1 TIMOTHY
Introduction to Timothy
I A Dangerous Heresy-- (William Barclay pg. 4)
A. It is clear that in the forefront of the situation against which the Pastoral Epistles were written there was a dangerous heresy which was threatening the welfare of the Christian Church. If we can distinguish the various characteristic features of that heresy, we may be able to go on to identify it.
a. It was characterized by speculative intellectualism. It produced questions (1 Timothy 1:14); those involved in it had a craving for questions (1 Timothy 6:4); it dealt in stupid and senseless questions (2 Timothy 2:23); its stupid questions are to be avoided (Titus 3:9), The word used in each case for questions is ekzètèsis, which means speculative discussion. This heresy was obviously one which was a playground of the intellectuals, or rather the pseudo-intellectuals of the Church. It was characterized by pride, The heretics are proud, although in reality they know nothing (1 Timothy 6:4). There are indications that these intellectuals set themselves on a level above ordinary Christians; in fact, they may well have said that complete salvation was outside the grasp of the ordinary man or woman and open only to them. At times, the Pastoral Epistles stress the word all in a most significant way. The grace of God, which brings salvation, has appeared to all (Titus 2:11). It is God's will that all should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). The intellectuals tried to make the greatest blessings of Christianity the exclusive possession of a chosen few; and, in complete contrast, the true faith stresses the all-embracing love of God.
b. There were within that heresy two opposite tendencies. There was a tendency to self-denial. The heretics tried to lay down special food laws, forgetting that everything God has made is good (1 Timothy 4:4-5). They listed many things as impure, forgetting that to the pure all things are pure (Titus 1:15). It is not impossible that they regarded sex as something unclean and belittled marriage, and even tried to persuade those who were married to renounce it, for in Titus 2:4 the simple duties of married life are stressed as being binding on Christians.
c. But this heresy also resulted in immorality. The heretics even went into private houses and led away weak and foolish women who were swayed by all kinds of desires (2 Timothy 3:6). They claimed to know God, but denied him by their actions (Titus 1:16). They were to impose upon people and to make money out of their false teaching. To them, gain was godliness (1 Timothy 6:5); they taught and deceived for sordid gain (Titus 1:11).
d. On the one hand, this heresy produced an un-Christian self-denial, and on the other it produced an equally unChristian immorality. It was characterized, too, by words and tales and genealogies. It was full of godless chatter and useless controversies (1 Timothy 6:20). It produced endless genealogies (1 Timothy 1:4; Titus 3:9). It produced myths and fables (1 Timothy 1:4; Titus 1:14).
e. It was at least in some way and to some extent tied up with Jewish legalism. Among its devotees were those 'of the circumcision' (Titus 1:10). The aim of the heretics was to be teachers of the law (1 Timothy 1:7). It pressed on people Jewish myths and the commandments of those who reject the truth (Titus 1:14).
f. Finally, these heretics denied the resurrection of the body. They said that any resurrection that a Christian was going to experience had been experienced already (2 Timothy 2:18). This is probably a reference to those who held that the only resurrection Christians experienced was a spiritual one when they died with Christ and rose again with him in the experience of baptism
(Romans 6:4).
B. Beginnings of Gnosticism (William Barclay pg. 7) mixture Philosophy/Mysticism/Judaizers (Leglists-circumcision)/Christianity
a. Is there any heresy which fits all this material? There is, and its name is Gnosticism. The basic idea behind Gnosticism was that all matter is essentially evil and that spirit alone is good. That basic belief had certain consequences. The Gnostics believed that matter is as eternal as God, and that when God created the world he had to use this essentially evil matter. That meant that, to them, God could not be the direct creator of the world. In order to touch this flawed matter, he had to send out a series of emanations (“to flow from” or “to pour forth or out of” or divine powers—they called them aeons (in Neoplatonism, Platonism, and Gnosticism a power existing from eternity; an emanation or phase of the supreme deity.)- each one more and more distant from himself until at last there came an emanation or aeon so distant that it could deal with matter and create the world. Between human beings and God there stretched a series of these emanations, each one containing an individual's name and genealogy. So Gnosticism literally had endless myths and endless genealogies. If men and women were ever to get to God, they must, as it were, climb this ladder of emanations; and, to do that, they needed a very special kind of knowledge including all kinds of passwords to get them past each stage. Only a person of the
highest intellectual ability could hope to acquire this knowledge and know these passwords and so get to God.
