Paul’s first letter to Timothy is a reminder—a plea—to the church to stay focused on advancing, making progress.  The church makes progress as it holds fast to the Word of God.  The Word of God gives us a clear sense of mission.  The Word of God gives us a way through uncertainty and difficulty.  The Word of God alive in the church is the Word of God at work in and through the church.  Life is for the work of discipleship; faith lives by works of love.  The Spirit causes the Word to live in us.  The Spirit is the power by which we can live the life to which God calls us.  The Spirit is with the church to help it stay focused.  The church that is focused on advancing the work of God grows in awareness of the presence, gifts, and blessings of the Spirit.

The trouble is our very human tendency, given all encouragement, means, and opportunity by the world, to get caught up in profitless things.  We have an innate tendency to allow our intellects to guide us down false paths, an innate tendency to permit our emotions to carry us down dirty rabbit holes.  It’s one thing to know something is harmful.  It’s quite another thing to avoid it (religiously) because we know it is harmful.  We know what smoking does to us.  We know what heavy alcohol use does to us.  We know what added sugar does to us.  So, what does straying from the Word do to us?

Paul had lived, worked, preached, and taught in Ephesus for some three years.  He wants his protégé to continue the work.  Frustratingly for Paul, and for Timothy, a big part of the work involves opposing faulty teaching, what Paul calls “strange doctrines” (1:3); more bluntly, he means false teaching.  English evangelical pastor, theologian, and Bible student John Stott, in his study of 1 Timothy, speaks of “rampant heresy” in Ephesus.[1]  It seems as if teaching what is false ought to be the problem of a long-gone age.  It’s still around—in the church—because heads still follow hearts, and neither are remarkably good at following God.  There is a way to salvation.  There is a way of life for us here.  Paul, who knew his Bible, surely remembered the proverb, “there is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death” (Pr 14:12).

Salvation or death.  Moses and the psalms speak of two ways.  Christ speaks of sheep and goats.  It’s important to know the difference; we may think it’s obvious, but maybe sometimes it’s not.  In Ephesus and everywhere he traveled, Paul was teaching the way to salvation; he was teaching the way of life for us here.  In Ephesus and everywhere he traveled, different teaching was always finding its way into the church, through teachers who liked better what they were teaching.  That different teaching was also making its way in through hearts open to different teaching.  If you could rewrite the Bible, what would you leave out, or add?  If you taught the faith, what would you wholeheartedly emphasize, and what would you wholeheartedly pass over in silence?

Paul addresses Timothy as his “true son in the faith” (1:2).  The aim of Paul’s teaching is just this: to raise up true children in the faith.  Such children are living the faith, advancing God’s work; they are not getting distracted or diverted into controversies over “useless speculation” (1:4).  In seminary, many of my fellow students were eager to take classes with the theology professors.  I was eager to take classes with the Bible professors.  I was less interested in reading what Barth, Moltmann, or Schleiermacher had to say, and much more interested in what Luke, Paul, and Moses had to say.  Paul identifies himself as “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God and of Christ Jesus our hope” (1:1).  That’s quite a claim!  His claim to be trustworthy, reliable, is this: he is speaking, teaching, at the command of God, “authorized directly by Christ.”[2]  No theologian can say that.

In Illinois, I spoke on a question at a meeting of that presbytery; I mentioned something Paul says.  Another elder quickly stood to respond that Paul wasn’t Jesus.  True, yet Paul teaches at the direct command of Jesus, commissioned by Jesus himself, to proclaim the faith in Spirit and truth.  Will Paul, then, teach what is contrary to the Word of God?  If we say that the words Jesus spoke have authority, but not the words of Paul, what are we really saying?

People can become so consumed with teaching what promises advancement, prosperity, and popularity here that they lose sight of the teaching that holds out life hereafter.  People want to be successful, liked, and approved of.  Paul tells Timothy, and us, what it is to be true to the Gospel: advancing the plan of God, which is by faith (1:4).  The false doctrines Paul warns against were teaching something other than faith: perhaps the focus of that teaching was knowledge or wisdom, virtue or power.  Knowledge, wisdom, virtue, and power can do much by way of self-justification, but true justification comes only by faith, only through Christ “who is our hope” (1:1).  Apart from this hope, we are not right with God and never can become so.  Apart from Jesus, frankly, there is no hope.  Grace, mercy, and peace come from him, but if people instead pursue knowledge as the world understands it, seek power as the world conceives it, grace, mercy, and peace will not seem so attractive.  Too often, blessing promised for tomorrow pales in comparison to allurements available now.

