Keep sharing good news without ads.
Reading 1 Timothy 1:1-2 and understanding Paul's reason for writing this letter and why he sent Timothy to the church in Ephesus. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
The Apostle Paul sent his most beloved servant to his most beloved church that they would be reminded to cling to and hold fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ. A reminder that we could all use when we understand the text.
Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When We Understand the Text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. It is a brand new week, and we're going to begin a brand new book of study. In fact, you could call this a brand new series, because we're going to go through all three of Paul's pastoral letters, 1 and 2 Timothy and his letter to Titus.
We will begin with his first letter to his most beloved servant, his son in the faith, the one that Paul trusted the most in his missionary entourage, and that was his protege, Timothy. We'll talk a little bit more about that, as well as the date of this letter, the reason for writing it, and all of that.
But let's begin with the scriptures. 1 Timothy 1, beginning in verse 1. The Apostle Paul introduces himself, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy, my true child in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
The aim of our charge is love, that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make their confident assertions.
Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.
I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful, appointing me to His service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor and insolent opponent. But I received mercy, because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life.
To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience.
By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. That's our entire first chapter of 1 Timothy here.
So let's talk a little bit about this letter. We have at the very beginning the apostle Paul introducing himself. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. And for about the first 1800 years or so of the church, that was not disputed.
It was universally accepted that Paul was the author of this letter and that he was writing it to Timothy. The Timothy that we see referenced so many times in the book of Acts and then multiple times throughout Paul's letters as well.
I think it's something like eight of Paul's letters, not including 1 and 2 Timothy, that he mentions Timothy. Nine if you include the letter to the Hebrews as well. So this was Paul's most trusted servant.
And we see that mentioned in a few of his letters, like when Paul wrote to the Philippians. He said, I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon so that I too may be cheered of news of you. For I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare.
And then referencing those who were rivals, who were trying to stir up trouble for Paul. He says, for they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father, he has served me in the gospel.
I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me. And I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will be able to come to you also. And then Paul also references Timothy to the Corinthians.
1 Corinthians 4, I urge you then be imitators of me. And that is why I sent Timothy to you, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere in every church.
So as Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to imitate him in behavior, because he's an imitator of Christ. He talks about that in 1 Corinthians 11, 1. Who better to exemplify Paul's behavior in teaching than his most trusted son in the faith?
And that would be Timothy. Now according to chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians, Timothy had not arrived to them yet. It's like he was en route. And so that's what Paul was mentioning there in chapter 4. But Paul caring for that church in Corinth so much that he was going to send Timothy to them.
And when we were going through 1 and 2 Thessalonians, we talked about that. Like the Thessalonians thought that Paul didn't care that much for them if he was going to send Timothy and Silas to them. But Paul said, no, it's because I care for you so much that I sent Timothy to you.
I'm going to come to you as soon as I am able. But I was prevented by Satan from being able to get to you. So I sent Timothy and Silas to come back and check on you and see how you guys are doing. It's because I love you so much that I sent you Timothy.
So this was a trusted child in the faith to the Apostle Paul. And Paul has sent his most trusted servant to the church that he loves the most. At least we see the most affection from the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts and also in his letters for the church in Ephesus.
We see in Acts 20 when Paul addresses the Ephesian elders for the last time. He knows that on this side of heaven, he will never see them again. He's about to go back to Jerusalem. He's going to be imprisoned in Rome.
And then once he's released from that imprisonment, he's going to go further west and then kind of come back through the region. But he knows Ephesus will never be a stop for him again. And so when he commissions the elders there at Ephesus to preach the gospel and beware of the wolves, the false teachers that will even arise from among them, he shares tears with them.
They weep together and pray together. In Acts 20 .37, it says that he embraced them and kissed them, being sorrowful most of all because of the word that he had spoken, that they would not see his face again.
And then they accompanied him to his ship, and that was the last that they saw of the apostle Paul. But still showing great care for this church as later on, he sent Timothy to them. And all was not well in the Ephesian church, as we just read here at the opening of this letter.
As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. So one of Timothy's assignments in being sent to Ephesus was to weed out the false teachers and return everyone back to the soundness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Sound doctrine, that which flowed from the gospel of Christ. Now, as I said, Paul introduces himself at the start of this letter, and that was universally accepted for the first 1800 years of the church, that Paul was the author of this letter.
It's only been in the last 200 years or so that his authorship has been doubted. And not just in 1 Timothy, but also 2 Timothy and Titus. Why? Why is it that suddenly there are critics out there, skeptics, that doubt Paul as being the author of these three pastoral letters?
