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.