taken prisoner and sent to Rome. After his release he must have visited Ephesus once more. There he found the very things the Holy Spirit had warned against. Timothy was with him on that visit, between his first and second imprisonment.
Paul urged Timothy to stay. He did not order him.
We see the love that even an apostle adopts towards his child in faith. It was not at all a domineering word, though full of earnest desire for the work of the Lord.
Kelly explains what makes someone a strange teacher, and where the line runs.
To teach things different from the word of God is to be a strange teacher. What guesses are to a scientist, speculations are to the teacher: traps that pull us away from the revealed truth God has entrusted to us. True science bows to facts. It looks for the general principles or connections behind them, and calls these laws. The believer and the teacher do the same. To go beyond the written word is to stray and mislead.
Ephesus sat under the highest ministry. The danger came from inside anyway.
The Apostle realised that "some" were ready to teach "other doctrines". This was true even among those who had the greatest light. The natural pride of the heart may think that much light is a safeguard against error. The Ephesian assembly teaches us a lesson worth learning. A company rich in truth, enjoying the highest ministry, still has no guarantee against false doctrine. Timothy, then, was to charge some that they teach no other doctrine than the great doctrines of the grace of God.
The remedy was not cleverness, and not fresh material.
Paul was sure that the state of the Ephesians' souls needed Timothy's ministry to work against the sad drift away from the truth that was already there. There were "some" at least who leaned toward teaching doctrine other than the truth of God. Countering this did not need superior intellect. It needed the faithfulness that honours God. It did not need new truth either, but the truth already given, pressed home to heart and conscience.
Timothy's stay at Ephesus has raised a question about his standing there.
From this some have thought that Timothy was a bishop, left there to appoint elders. But in Acts 20 we see all the elders already doing their work at Ephesus, five years before Paul wrote to Timothy. So that theory will not hold good.
The later record of Ephesus shows how this danger played out.
In 2 Timothy 1:15 comes the sad news that "all who are in Asia" (which must have included Ephesus) had "turned away from" Paul. This surely means they gave up the truth as Paul taught it, and settled down with a lower standard... Revelation 2:1-7 gives the address to this church. Much in it speaks in their favour. Yet it also had to bring the solemn charge that they had left their first love, and the warning that if they did not repent their lampstand would be removed.
- Occasion — Paul had predicted wolves from outside and twisted teaching from inside. He came back to Ephesus, found it starting, and left Timothy there.
- Tone — He does not command his younger co-worker. He urges him, and authority speaks in the language of love.
- Charge — "No other doctrine" means no teaching beyond the written word. To add speculation is to mislead.
- Danger — Even the best-taught church had "some" who wanted to teach otherwise. Rich truth is no immunity.
- Outcome — Timothy needed faithfulness, not brilliance. Where that guard slipped, Asia turned away, and the warning came that Ephesus could lose its lampstand.
nor to turn their minds to fables and interminable genealogies, which bring questionings rather than [further] God's dispensation, which [is] in faith.
Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus with one job: to stop certain men teaching things that were not the truth. This verse names what those men were chasing. Translators have read its closing phrase in two ways, and each reading gives a different answer to what Paul puts in its place.
The two things Paul names here came from opposite worlds.
These strange teachings were of two kinds: "fables" (or "myths") and "genealogies." By the first word Paul meant ideas brought in from the pagan world, even though they were the polished theories of the Greek schools. By the second he meant ideas brought in from the Jewish world, where family descent had played such a large part.
The same error keeps coming back under new names.
This warning targets the Gnostic emanations — the invented "aeons" and the lists of how one came from another... The myths of our own day are no more in keeping with sound doctrine and the truth of God: evolution, which derives one thing from another in an endless chain, and the myths of destructive criticism, spiritism, theosophy, Christian Science, and other strange notions.
The appeal is not accidental. A chain of descent leaves no room for God to act.
"Endless genealogies" please the natural mind and religious human nature alike, for they shut God out and make much of man. They assume that all blessing is a process of development handed down from one generation to the next. That is why the religious Jew made so much of his family line.
This is not a ban on the family lists that Scripture itself records.
The subject itself does build us up, as the whole Word of God does. But it is useless to take it up with only your own intelligence, as the rationalists have so often done. And these are not the genealogies the apostle tells us not to give heed to (1 Tim. 1:4; Titus 3:9). He was warning against a philosophical system that tried to set up endless levels in a hierarchy of spirits.
