1 Timothy
Day 1
SCRIPTURE
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, 2To Timothy, my loyal child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Timothy 1:1-2, NRSV)
WHAT
I remember the first sermon I ever preached. I was in my early 30s and I was serving as the lay leader of my church while working as an engineer for a chemical company. It was the custom of the church that on the annual Laity Sunday, the lay leader should preach. My text was 2 Samuel 5:1-5, the story of David being anointed king over Israel.
It seemed simple enough. But as I dug into this scripture, I kept finding material that I felt I needed to include, directions I needed the sermon to take. In fact, it seemed to this neophyte, pre-seminary preacher that every major doctrine of the Church could somehow be found in this one scripture! In the end, as you might expect, the sermon included a lot of information, but its point was hard to find.
Welcome to the letters we know as the Pastoral Letters. We have a lot to cover so I will break this Background Commentary up into two days. In the volume on 2 Timothy and Titus I include a third background Commentary. Today, we’ll look at the recipients of the letters – Timothy and Titus – and the situations they faced. In the next commentary, we’ll examine the authorship of the three letters. In that third commentary, we look at a minority report timeline relating the three letters.
Our author seems aware that there can be two types of letters (or sermons). One is the kind that I preached that day during my first sermon – the kind that seems to go all over the place, covering a lot of ground, sharing a lot of information, but whose overall point is nearly impossible to find. What the reader/listener is supposed to DO with the message is nearly impossible to identify. The other kind of letter (or sermon) is one which may also present a lot of information, but it is focused, useful, ripe with application. What the reader/listener is supposed to DO with the message is clear. Our author seems intent on writing a letter of the second kind.
As I have already mentioned, these three letters are collectively known as the Pastoral Letters, or Pastoral Epistles. This attribution seems to go back to 1726 when a great scholar named Paul Anton gave a series of famous lectures on them under that title. Paul is seen as giving pastoral advice to his young charges Timothy and Titus. The name then stuck. Unlike all Paul’s other letters (except Philemon), these letters are not addressed to churches but rather to individuals. In these letters both to Timothy and to Titus, Paul is giving pastoral advice to encourage them in their leadership in the midst of specific, though different in each letter, challenges.
Who were Timothy and Titus and what problems did they face?
We first meet Timothy in the book of Acts when Paul is on his second missionary journey into what is today southern Turkey. At the Council of Jerusalem described in Acts 15, at which Paul and Barnabas described the results of their mission to Gentiles, the future of the Gentile mission was decided. The Church discerned, despite opposition, that the mission to Gentiles should continue. So Paul and Barnabas set out on another mission. Unfortunately, a sharp argument concerning John Mark led Paul and Barnabas to separate. Paul continued on into southern Turkey. In the area of the towns of Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium, he met Timothy for the first time:
Paul went on also to Derbe and to Lystra, where there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer; but his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. (Acts 16:1-3, NRSV)
Timothy was a young disciple who became Paul’s “fix it” man. Paul often sent Timothy to churches which had unique problems, including Thessalonica, Philippi, and most notably Corinth – to act as Paul’s personal delegate, or ambassador:
…we sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker for God in proclaiming the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you for the sake of your faith, so that no one would be shaken by these persecutions. …Timothy has just now come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love. He has told us also that you always remember us kindly and long to see us -- just as we long to see you. (1 Thessalonians 3:2-3, 6, NRSV)
I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be cheered by news of you. (Philippians 2:19, NRSV)
For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them everywhere in every church. (1 Corinthians 4:17, NRSV)
We often think of all the miles Paul traveled during his missions, but Timothy traveled many of those same miles and more! Back and forth, back and forth.
Timothy is also listed as the co-author of six letters – 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and 2 Corinthians. And he is mentioned in the final greetings in Romans.
According to 1 Timothy 1:3-4, Paul charged Timothy to remain in Ephesus to deal with a set of problems we’ll soon look at while Paul himself traveled to Macedonia (Thessalonica, Philippi, and Beroea). This is probably the reference in Acts 20:
After the uproar had ceased, Paul sent for the disciples; and after encouraging them and saying farewell, he left for Macedonia. (Acts 20:1, NRSV)
Paul never returned to Ephesus, so far as we know. Paul says in 1 Timothy:
I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine, and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith. (1 Timothy 1:3-4, NRSV)
What were the problems Timothy (and to some extent, Titus also on the island of Crete) was supposed to deal with while Paul was away in Macedonia? We don’t know for sure, but we have clues that guide us.
