First Timothy 1:1
Paul was writing to Timothy and the Bible says in I Timothy 1:1, “Paul, an
apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior, and Lord Jesus
Christ, which is our hope.” Paul identified himself simply as an apostle of Jesus Christ. We
know that the word “apostle” means “one who is sent.” Paul did not become an apostle
because it was a career that he chose. He became an apostle because God sent
him. God commanded him to become an apostle. For the same reason each of us who
are believers should do what we do. We pray and we ask for God’s will to be
done. We lift our hearts to God, and we say to Him, “Here am I Lord, send me.” When we do so, we know the same thing that Paul
knew: that God is guiding and directing our lives. Because we honestly pray for
the will of God to be done, we know that His will is being done in what He has
directed each of us to do.
Evidently Paul wanted to make it very clear who had called him and
who had sent him. Three times Paul mentioned Jesus in
this first verse, twice by name and once as “Savior.” Paul called Jesus four
different things. He called Jesus Lord. He called Jesus Savior. He called Jesus
God. And he called Jesus “our hope.” Recognizing Jesus as Lord is a requirement of salvation.
Romans 10:9 says, “That if thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus…” If Jesus is truly your
Lord and if He sends you to do something, then you are going to go do it. The
Apostle Paul was a “sent one.” He was sent by Jesus, and therefore his
authority came from Jesus.
One of the reasons that we are willing to go wherever He wants us
to go and do whatever He wants us to do is because He is our Savior. He died
for us. We owe Him everything. We are not our own. We are bought with a price.
We recognize Him as being our Lord because first of all He became our Savior.
It is important to notice that the Bible calls Jesus, God our
Savior. By saying that Jesus is the Son of God, we are also saying that He is
God the Son. In Him dwells all the fullness of the godhead bodily. Jesus is God
in every sense of the word. That is expressed very clearly here in First
Timothy 1:1 just as it is many, many other places in the New Testament. It is
not surprising that Paul makes it clear in the very first verse of his letter
to Timothy that Jesus is God. Many people understand the humanity of Jesus, but
not as many recognize His divinity.
The forth thing that Paul said about Jesus is that He is “our hope.” In the New
Testament the word “hope” has a different emphasis than we use sometimes for the
word. We use the word “hope” to mean maybe something will happen and maybe it won’t,
such as, “I hope we get some rain this weekend.” The word “hope” in the Bible
refers to expectation. We look forward to the day when we will be in heaven
forever, and we look forward to the day when Jesus returns to the earth and
transforms the world. That’s the “hope” of the Christian. People of the world
have hope in this life only. The believer’s hope is a sure hope that extends
beyond the grave.
In First Timothy 1:2 Paul wrote, “Unto Timothy, my own son in the
faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.” According to
the Bible all Christians are members of the family of God. For some Christians
the only family with which they can have a relationship is the family of God.
This appeared to be the case with the Apostle Paul. He called Timothy his “own son in the
faith”
because evidently Paul had played a part in the birth of Timothy’s faith. Of
course, after someone comes to believe in Christ, they also need to grow in
faith and in Christ. One of the reasons that this letter was written was to
help Timothy be prepared for his responsibilities as a pastor in the churches
where Paul had also worked.
In order to be equipped for what lie ahead, Paul knew that Timothy
needed “grace, mercy, and peace.” Grace refers to God’s gifts and God’s
enabling that comes through Jesus Christ. Grace is unmerited. No one can
deserve it or earn it. Grace is available because of what Jesus did. The
Christian life starts and ends with grace. Grace is everything. With grace you
can do anything. Without grace you will be incapable of knowing or serving God.
God has a great storehouse of grace available. If you accomplish anything it
will be by the grace of God, so all that you need is grace.
But you are weak and will easily fail. That’s why you still need
mercy. Grace is when God gives you what you do not deserve, and mercy is when
God does not give what you do deserve. We are sinners, but God is merciful. No
matter how much we fail or how great are our sins, God will always have more
mercy than we will ever have sins. There is no one that has sinned too much
that they cannot be forgiven. Anyone who serves God in this world does so not
because of their own goodness, but only because of God’s mercy. First John 1:9
says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins, and to cleans us from all unrighteousness.” In First
Timothy 1:2 Paul is reminding Timothy that he will still need to rely on the
mercy of God.
We need grace and mercy that can only come from God through
Christ, and we also need “peace.” We live in a world that has so many uncertainties, fears, and
difficulties that it truly does require divine intervention in order to have
peace. The world seeks peace where it can never be found. Jesus said to His
disciples, “My peace I give unto you.” There is a peace that passes
understanding. It comes from having faith in God. If we do not have this peace,
we will not be very effective in serving Him in this world. Thank God that we
can have all three through Christ. We can have “grace, mercy, and peace from
God our Father, and Jesus Christ our Lord.”