Where does such teaching come from? Not from faith.
When men set up as teachers of strange doctrine, they always wander into the region of fable and give heed to myths and endless genealogies. The love of the marvellous went to work among Christians early on. Imagination is never faith. Faith delights in knowing God and His will, and so trusts nothing but His word, however thankful it is for those who bring it. Imagination is the natural resource of people who do not know the truth.
An impressive family line is exciting, but excitement is not the test.
Truth is solid and real. It is not fanciful, and it does not play to our love of sensation. It is precious, vital, practical. The things that only impress the mind or the imagination are not the things that feed the soul. Tracing your family line back to some famous ancestor may be exciting, but only to the flesh.
Older English Bibles end the verse with "godly edifying." The ESV reads "the stewardship from God that is by faith." One Greek letter separates the two words, and the writers quoted here judge the second to be the true reading.
Clearly "edification" is not the point here. The point is the right order of the house of God, and this in faith.
And that order is what love works to further.
The older English version reads "edifying," but the correct reading is "dispensation," or "house-law" — one changed letter in the Greek word makes the difference. Love furthers everything God has ordered as the rule of His house.
The verse ends on faith. God runs His house by it, and it works in both directions.
The apostle does not finish his sentence. Timothy would understand without question; so ought we. But he lets us know what he thinks of speculation: it produces barren questions for the mind. God's dispensation, by contrast, is in faith. It is faith that He uses both to dispense and to receive.
This is not a private matter of taste in study.
So we see that some were warned about their ministry. It had to be sound in the truth and profitable, not taken up with questions that do not build up. If they kept on with such troublesome ministry, they would show self-will, and they would surely have to be disciplined and silenced.
- Two sources. The "myths" came from the pagan schools, the "genealogies" from Jewish pride of ancestry. Both were imports. Neither grew out of what God had revealed.
- One appeal. Endless chains of descent make much of man and shut God out. They explain everything by what came before, not by the God who acts.
- One yield. Speculation can only produce questions. Imagination is never faith. What impresses the mind does not feed the soul.
- One alternative. The truer reading is not "edifying" but God's stewardship. That means the right ordering of His house, run on faith.
- One test for ministry. Teaching that raises questions without building anyone up is not a harmless hobby. In God's house it is self-will, and it has to be dealt with.
But the end of what is enjoined is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith;
Paul has just laid a charge on Timothy. This verse states the goal behind it, and answers a simple question: what is all that teaching for?
The English word misleads. Commentators say Paul does not mean the Ten Commandments here. He means the charge he has just given Timothy.
I am afraid the word "commandment" often gives the English reader a wrong impression. People in the Christian world turn so readily to what we call the Ten Commandments, the ten words of the law, that whenever the word "commandment" comes up, you can expect many — even children of God, who ought to know better — to slip straight back to the law without noticing. That was far from the writer's thought here... What the apostle means by the commandment is the charge he was laying on Timothy, his child in the faith and fellow worker.
One commentator draws the same lesson from this verse while writing about the two great commandments:
The man saw that the love which fulfils these two great commandments matters far more than offering all the sacrifices the law required. The sacrifices had their place, but they were only a means to an end. Love is the goal, "the aim of our charge," as 1 Timothy 1:5 tells us. The goal is greater than the means.
One writer takes each phrase in turn, and sets them all against idle speculation.
The aim of the charge is not idle speculation. It is love — God's own nature — enjoyed and active. It is purity in the affections, a pure heart that sees God. It is a conscience with nothing on it, happy in God's presence. And then faith: the spirit of dependence on God and confidence in Him. What a bright state to be in before God!
The first of the three reaches outward; the second and third are personal and Godward.
Second comes a good conscience. This one is very personal, while the first takes in other people. To keep a good conscience we must obey what we have learned from God. "A sincere faith" completes the three, and it connects the soul directly with God. It brings God into everything, in simple, genuine confidence that He is supreme.
These three things have a source, and commentators are clear that it is not the law.
These are the effects of the gospel when it comes home to believers, and the law simply cannot produce them. The law may convict us of the hatred and impurity of the heart. It may prove that the conscience is evil. And it has nothing to do with faith... The law works out wrath, not grace, and so it brings death, not life. This is not because the law is not good and holy, but because man is evil, godless and powerless.