b. Further, if matter was totally evil, the body was altogether evil. From that, two opposite possible consequences sprang. Either the body must be held in check so that a rigorous self-discipline resulted, in which the needs of the body were as far as possible eliminated and its instincts, especially the sexual drive, as far as possible destroyed; or it could be held that, since it was evil, it did not matter what was done with the body, and its instincts and desires could be given full rein. The Gnostics therefore became either people who denied themselves all physical comforts or people to whom morality had ceased to have any relevance at all.
c. Still further, if the body was evil, clearly there could be no such thing as its resurrection. It was not the resurrection of the body but its destruction to which the Gnostics looked forward. All this fits accurately the situation of the Pastoral Epistles. In Gnosticism, we see the intellectualism, the intellectual arrogance, the myths and the genealogies, the self-denial and the immorality, the refusal to contemplate the possibility of a bodily resurrection, which were part and parcel of the heresy against which the Pastoral Epistles were written.
d. One element in the heresy has not yet been fitted into place - the Judaism and the legalism of which the Pastoral Epistles speak. That too finds its place. Sometimes Gnosticism and Judaism joined hands. We have already said that the Gnostics insisted that to climb the ladder to God a very special knowledge was necessary, and that some of them insisted that for the good life a strict self-discipline was essential. It as the claim of certain of the Jews that it was precisely the Jewish law and the Jewish food regulations which provided that special knowledge and necessary self-discipline, and so there were times when Judaism and Gnosticism went hand in hand.
e. It is quite clear that the heresy behind the Pastoral Epistles was Gnosticism. Some have used that fact to try to prove that Paul could have had nothing to do with the writing of these letters, because, they say, Gnosticism did not emerge until much later than Paul. It is quite true that the great formal systems of Gnosticism, connected with such names as Valentinus and Basilides, did not arise until the second century; but these great figures only systematized what was already there. The basic ideas of Gnosticism were there in the atmosphere which surrounded the early Church, even in the days of Paul. It is easy to see their attraction, and also to see that, if they had been allowed to flourish unchecked, they could have turned Christianity into a speculative philosophy and wrecked it. In facing Gnosticism, the Church was facing one of the gravest dangers which ever threatened the Christian faith.
II. Error and Heresy
A. That you might pass on the order to some of the people there, not to teach erroneous novelties, nor to give their attention to idle tales and endless genealogies, which only succeed in producing empty speculations rather than the effective administration of God's people, which should be based on faith. The instruction which I gave you is designed to
produce love which issues from a pure heart, a good conscience and an undissembling faith. But some of these people of whom I am talking have never even tried to find the right road, and have turned aside out of it to empty and useless discussions, in their claim to become teachers of the law, although they do not know what they are talking about, nor do they realize the real meaning of the things about which they dogmatize. It is clear that behind the Pastoral Epistles there is some heresy which is endangering the Church. Right at the
beginning, we should try to see what this heresy is. We will therefore collect the facts about it now.