In I Timothy 1:1 the Bible made very
clear the deity of Christ. Christ is God. In I Timothy
1:2 two of the three persons of the trinity are emphasized: God the Father and
God the Son. Jesus is God, God the Son; but there is also God the Father. In
ways that we cannot totally understand, they are distinct individuals and yet
they are one. If anyone denies the deity of Christ or the trinity then they are
not of God and they do not understand the scriptures.
In I Timothy 1:3 Paul is pointing out to Timothy the great
importance of sound doctrine and right teaching. It’s not enough to have good intentions.
It’s not enough to have zeal. Everything in the Christian life centers around
and emanates from sound doctrine. If the doctrines are wrong, the behaviors and
actions will be wrong. The Bible says, “As I besought thee to abide still at
Paul gives a warning to Timothy in verse 4 about certain things to
avoid if one wishes to be a student and a teacher of sound doctrine. It says, “Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister
questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.” We do not
know specifically what fables and genealogies that Paul is talking about. But
we do not need to know. It is the principle that matters. Anything that might
“minister questions” should be avoided. The purpose of the Christian should be
to talk about things that build up someone’s faith. That’s what is meant by “godly edifying
which is in faith.” The word “edify” means to build up. There are certain subjects
and there is a negative way of talking about certain subjects that will
contribute to putting questions into the minds of the hearers. Some cults make
this mistake by bringing into their discussions other writings besides the
Bible, and these other writings are on the same level as “fables.” The Bible
alone is the source for all faith and sound doctrine. Of course, the Bible can
be used improperly. The proper way to teach the Bible is to have a goal to
build up the faith of the hearers, and never to tear down. The gospel means
good news. If you teach the good news the way it ought to be taught, then you
will say good and positive things that will build up the faith of the hearers.
The Bible says in I Timothy 1:5, “Now the end of the commandment
is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith
unfeigned.” We have already said before and we must say again that if you
are going to understand how to truly live for God in this world, you must understand
the difference between law and grace. Some people are confused and others are
misguided about what are the laws and what are the commandments that one needs
first of all to obey? We know what the law encompasses. It is the Ten
Commandments and all the other commandments of the Bible. Paul is saying by the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit that this right here in I Timothy 1:5 is the
exact description of what a Christian will do if that Christian will serve God
and follow God in the world. “Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure
heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.”
Three things are mentioned as being “the end of the
commandment.” The first one should not surprise us: “charity out of
a pure heart.” Charity means love. When you first became a Christian hopefully
someone told you that the most important thing you could ever do to learn to
serve God was to learn to love. Jesus taught us the importance of love. He told
us to love our enemies, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love one
another, and to love God with all the heart and all the
mind and all the soul and all the strength. The more that we learn to love, the more that we are like God, and the more that we
are able to do the will of God. “God is love.” “For God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”
“The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart.” In order
to have a pure heart your heart has to be cleansed. Lack of love is a sure sign
of sin and of selfishness. You cannot love others if you are centered on
yourself. Love out of a pure heart refers to a love that is connected with
God’s holiness and morality. Some people have justified their own immorality by
calling it love. That’s not love out of a pure heart.
One achieves the end of the commandment also by having a “good
conscience.” Your conscience is your knowledge of yourself in connection with
your knowledge of a standard of right and wrong. Do not ever purposely violate
your own conscience. “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” It’s important to
have a good conscience because having one is imperative to being rightly
related to God and having confidence in Him. If you do violate your conscience,
you can make things right through confession to Jesus Christ. He is always ready
and willing to forgive.
The third thing needed to achieve the end of the commandment is to
have “faith unfeigned.” “The just shall live by faith.” “Without faith
it is impossible to please God.” With faith we can do anything including removing
mountains, according to Jesus. Without faith we can do nothing genuine in the
service of God. Your faith is one of your most precious possessions. Do
whatever it takes to see your faith increase. “Faith comes by hearing and
hearing by the Word of God.” To have faith unfeigned means to have a faith that is
not hypocritical. Don’t pretend to have faith if you do not have it. Always
seek to have more of it, but do not pretend to have more than you really do.
Whenever there are people of faith, there will be the temptation for some to
pretend that they are something that they are not. If we are going to serve God
it must be with faith unfeigned.
If you do not serve God in the way that is described in I Timothy
1:5, then what is said in I Timothy 1:6 may apply to you. It says, “From which
some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling.” Why is it
that some people in the name of Christianity can say some of the strange and
weird things that they do say? Sometimes I am amazed and astonished at some of
the things that come out of the mouths of some people who are supposed to be
preachers of the gospel. Their words become “vain jangling,” which means
literally vain speaking. They speak but their words are empty and of no real
value in the spread of the truth. Why do they talk that way? What happened?
They turned aside from love out of a pure heart, from a good conscience, and
from faith unfeigned. The Bible is a great book. It tells us just what we need
to know to serve God in this world. I Timothy 1:5 says,
“Now
the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good
conscience, and of faith unfeigned.”
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Copyright; 2001 by Charles F. (Rick) Creech
All Rights Reserved