Another writer shows how one produces the next.
A sincere faith in Christ clears the conscience of guilt and produces love out of a pure heart.
Notice what Timothy is not told to aim at. Nothing here is visible or impressive.
The charge was not to do some great service or make some great sacrifice. It was not doing great things before men, but being in a right condition before God. Love in the heart, "a good conscience" and "a sincere faith" are qualities that God alone can see, though others may see the effect they produce in a person's life.
One writer follows faith and conscience through this letter, and shows the cost of dropping either one:
In the first chapter he says the goal of the charge he told Timothy to keep, and to press on the saints, was "love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." Later in the same chapter he says, "holding faith and a good conscience," and tells him that some have put away the good conscience and so made shipwreck of the faith... Some have fallen into the great mistake of making everything of conscience and nothing of faith. It is just as great a mistake to make everything of faith and nothing of conscience.
- Charge — "Commandment" here means Paul's charge to Timothy, not the Ten Commandments. Read it as law and you reverse the whole point.
- Aim — Everything taught in the church is a means; love is the end, and the end is greater than the means.
- Source — Faith in Christ clears the conscience, and a clear conscience sets love free. The law could expose the problem, but never cure it.
- Depth — The goal is a condition only God sees: love, a good conscience, sincere faith. It is not a public achievement.
- Loss — Faith and conscience must be held together. Put away a good conscience and you make shipwreck of faith itself.
which [things] some having missed, have turned aside to vain discourse,
Paul has just told Timothy that the goal of his charge is love — flowing from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. Verse 6 is the sad opposite. Some people never reached that goal. Missing it did not make them quiet. It set them talking, and their talk went nowhere.
The three qualities Paul named are not achievements of religious effort. Grace produces them. The law never could.
What he calls for is love out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. The law does not produce this. Neither do human imaginings and questions. Only the gospel of grace does. Speculative questions, and anything else like them, do not touch the conscience or bring anyone into the presence of God. A sincere faith in Christ clears the conscience from guilt and produces love out of a pure heart.
This swerve is a missed aim. The men who missed it did not fall silent. Their talk was the evidence that they had missed.
The people the apostle describes were opponents who pushed the Jewish law, and he tells them plainly that they had missed their aim. Could they really claim a pure heart, or a good conscience, or sincere faith? What they showed was not love but empty talk. Through Christ even the weakest Christian walks in truth and love. We are loved perfectly, and so we love. Christ's sacrifice cleanses the heart by its power, and it makes the conscience good as well. Faith knows that all the evil and ruin are fully met in Christ's death and resurrection. So it rests at ease and pretends nothing, because all good is truly given by God and secured in His Son.
Older translations call this "vain jangling" — plenty of noise, nothing that feeds anyone. A confident tone proves nothing about understanding.
But some had turned aside from these ends of true soul-prosperity, to "vain jangling." This is simply idle, empty talk that gives no good to the hearers. They wanted to be teachers of the law. Yet Scripture solemnly declares that they understood neither what they said nor what they so forcefully affirmed. Bold, proud, dogmatic language does not always show honest conviction about the truth of what a man claims. It may instead point to a sad ignorance of the whole subject he is handling.
The drift has a predictable destination.
Some had left these great landmarks of Christianity behind and turned aside to empty discussions. And here we meet again the same corrupters of Christianity: teachers who pushed the Jewish law. They had rejected the Saviour, and then they filled the apostle's path with thorns. They wanted to teach the law. The human mind is equal to that.
The same drift did not stop with the first century.
The Christian world has largely turned aside in two directions. On one side it teaches made-up claims in the name of science. On the other it turns to genealogies tied to religious succession, apostolic and otherwise, with all the ritual built on that. So the religious arena is full of questioners and echoes with the uproar of vain jangling. What God aims at producing, and does produce where the truth holds sway, is love.
The swerve started before the talking did.
Those who swerved from the truth and turned aside to vain jangling — and there were many such in the apostle's day — did so because they had first let slip what once seemed to have been planted in their hearts by God.
These people were not outsiders. They stood inside the Christian company.