B. This passage brings us face to face with two of its main characteristics. It dealt in idle tales and endless genealogies. These two things were not peculiar to this heresy but were deeply ingrained in the thought of the ancient world:
a. First, the idle tales. One of the characteristics of the ancient world was that the poets and even the historians loved to work out romantic and fictitious tales
about the foundation of cities and of families. They would tell how some god
came to earth and founded the city or took in marriage a mortal woman and
founded a family. The ancient world was full of stories like that.
b. Second, the endless genealogies. The ancient world had a passion for genealogies. We can see this even in the Old Testament with its chapters and names and in the New Testament with the genealogies of Jesus with which Matthew and Luke begin their gospels. A man like Alexander the Great had a completely artificial pedigree constructed in which he traced his lineage back on the one side to Achilles and Andromache and on the other to Perseus and Hercules. It would be the easiest thing in the world for Christianity to get lost in endless fables and stories about origins and
in elaborate and imaginary genealogies. That was a danger which was fundamental to the situation in which Christian thought was developing. It was peculiarly threatening from two directions.
i. It was threatening from the Jewish direction. To the Jews, there was no book in the world like the Old Testament. Their scholars spent a lifetime studying it and expounding it. In the Old Testament, many chapters and many sections are long genealogies; and one of the favorite occupations of the Jewish scholars was to construct an imaginary and inspiring biography for every name in the list! People could go on doing that forever; and it may be that that was what was partly in Paul's mind. He may be saying: When you ought to be working at the Christian life, you are working out imaginary biographies and genealogies. You are wasting your time on trivia when you should be getting down to life and living' This may be a warning to us never to allow Christian thinking to get lost in speculations which do not matter.
ii. But this danger came with an even greater threat from the Greek side. At
this time in history, a Greek line of thought was developing which came to
be known as Gnosticism. We find it especially in the background of the Pastoral Epistles, the Letter to the Colossians and the Fourth Gospel.
C. Gnosticism
a. It was entirely speculative. It began with the problem of the origin of sin and of suffering. If God is altogether good, he could not have created them. How then did they get into the world? The Gnostic answer was that creation was not creation out of nothing; before time began, matter existed. They believed that this matter was essentially imperfect and evil; and out of this essentially evil matter the world
was created.
b. No sooner had they reached this point than they ran into another difficulty. If
matter is essentially evil and God is essentially good, matter could not have
been touched by God. So they began another set of speculations.
c. They said that God put out an emanation, a divine power, and that this emanation put out another emanation, and the second emanation put out a third emanation, and so on and on until there came into being an emanation so distant from God that
he could handle matter; and that it was not God but this emanation who created the world.
d. They went further. They held that each successive emanation knew less about God, so that there came a stage in the series of emanations when the emanations were completely ignorant of him - and, more, there was a final stage when the emanations were not only ignorant of God but actively hostile to him. So they arrived at the thought that the god who created the world was quite ignorant of and hostile to the true God.
e. Later on, they went even further and identified the God of the Old Testament with this creating god, and the God of the New Testament with the true God. They further provided each one of the emanations with a complete biography. And so they built up an elaborate mythology of gods and emanations, each with a story, a biography and a genealogy.
f. There is no doubt that the ancient world was riddled with that kind of thinking, and that it even entered the Church itself. It made Jesus merely the greatest of the emanations, the divine power closest to God. It placed him as the highest link in the endless chain between God and human beings.
g. This Gnostic line of thought had certain characteristics which appear all through the Pastoral Epistles as the characteristics of those whose heresies were threatening the Church and the purity of the faith.
i. Gnosticism was obviously highly speculative, and it was therefore intensely intellectually snobbish. It believed that all this intellectual speculation was quite beyond the mental grasp of ordinary people and was for a chosen few, the elite of the Church. So, Timothy is warned against profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge' (1 Timothy 6:20). He
is warned against a religion of speculative questions instead of humble faith
(1 Timothy 1:4). He is warned against the one who is conceited but really
understands nothing and who loves controversy and disputes about words (1 Timothy 6:4). He is told to shun 'profane chatter', for it can produce only
ungodliness (2 Timothy 2:16). He is told to avoid 'stupid and senseless controversies' which in the end can only lead to strife (2 Timothy 2:23).
ii. Further, the Pastoral Epistles go out of their way to stress the fact that this idea of an intellectual aristocracy is quite wrong, for God's love is universal. God wants everyone to be saved and everyone to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). God is the Savior of all, especially those who believe (1 Timothy 4:1 o). The Christian Church would have nothing to do with any kind of faith which was founded on intellectual speculation and which set up an arrogant intellectual elite.
