I TIMOTHY 1:1-14

I was thumbing through my old King James Bible given to me by my grandmother for Christmas when I was 13 years old, and I found a tiny piece of yellowing paper with the above Bible passage printed on it. I have no idea where it came from – probably as part of a Bible drill in church youth group. But I decided that it might be a sign from God that there was a message in those verses for me. I see nothing whatsoever wrong in accepting such fortuitous occurrences as possible examples of divine guidance. My problem, however, is with those who approach a portion of Scripture and immediately jump from reading it to finding an application for their own lives. In the process, they are leaping over the necessary step of understanding the text first.

Interpretation

My own personal way of understanding a passage is to first consider its context. It can be pictured as below with the adjacent verses:

A. “Charge” to Timothy (1:1-5)

B. “Certain persons” (1:6-11)

C. Thanksgiving (1:12-17) – ending “AMEN”

A'. “Charge” to Timothy (1:18-19a)

B'. “Certain persons” (1:19b-20)

Towner similarly notes the close relationship of 1:3-7 to 1:18-20 shown above, and Timothy as a child in 1:2 and 1:18 demonstrates the same thing. And in fact, the organization of the whole letter (described in the post “I Timothy: Introduction to the literary Structure”) indicates that the closest parallel/contrast between these verses in chapter 1 is found in I Timothy 6. That chapter not only describes true teachers of the word in marked contrast to the false teachers described in 1:6-11, but it also repeats in vv. 20-21 the earlier warning against false teachers.

Here were my initial observations upon reading through this passage:

Verses 1-2 Paul departs somewhat from his usual pattern of beginning with grace and peace by adding “mercy,” which becomes important for Paul personally at the end of this overall passage (in 1:13). Also, he does not repeat “grace and mercy” in the reverse order. Thirdly, he does not follow the opening greeting with a thanksgiving section, but plunges right into the problem that Timothy is facing at Ephesus, to which he is ministering. This all indicates, as commentators have pointed out, to the seriousness of the problem at that church.

Verses 3-7 The problems with the teachers in Ephesus are enumerated as teaching different doctrines, wasting their time on subjects that might not be heretical but were highly speculative, not having the final goal of teaching in mind, and wanting to teach when they were not yet equipped to do so.

Verses 8-11 This seems to be a digression of sorts that appears to say that the main purpose of the OT law was to bring people to a realization of their sin and not to be used for any other purpose. I am immediately reminded of the many sermons I heard growing up which continued to preach hell and brimstone to the already convinced. It seemed like a colossal waste of time to me and could have been spent much more profitably in building up the congregation according to the goals outlined in 1:5.

Verses 12-14 Happily, Paul now turns the spotlight on his own life of sinfulness in a section of self-refection on God's grace.

Questions to be answered

At this point, several points arise in my mind. There is the question of what the “myths and endless genealogies” consist of. I also wonder if I am correct in concluding that v. 5 outlines the goals that godly teaching should produce? Also, am I correct in my understanding of 1:8 regarding the purpose of the law?

To clear up these three points, I will turn to some trustworthy commentaries for guidance.

I Timothy 1:4 Regarding endless genealogies, I came up with the following suggestions:

NRSV Study Bible: “uncertain, but probably speculations on biblical [i.e. Old Testament] texts”

Stibbs: “possibly fanciful additions to, and interpretations of the OT”

Ward: He doubts that it has anything to do with much later Gnostic beliefs. More likely it “savors of rabbinical speculation...invented stories of patriarchal pedigrees.” He and many other commentators (such as D. Guthrie, Lea and Griffin, Knight, and Towner) cite the Book of Jubilees as a prime example of this tendency. Towner additionally cites pseudo-Philo and calls such speculations “wheel-spinning futility.” And Knight offers decisive reasons why it couldn't be Gnosticism as well as giving many other examples of early Jewish speculative writings of this sort.

Standing alone among the sources I consulted was Hanson who expresses the unsupported opinion that Paul would have seen nothing whatsoever wrong with the sorts of extrabiblical writings mentioned above. Therefore he must have been referring to some sort of Jewish proto-Gnosticism concerning the Creation proceeding from God through a whole host of lesser spiritual entities or emanations until finally arriving at the flawed material existence we see around us. This was in fact the belief of much later Gnosticism, but there is no evidence that the Jews of Paul's time ever speculated in that manner. Such an outlier as Hanson demonstrates that it is very dangerous to take any one scholar's, or especially non-scholar's, opinion as gospel truth.