There were some in the Christian circle who had missed these great spiritual qualities of Christianity. Lacking them, they turned aside from the truth to empty talk. Christianity rests on the grace of God, and it brings the heart and conscience of a person into God's presence. When this grace is missed, our religious nature turns aside to empty words, and men become "law-teachers".
- Aim. Paul set one target: love from a pure heart, a good conscience and sincere faith. Verse 6 is about people who missed it.
- Source. Only the gospel of grace hits that target. Law and speculation never do, because questions leave the conscience untouched.
- Miss. The swerve began inside. What had seemed planted in the heart was let slip, and only then did the talking start.
- Drift. Once grace is missed, our religious nature reaches for the law. Teaching rules is work the human mind can do by itself.
- Result. The end product is empty talk that feeds no one. It comes with a confident tone that hides real ignorance of the subject.
desiring to be law-teachers, not understanding either what they say or concerning what they [so] strenuously affirm.
Paul has just told Timothy that the aim of his charge is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Now he turns to the people who have drifted away from it. They still want a platform, and the subject they choose is the law. The sting of the verse is this: the thing they teach with such confidence is the thing they understand least.
The wish to be a law-teacher is not where the trouble starts. One writer traces it back to something missing in the heart:
There were some in the Christian circle who had missed these great spiritual qualities of Christianity. Without them, they turned away from the truth to empty talk. Christianity, based on the grace of God, brings the soul, in heart and conscience, into the presence of God. When this grace is "missed", religious human nature turns aside to empty words, and men become "law-teachers". Such people do not see what their false teaching leads to. They do not understand the true use of the law they insist on so firmly.
Paul knew these men. They had shadowed his work everywhere:
They aimed at being law-teachers, but they did not understand what they said or what they insisted on so firmly. They were clearly the same men who pressed the Jewish law on everyone, always insisting on law-keeping and its rules. They were false teachers who twisted the gospel. They followed the apostle everywhere and tried to damage his work.
Paul's last phrase is about confident assertion. Strong words can hide an empty mind:
Bold, arrogant, dogmatic language does not always mean a man is honestly convinced of what he says. It may point instead to a pathetic ignorance of the whole subject he is handling. And nothing is used with more ignorance than the law, by many who think themselves experts on it. They would sooner sit as judge than let the law judge and expose their own hearts. Yet that is the main purpose God gave it for.
These teachers never grasped who the law is aimed at:
Yet the law is good, if one uses it lawfully. Law has the bad in view, not the good. Law exists to detect, convict, and punish. Law never made a "just man," still less "the good" man… It is a sharp weapon to wound and kill lawbreakers. It was never designed to form honest motives or a life of true righteousness. Its excellence is that it spares no evil, and man is evil by nature. Grace, not law, saves sinners.
The mistake costs more than it looks. A believer who takes the law as his rule of life gives up something real:
A Christian who takes up the law as the rule of his own life must first give up his place in Christ. He must abandon that righteousness of God which he is made in Him. The law was not enacted for the Christian. Of course, no Christian means such folly. But that is what the error amounts to. The very principle of taking the law for himself gives up all his blessing in Christ, though he neither knows it nor intends it.
Commentators apply Paul's words far beyond his own day. One writer shows what preaching law does to the picture of God:
Some were falsifying the Gospel in the apostle's day by preaching the law. Of these he says, with contempt, that they understand neither what they are saying nor the things they assert. He would speak the same way about the religious leaders of our own time. They put men under law. They urge them to come into the presence of God with vows on their lips that no one can keep. The Gospel reveals Him not as one who demands, but as one who gives. It is a solemn thing to falsify His testimony.
Another writer turns the verse on a common habit — sending brand-new believers out to teach:
The custom of many nowadays is to say to every newborn soul in Christ, "Go and work for the Lord." So we hear a great deal of "preaching." But in countless cases we may well say that they desire to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
- Missed — the trouble starts before the teaching. These men had missed the grace and the spiritual qualities at the heart of Christianity.
- Turned — empty talk fills the gap, and it takes the respectable shape of law-teaching.
- Claimed — they wanted the teacher's title, and the law let them sit as judge instead of being judged.
- Exposed — Paul's verdict is not that they got a detail wrong. They understood neither their own words nor their subject. Loud confidence proved nothing.
- Corrected — the law is good when used lawfully. It convicts the guilty. It never makes anyone righteous. Grace saves sinners, and no law-teacher can do that work.