Advancing God’s plan is by faith.  Paul is teaching about faith, and “the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith” (1:5).  The implication seems to be that the teaching Paul warns us about is neither pure, nor good, nor sincere.  Those who teach it may call it love, but it is not love according to faith.  Anybody can teach what they call love; let us rather learn love according to faith.  Faith trusts the Word of God.

There are those who seem to know Scripture but not Christ.  I suppose some have thought that about me.  “Well, he knows his Bible, I guess, but . . . he just doesn’t seem to know Jesus.”  There are those who seem to know Jesus but not Scripture.  Neither is the lesser fault.  Now, Jesus is the Word.  If you would know Christ, know Scripture, and if you would know Scripture, know Christ.  Paul is cautioning us against something very old: turning God’s Word to our interests, our hearts, rather than turning over our interests, our hearts, to God’s Word.  I’ve heard blasphemy defined as using God for our own purposes.  To receive our purpose from God’s Word is always the right way.

The goal is love.  The way is love.  The Word is love.  Boy George—if you remember who he is—was on Oprah years ago (if you remember her); he said any love is good love; the audience let him know they thought that was bad thinking—this was a long time ago, you see.  Paul teaches love because he teaches Jesus.  Jesus is love, but let’s not make the mistake of thinking love is Jesus, any love is Jesus, any love is good love.

The love Paul teaches comes from a pure heart.  How can any heart be pure?  Blanche DuBois, of Streetcar Named Desire fame, memorably said she had never been untrue in her heart: the saddest thing that sad woman said.  Yet she so wanted it to be true: it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me!  If we all lived the lie, wouldn’t that make it true?

The love Paul teaches comes from a good conscience, a phrase he also uses elsewhere in his letters.  Peter speaks of it, too.  Scottish pastor and Bible teacher William Barclay suggests that it has to do with taking a good long look at yourself and finding nothing about which you ought to feel ashamed.[3]  If that’s the right way of understanding the phrase “good conscience,” I can’t say I have one, but I believe I have Christ.  Maybe a simpler way to take it is that a good conscience is what you have when your behavior is in line with your profession.  In other words, a good conscience happily testifies that, more and more, our deeds are living up to our words.

We need someone from outside ourselves, outside our heart, our conscience, outside our self-conceived faith, to show us, tell us, and change us.  Paul teaches that this someone is Jesus Christ.  Jesus has the power because he has the love; more, he is the love.  The Black-eyed Peas (anybody know who I’m talking about?) sang “Where Is the Love?” (2003): “Father, father, father, help us / Send some guidance from above.”  He has.  He does.

When God’s guidance, His truth, comes into conflict with their truth, people tend to cling to their truth.  They want their truth; God’s truth must fit with their truth, because, you know, who’s to say?  How can we say we know God’s truth?  Don’t judge!  People are very good at this, regardless of social position or political persuasion.  Barclay writes of how, “When a man takes the wrong way, his first instinct is to find excuses for himself.  He takes the Christian teaching and twists it to suit himself.”[4]  Barclay wrote that back in 1956.  And God is good at shining light, true light, and offering love, true love, and changing lives, by causing His own to want what He wants, love what He loves, and to follow the way He provides for us.  Along the way, He purifies our loving, makes our conscience good, and creates in us sincere faith.  More, He helps us to want these more than what the fallen, darkened places in our hearts and minds still crave.

Any talk, any teaching, that feeds the fallen places, is not faith talk, it isn’t God talk.  It’s idolatry, which always has one goal only: to serve and worship the fallen heart.  All the little golden statues and bejeweled images are instances of one idol, one false god: the fallen human heart.  None of us are exempt from that temptation; not theologians in their seminars, not those in the pews, nor pastors in their pulpits.  God, knowing this, helps us.  He gives us His Word.  He creates in us hearts fertile for it.  He gives us the light, the water and air of the Spirit.

Now to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

               [1] John Stott.  Guard the Truth: The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus.  Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity P, 1996.  24.

               [2] Stott, 39.

               [3] William Barclay.  Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.  Daily Study Bible.  Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1975.  34.

               [4] Barclay, 53.