Well, it's partly because they've been in their ivory towers for too long. They start to look at the language of Paul's other letters, and they evaluate the language in these pastoral letters, and they see that it's different.
Paul uses different phrasing. He uses different words. He uses kind of a loftier language, even, in the pastoral letters than he used with the churches. It's so different that maybe Paul didn't ever actually write these letters at all.
They were written pseudonymously and only attributed to Paul, but it wasn't actually him who was behind the authorship of these letters. Well, there is a pretty obvious reason for why the language in these pastoral letters is different than Paul's letters to the rest of the churches.
First of all, it's because he's writing to individuals, whereas in the other letters, he's writing to an entire congregation. In the pastoral letters, he's writing to individual men, Timothy and to Titus.
So he's going to address them differently than he's going to be addressing a congregation. But secondly, Timothy and Titus were mature believers in the faith. They had to be in order to do the work that Paul was sending them to do.
They had to understand the scriptures well, and they had to be prime examples to the congregations that they were being sent to teach. They were an example of maturity, not just in knowledge, but also in behavior and character.
So, of course, Paul is going to speak to them differently than the way that he's going to speak to other believers in other churches that are not as mature in the faith, particularly the Corinthians and the Galatians, who needed to be rebuked because they were following after a different gospel.
Timothy and Titus were mature in the gospel. They were seasoned in the scriptures. And so Paul is going to talk with them differently than the way that he talks with the other churches. I should think that that reason would be quite obvious as to why the language would appear to be a little bit different.
There's another reason why we should not doubt that Paul was the author of this letter, and this reason is a little bit more historical. Tertullian, who lived between 160 and 225 AD, wrote a work entitled On Baptism.
And in that particular work, he talked about an elder of a church who had written a pseudonymous work entitled The Acts of Paul. So he wrote this work as though Paul wrote it. But it was his writing. He just attributed Paul's name to it.
Included in The Acts of Paul was a Pauline letter called Third Corinthians. Now, we do know that Paul wrote other letters to the Corinthians. He mentions in First Corinthians about another letter that he had written to them previously.
But if we were going to include it in canon, it would be like a prequel. It would be called Zero Corinthians. It wouldn't be Third Corinthians because it would have preceded First Corinthians. But anyway, Paul didn't actually write this Third Corinthians letter that appeared in The Acts of Paul.
It was written by this other elder. And when it was discovered that he had done this, he was removed from his office, and that work that he composed entitled The Acts of Paul was destroyed. We have no record of it at all except for what Tertullian wrote about it.
So this is how serious it was to write something and claim it to be scripture and apply an apostle's name to that work when that apostle didn't actually write it. This elder was removed from the church, and he was never allowed to teach in the church again.
That's how serious this offense was. So it's one thing to write something and attribute somebody's name to it in the sense that it might be like a narrative work. But this was an instance in which a letter was being written, and Paul's name was being attributed to it.
And that's just something you did not do. You did not write a pseudonymous work and attach someone's name to a letter that they didn't actually write. We saw what kind of problems that caused with the Thessalonians when we were going through 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
Particularly in that second letter, they thought that they had received a letter from Paul saying that the Day of the Lord had already happened. So you see what kind of disruption this would cause in the churches to attribute something to an apostle that they didn't actually write.
It was a very, very serious offense. It was adding to the Word of God. It was claiming something to be God's Word that wasn't actually God's Word, because whatever came from an apostle was as authoritative as if it had come from Christ himself.
So written by anyone else that then attributed it to the authority of an apostle would have been to write scripture. Therefore, it's the same as adding to the Word of God, which we're told in Proverbs and Deuteronomy and the book of Revelation, you absolutely should not do.
Do not add to this book. Do not take anything away from it. So these are just the evidences that we have here that Paul was indeed the writer of 1 Timothy, and we have no reason to doubt that he is the author of this particular book.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God, our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope. So when did Paul write this letter? Now, that's something that's a little bit more difficult to determine.
I read somewhere—I cannot remember when I read this. I think it was when I was reading or I was teaching through 1 Timothy at my church, which I can't even remember how long ago that was now. Four years ago?
Three or four years ago. I remember reading in my research leading up to teaching through 1 Timothy, there was somebody that wondered if when Paul was leaving Ephesus in Acts 20 that he left Timothy there, which is why he says, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrines.
So as he was going on to somewhere else and saying goodbye to those Ephesian elders for the last time, he left Paul there. Well, there's a couple of problems with that, because Paul didn't actually go to Ephesus when he addressed the Ephesian elders for the last time.