First, Luke tells us in Acts that about five years prior, before Paul made what turned out to be his final trip to Jerusalem, he passed by Ephesus (the place where he had spent two and a half years). He called the church elders to meet him at Miletus, a town south of Ephesus. Knowing they would never see each other again in this life, after saying his goodbyes, Paul gave this warning to the elders:
Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son. I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them. (Acts 20:28-30, NRSV)
That seems to be precisely what happened and is the context in which Paul writes to Timothy. Some elders in the church are distorting the truth of the gospel in order to entice the disciples to follow them. Paul even names names:
By rejecting conscience, certain persons have suffered shipwreck in the faith; among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have turned over to Satan, so that they may learn not to blaspheme. (1 Timothy 1:19-20, NRSV)
The phrase, “turned over to Satan” seems to mean ex-communicated from the Church. Paul uses the same phrase in 1 Corinthians regarding an immoral disciple who was sleeping with his stepmother. Paul instructs the leaders in Corinth regarding this man:
…you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:5, NRSV)
Apparently Hymenaeus and Alexander were ring leaders of a group of Ephesian elders who were teaching doctrines contrary to Paul’s vision of the gospel. 2 Timothy mentions Hymenaeus and Alexander again, and adds a third false teacher, Philetus:
Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place. They are upsetting the faith of some. (2 Timothy 2:16-18, NRSV)
Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will pay him back for his deeds. You also must beware of him, for he strongly opposed our message. (2 Timothy 4:14-15, NRSV)
There is a strong tradition in the Church, though a minority one now, that Paul was released from his Roman imprisonment which is described at the end of Acts. This gave him some years during which he may have actually fulfilled his plan to preach the gospel in Spain.
But now, with no further place for me in these regions, I desire, as I have for many years, to come to you when I go to Spain. …when I have completed this, and have delivered to them what has been collected [i.e., delivery of the financial collection to Jerusalem for famine relief], I will set out by way of you to Spain… (Romans 15:23-24, 28-29, NRSV)
Under this theory, was arrested a second time and brought to Rome, an imprisonment that this time led to his death. It was during this second imprisonment that Paul write 2 Timothy according to this theory. If so, it may be that when Paul says, “Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm,” he meant that Alexander was an instigator of Paul’s arrest.
There are other clues to the problems which both Timothy and Titus faced. It is clear that Timothy was left to deal with something Paul considered a very dangerous situation which threatened the welfare of the Church, not only in Ephesus, but because it was such an influential place, elsewhere as well. By identifying the various characteristic features of their situation, as William Barclay points out, we may be able to go on to identify it and the heresy the delegates faced.
First, as Professor Barclay notes, this heresy was characterized by speculative intellectualism:
“It produced questions (1 Timothy 1:4); 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 ekzētēsis, which means speculative discussion. This heresy was obviously one which was a playground of the intellectuals, or rather the pseudo-intellectuals of the Church.”
Second, the heretics were characterized by pride. Again quoting Professor Barclay:
“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.”
Third, there was the heretics’ tendency toward ascetism, i.e., a tendency to self-denial. As Professor Barclay observes, 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,” he says, “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.”
But their heresy, whatever it was, also resulted in what our author considered immorality. “The heretics even went into private houses,” says Professor Barclay:
“…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 out 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).”
Fourth, the heretics were full of godless chatter and useless controversies (1 Timothy 6:20). Their teaching produced endless genealogies (1 Timothy 1:4; Titus 3:9) along with myths and fables (1 Timothy 1:4; Titus 1:14).
Fifth, to some extent the heretics favored Jewish legalism. Among the heretics 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).
Last, but certainly not least, 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 (since they believed the body was evil) when they died with Christ and rose again with him in the experience of baptism (Romans 6:4).
Is there any heresy which contains all of these elements? “There is,” says Professor Barclay, “and its name is Gnosticism.” Gnosticism became a full blown and very challenging threat to the Church in the late first and early second centuries. It was not uniquely a Christian heresy for Gnosticism was a widespread philosophy throughout the empire, not just in the Church. There was a Gnostic influence in Judaism also. But we can see early Church Fathers reacting to it. The word “Gnosticism” derives from the Greek word for knowledge, which is gnosis.
The basic ideas behind Gnosticism were, as Professor Barclay explains:
“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 or divine powers – they called them aeons – each one more and more distant from himself until at last there came an emanation or aeonso 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.”
If Paul truly is the author of these letters (more on that in the next commentary), he and his delegates could have been facing the early days of Gnosticism’s penetration into the Church, a situation which clearly did become a huge threat to the Church by the second century. There is evidence that this is exactly the situation faced by the author of the letters of John also.
So this is the problem Timothy faced in Ephesus. There were elders and other church leaders who were swayed by this rising Gnosticism. Paul needed Timothy to “shut that down!”
Well, we saw who Timothy was, and his connection to Paul. But who was Titus?