I Timothy 1:5 As to whether this verse does indeed outline the final goal of all good teaching, I was pleased to see that interpretation confirmed in all of the sources I consulted. This may seem obvious to many of you, but I have been amazed before to discover that what I thought was the obvious meaning of a passage was not so obvious to others. And conversely, I have also been caught off guard when others pointed out to me that my personal interpretation was not correct.

Some additional implications I had not considered were pointed out by these commentators:

Both Ward and Stibbs stated that the four characteristics in this verse are acquired in reverse order.

Similarly, Knight says that love is the goal and it comes from the other three sources. And Towner says that the final goal is love, produced “from the perspective of three interior features of genuine belief.

Hanson perceptively notes, “The goal of teaching “is not meant to create endless discussion groups.” Years ago, I was convicted of that danger in my own teaching when I read C.S. Lewis' book The Great Divorce. There is a pastor in that fiction book who refuses to budge beyond “purgatory” to heaven because that would take all the fun out of teaching his small Bible study if all his speculative questions were definitively answered there.

I Timothy 1:8 My final concern was whether I was correct in my understanding of the purpose of the law mentioned in this verse. Lea and Griffin do agree in that interpretation, and Stibbs adds that the order of sins listed here is roughly the same as found in the Ten Commandments. Knight treats it as a very complicated question, but in the end agrees with the others that the Mosaic moral law is what is in mind here.

Again, Hanson is an outlier. He feels that this verse proves that Paul was not at all the author of this epistle since this verse takes a quite different view of the law than Paul would have been comfortable expressing. Hanson says that for this author, “using the law correctly simply means being a law-abiding citizen.” I can't help feeling that Hanson began with his skeptical view of Paul's authorship and then misconstrued the meaning of this verse in order to prove it.

Application

Armed with this background, I can now turn to personal application. And one useful way in which to do that is to put myself in the shoes of the three major characters in this section: Paul, Timothy, and the false teachers.

Paul

As a senior teacher helping out other teachers with less experience, I can to some small extent relate to Paul. For years, my main ministry was teaching in small groups and Sunday school. But slowly I came to the realization that it was time to step away from my role as the primary teacher and time to begin helping prepare others to take my place. I first did this by starting to function as the organizer of an ever-growing and ever-changing group of co-teachers. I would lay out each semester's lesson plan (some of which are found in this blog) with suggestions as to how each lesson could be approached. Many of these new teachers went on to start their own Sunday school classes. I also conducted a few more intensive one-on-one mentoring sessions with younger church leaders. In this activity I found that I often managed to learn as much as I imparted. Today, when it is more difficult to conduct any in-person interactions, I am relying on the internet to convey to others what I may have learned over the years.

I found that the greatest barrier to being a mentor rather than the actual presenter of material is to shed the egotism often involved in appearing before a group as the “expert.”

Timothy

By reading Paul's words as if they were directed toward me instead of Timothy, I can gain a quite different perspective. Although I may have somewhat more years of experience as a teacher than Timothy did at the time this letter was written, I cannot by any means feel that I am too advanced to relate to him. I have tried very hard, for one thing, to admit to myself and others that any pretense of intellectual superiority is due strictly to the scholarly sources I have stolen from. And in addition, God always has a way of cutting me down to size whenever I begin preaching instead of teaching the word. My words have often turned around to convict me more than my audience.

False Teachers

Here is one group that I would like to dismiss from consideration by simply saying that I can't relate to them at all. But I can't in good conscience do that. Actually, this is the group that I can relate to the best. They wasted their audience's time with endless genealogies, and I am tempted to just point to the Mormons as a modern example. Or I could point to my prime target in several posts: dispensationalists and their endless speculations regarding the details of the end times.

However, if I am honest with myself, I must admit that I have been guilty of the same sin when I bore my Sunday school classes with my lectures on the literary structures found in the Bible. As a former co-teacher was fond of saying toward the end of his class explaining a passage, “So what?” In other words, all that is nice to know, but what does it mean in my life? I began to recognize that the application aspect of Bible study was a weakness in my own presentations. So I have to constantly push myself in that uncomfortable direction and/or surround myself with those who can supplement my teachings with that missing component.