iii. Gnosticism was concerned with this long series of emanations. It gave
to each of them a biography and a pedigree and an importance in the chain
between God and human beings. These Gnostics were concerned with 'endless genealogies' (1 Timothy 1:4). They went in for profane myths' about them (1 Timothy 4:7). They turned their ears away from the truth to myths (2 Timothy 4:4). They dealt in fables like the Jewish myths (Titus 1:14). Worst of all, they thought in terms of two gods and of Jesus as one of a whole series of mediators between God and human beings, whereas there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human' (1 Timothy 2:5). There is only one King of the ages, immortal, invisible; there is only one God (1 Timothy 1:17). Christianity had to renounce a religion which took the unique place from God and from Jesus Christ.
h. Sometimes Gnosticism was referred to as a system of Dualism (Mike Mazzalongo)
i. Two Elements: God/Mind – Flesh/Matter
ii. Both eternal
iii. God/Mind good – Flesh/matter evil
iv. Salvation = Escape from the flesh
v. Two ways to escape:
1. Asceticism (deny the flesh)
a. Fasting, flogging, abstaining from pork, etc.
b. No sex – No marriage
2. Antinomianism (indulge the flesh)
a. No laws
b. Immoral sex
III. The early Christian theologian Tertullian said that Paul wrote two letters to Timothy and one to Titus, which were composed concerning the state of the Church (de ecclesiastico statu). It is
not then surprising that the first name given to them was Pontifical Letters, that is, written by the pontifex, the priest, the controller of the church. Bit by bit, they came to acquire the name by which they are still known—the Pastoral Epistles. In these letters, we are confronted with the picture of a church with a fairly highly developed ecclesiastical organization. There are elders, bishops, overseers, and there are deacons. There is clearly here a quite elaborate structure within the Church—too elaborate, some would claim, for the early days in which Paul lived and worked. (William Barclay)
IV. Timothy --(William Barclay pg. 24)
A. Paul was never able to speak of him without affection in his voice. Timothy was a native of Lystra in the province of Galatia. It was a Roman colony; it called itself 'the most brilliant colony of Lystra, but in reality it was a little place on the edges of civilization. Its importance was that there was a resident Roman garrison there to keep control of the wild tribes of the Isaurian mountains which lay beyond. It was on the first missionary journey that Paul and Barnabas arrived there (Acts 14:8-21)
B. At that time, there is no mention of Timothy; but it has been suggested that, when Paul was in Lystra, he found a lodging in Timothy's home, in view of the fact that he knew well the faith and devotion of Timothy's mother Eunice and of his grandmother Lois (2 Timothy
1:5).
C. On that first visit, Timothy must have been very young (15-17 yrs old according to Skip Hietzig); but the Christian faith took hold of him, and Paul became his hero. Possibly his mother, Eunice and grandmother, Lois were saved during Paul’s first missionary trip.
D. It was at Paul's visit to Lystra on the second missionary journey that life began for Timothy (Acts 16:1-3). Young as he was, he had become a valuable member of the Christian church in Lystra. There was such a charm and enthusiasm in the young man that everyone spoke well of him. To Paul, he seemed the ideal person to be his assistant. Maybe even then he had dreams that this young man was the one to train to take over his work when the time came.
E. Timothy was the child of a mixed marriage: his mother was a Jew, and his father a Greek (Acts 16:1). Paul circumcised him. It was not that Paul was a slave to the Jewish law, or that he saw in circumcision any special virtue; but he knew that, if Timothy was to work among the Jews, there would be an initial prejudice against him if he was uncircumcised, and so he took this step as a practical measure to increase Timothy's usefulness as an evangelist.