Titus was a Gentile who was led to faith in Christ by Paul. In Galatians, Paul tells us:
Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain. But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. (Galatians 2:1-3, NRSV)
From this passage, we can see that for Paul, Titus was living proof that circumcision was not necessary to become a disciple of Jesus. This is a major theme of the letter to the Galatians as Paul battled Jewish disciples of Jesus who taught that Gentiles must become a Jew by following the law of Moses (including circumcision) before they could become a disciple of Jesus. Thus, Titus was a living sermon illustration.
Titus became a co-worker with Paul. Unlike Timothy, Titus is not mentioned in Acts, so we don’t exactly know how he and Paul met. But he does show up in several of Paul’s letters. To him, Paul later wrote (though we will examine Pauline authorship in tomorrow’s commentary):
To Titus, my loyal child in the faith we share: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus 1:4, NRSV)
From Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, we can see how important Titus was to Paul:
When I came to Troas to proclaim the good news of Christ, a door was opened for me in the Lord; but my mind could not rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said farewell to them and went on to Macedonia. (2 Corinthians 2:12-13, NRSV)
Later in 2 Corinthians, we learn that Titus had been serving in Corinth and brought a good word of the church to Paul while he was in Macedonia:
For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted in every way -- disputes without and fears within. But God, who consoles the downcast, consoled us by the arrival of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was consoled about you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more. (2 Corinthians 7:5-7, NRSV)
Titus was involved in helping Paul take up a collection among the Gentile churches for the relief of Jewish disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem during an empire-wide famine:
We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints -- and this, not merely as we expected; they gave themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us, so that we might urge Titus that, as he had already made a beginning, so he should also complete this generous undertaking among you. (2 Corinthians 8:1-6, NRSV)
It could have been on this return visit to Corinth which he made to complete the collection for the saints in Jerusalem that Titus delivered the letter we know as 2 Corinthians from Paul, who was probably in Philippi. (We know he was in Macedonia, which had churches in Philippi, Thessalonica, and possibly Beroea.)
Probably several years later, Titus and Paul traveled to the island of Crete and began a church there, though that visit is nowhere documented in the New Testament. (Luke mentions the island of Crete in Acts 27 but by then Paul had been arrested and was on his way by sea to Rome). Before moving on, Paul left Titus behind to continue the work and strengthen the new church:
I left you behind in Crete for this reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done, and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you… (Titus 1:5, NRSV)
Later, when Artemas and/or Tychicus (another often mentioned delegate of Paul’s) arrived in Crete to take over directing the ministry, Paul summoned Titus to join him in Nicopolis, a city in the province of Achaia in western Greece:
When I send Artemas to you, or Tychicus, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there. (Titus 3:12, NRSV)
In 2 Timothy, we find the last mention of Titus, and again, he is being a hardworking servant of the gospel:
Do your best to come to me soon, for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. (2 Timothy 4:9-10, NRSV)
Dalmatia was an area which later became known as Yugoslavia and is now called Serbia and Montenegro.
On Crete, Titus was tasked with strengthening the new church. But that church faced a similar problem with the growing heresy of Gnosticism as Timothy faced in Ephesus. The difference, as Professor Gordan Fee points out, was that Ephesus was a twelve year-old church by this point, with established elders, some of whom were leading the church astray. Crete, by contrast, was a brand new church. Learning from his experience in Ephesus, Paul wanted Titus to establish good order from the get-go. That’s why the book of Titus starts off with establishing not the duties but the qualifications of elders and deacons as church leaders. Look again at how Paul starts the letter to Titus:
I left you behind in Crete for this reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done, and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you… (Titus 1:5, NRSV)
Note that Titus is to, as Professor Fee notes, “appoint” elders, not “replace” elders, as would be the case for Timothy in Ephesus. Only with the right leaders in place can the church take on the task of dealing with false teachers and their heresies. Titus is then to “teach what is consistent with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1).
So now we have a better sense of who Timothy and Titus were, and the situations they faced in carrying out the task given them by their mentor and coworker in the gospel, the apostle Paul. In tomorrow’s commentary, we will examine the controversial question, “Who wrote the Pastoral Letters? Was it really Paul?”
APPLY
Throughout this study, I will listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit pointing out similarities between the modern Church and the churches where Timothy and Titus led and I will listen for the Spirit’s direction.
PRAYER
Lord, I open myself up to you to be taught by the Holy Spirit through these Pastoral Letters to churches and their leaders in the first century. Help me to hear what you will teach and apply it. In Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why are the letters of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus collectively known as the Pastoral Letters, or the Pastoral Epistles?
2. What do we know of Timothy and Titus and their relationship to Paul? What do we see these two gospel workers doing in the New Testament as they worked alongside Paul?
3. What problem(s) was Timothy facing in Ephesus? How might Gnosticism as the heresy he faced there help explain what the author (Paul?) tells him to do?
4. How was Titus’ situation on Crete both the same and different than what Timothy faced in Ephesus?
How can you apply these insights in your life?