1 Timothy 1:3–7

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Clearly "edification" is not the point here. The point is the right order of the house of God, and this in faith.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 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.

A sincere faith in Christ clears the conscience of guilt and produces love out of a pure heart.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.