F. From that time forward, Timothy was Paul's constant companion. He was left behind at Berea with Silas when Paul escaped to Athens, and later joined him there (Acts 17:14-15, 18:5). He was sent as Paul's messenger to Macedonia (Acts 19:22). He was there when the collection from the churches was being taken to Jerusalem (Acts 20:4). He was with Paul in Corinth when Paul wrote his letter to Rome (Romans 16:21). He was Paul's messenger to Corinth when there was trouble in that unruly church (1 Corinthians 4:17, 16:10). He was with Paul when he wrote 2 Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:1, 1:19). It was Timothy whom Paul sent to see how things were going in Thessalonica; and he was with Paul when he wrote his letter to that church (1 Thessalonians 1:1, 3:2, 3:6). He was with Paul in prison when he wrote to Philippi; and Paul was planning to send him to Philippi as his representative (Philippians 1:1, 2:19). He was with Paul when he wrote to the church at Colossae and to Philemon (Colossians 1:1; Philemon 1:1). Timothy was constantly by Paul's side; and, when Paul had a difficult job to do, Timothy was the one sent to do it.
G. Over and over again, there is affection in Paul's voice when he speaks of Timothy. When he is sending him to that sadly divided church at Corinth, he writes: I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord' (1 Corinthians 4:17). When he is planning
to send him to Philippi, he writes: 'I have no one like him... like a son with a father he has served with me in the work of the gospel' (Philippians 2:20, 2:22). Here he calls him 'his true child'. The word that he uses for true is gnesios. It has two meanings. It was the normal
word for a legitimate child, as distinct from illegitimate. It was also the word for genuine, as opposed to counterfeit. Timothy was the man whom Paul could trust and could send anywhere, knowing that he would go. Happy indeed is the leader who possesses a follower like that. Timothy is our example of how we should serve in the faith. Christ and His Church need servants like that.
V. Paul (Chuck Missler)
Saul, a Jew born a Roman citizen and raised in Tarsus
Educated in Jerusalem as a Pharisee under Gamaliel
Holds the coats while Stephen is stoned
Becomes a violent persecutor of the Church
On the road to Damascus, is confronted by Jesus
Visit with Ananias; blindness healed and is baptized
Stays in Damascus; during which he spends 3 year in the desert of Arabia and then returns
BECOMES THE APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES
3 years after his conversion, Paul is forced to flee in a basket
Goes to see Peter; Barnabas introduces to suspicious believers
Talks to Peter and John concerning Gentile Salvation, etc.
After 2 weeks, is smuggled out of Jerusalem
Taken to Caesarea, then to Tarsus
Spends 10 years in Tarsus; during which he visits Cilicia and Syria
Still unknown to believers in Judea
Barnabas brings Saul to Antioch; they teach together 1 year
Saul, Barnabas, and Titus bring famine relief money for Judea
They meet privately with church leaders, who acknowledge Saul’s ministry to the Gentiles
Later years, arrested at Caesarea and for about two years and transferred to Rome and
Under house arrest for a while in Rome with much freedom.
Released for about 5 years, but then again captured and was put in the bottom of the
dungeon.
Later beheaded under Nero.
VI. Warnings in the 1st Timothy letter: (Chuck Missler)
--Some have turned aside 1:6
--Some have made a shipwreck 1:19
--Some shall fall away 4:1
--Some have turned after Satan 5:15
--Some have been led astray 6:10
--Some have missed the mark 6:21
--Our Challenge: Finishing well . . .
VII. The Modern Church (Chuck Missler)
--Where’s the Gospel in the modern church? Several attend church where they never hear of
the gospel. The blood and the cross are never mentioned.
--Where’s the call to obedience and accountability?
--Which book in the NT chronicles the early church practices? Acts. How many times does the
word “Love” appear in the book of Acts? 0
--The symbol of the “Emergent Church” = An apple with a worm emerging . . .
in the process of coming into being or becoming prominent.
VIII. The Importance of 1 Timothy (Mike Mazzalongo
--Source for church organization
--Stress the importance of teaching correct doctrine
--They demand holy living of the leaders and the members
--Provide historical information
--God speaks to us as He did to them