They came and met him at Miletus, I believe it was. And so he didn't set foot in Ephesus again because he was kind of a wanted man. There were people that wanted to kill him there. So he sent for the elders and they came to him.
So he didn't leave Timothy there since he never set foot there in the first place, at least in terms of the story or the account that we read in Acts 20. Plus it says in 1 Timothy 1 .3, Well, Paul wasn't going to Macedonia after he addressed those elders for the last time.
He was going to Jerusalem. He was heading back to Judea. So this would have been a different account altogether. Likely, this was after Paul's first imprisonment in Rome. So that would have been about 61 or 62 AD.
And then upon being released from his arrest in Rome, he went west by some accounts. He went all the way to Spain. And so it was while he was on that next missionary journey that he sent Timothy back to Ephesus.
So sometime between Paul's first imprisonment in Rome and his second imprisonment, because it was his second imprisonment when he was martyred. So the writing of this letter would have taken place after the events that we read about in the book of Acts.
But again, during the missionary work that he was doing between that first and second imprisonment, which would have been sometime around the mid -60s AD. So 63, 64, that would have been a pretty good estimate as to when Paul wrote this letter.
And this is according to what we read from some of the early fathers of the church, things that they wrote about this particular letter. And therefore, from their accounts, we can kind of assemble a kind of a timeline as to when we think Paul would have written this letter to Timothy.
Now the next one, which is the last letter that we have of Paul's in canon, 2 Timothy. This was right before he was martyred. So that one would have been written sometime around 67 or 68 AD, right before Nero put him to death for preaching the gospel of Christ.
But this one, about five years before. So that's about our date for this particular letter. And the occasion, of course, is to send Timothy to Ephesus to correct some of the false teaching that is going on there.
Now they haven't forgotten the gospel, but that's certainly at risk. Because they've wandered away from teaching sound doctrine, that which flows from the gospel of Jesus Christ. And instead, some of their teachers have wandered off into myths and endless genealogies, promoting speculation rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
And so Timothy, as Paul's most trusted servant, is going to go and rebuke those elders. Timothy himself is probably going to be taking on the role of the head elder. So he would be the pastor of the church in Ephesus.
In a plurality eldership, he's going to be kind of the main overseer. And that's a common structure. We see in Jerusalem that James is the head elder there. Whenever Paul goes back to visit the Christians there at Jerusalem, it's James that's referenced as being the one who is the head of that particular church.
So here at Ephesus, Paul is sending Timothy to do that work. Timothy, who is a young man at this time, you're probably familiar with 1 Timothy 4 .12, where Paul says, don't let anyone look down on you because of your youth.
So Timothy was a young man, probably in his early 30s. And this was a letter that was hugely encouraging to me because I was ordained at 29 and became the head teaching elder. I think I was 31 or 32. It was right around my 32nd birthday.
And so I read a lot of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus during those first couple of years of assuming the role of teaching pastor because Timothy was probably about that age. He was probably in his young 30s.
And there would have been other elders at the church in Ephesus that would have been older than he was, maybe even considered themselves more seasoned. But clearly there was reason for Timothy to have to go there to return this church to a soundness in their teaching that they had forgotten.
And we'll address that a little bit more as we continue on through this first chapter of 1 Timothy. So there's a little bit about the occasion and background of this particular letter date, understanding that Paul was the one who wrote it, and just how trusted a servant in the Lord Timothy was to him, that Paul would be sending Timothy to his favorite church to once again remind them of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that everything that is taught from the pulpit of a church needs to flow from that.
We've forgotten that in many churches, especially here in America today. And we'll be addressing those things as we continue through this particular study. I'm excited to embark on this with you, and I hope that you'll join me again tomorrow as we continue our study of the book of 1 Timothy.
Let us pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for these wonderful letters that were written by your servants so that we also might be instructed by your Holy Spirit to cling to and hold fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Everything that we could learn about God and who you are, we learn from the grace that is found there and the good news that Jesus died for sinners. And it is through our faith in Christ that we are saved, that we have fellowship with God, that we look forward to a future kingdom with God, all of this coming from the gospel.
And so we desire to hold fast to this and that we grow in it all the more. We never graduate from the gospel, but we just mature in our understanding of it as we grow together in Christ. So lead us in this particular study as we embark on Paul's letter to Timothy.
May we be convicted of sin. May we desire all the more the holiness of Christ in our lives. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.
Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.
Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.