Theopedia

First Epistle to Timothy

“He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”

— 1 Timothy 3:16 (ESV)

Overview

First Timothy is a letter from the apostle Paul to Timothy, his younger colleague, one of the New Testament’s three Pastoral Epistles alongside 2 Timothy and Titus, so called because each addresses a minister of the church rather than a congregation.1 Paul wrote it to Timothy while Timothy remained at Ephesus, instructing him how to oppose false teachers and how to order the church’s worship and offices (1 Tim. 1:3).

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Author and Date

Paul identifies himself as the letter’s author (1 Tim. 1:1), a claim the ancient church received without dispute; only in modern scholarship has Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles been widely questioned, on the ground that they were written in Paul’s name after his death.2 Because 1 Timothy assumes a period of travel and ministry at Ephesus not recorded in Acts, conservative interpreters place it after Paul’s release from the imprisonment with which Acts closes, not long before the second and fatal imprisonment recorded in 2 Timothy, dating the letter to around AD 64.3

Historical and Literary Context

Paul had left Timothy at Ephesus to charge certain men there “not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:3). The church had fallen into the grip of false teachers, some apparently arising from within its own eldership, who devoted themselves to “myths and endless genealogies” and turned the law to wrong use (1 Tim. 1:4-7).4 These teachers were chiefly Jewish and corrupt in practice as well as doctrine, resembling the speculative errorists Paul had answered at Colossae more than the Gnostics of the following century.5 Paul had already warned the Ephesian elders that “fierce wolves” would arise from among their own number (Acts 20:29-30), and the letter answers that crisis by setting the church’s leadership and worship back in order.4

Structure

  1. Warnings against false teachers and a statement of the true gospel (1 Tim. 1)
  2. Instructions for worship and for the qualifications of overseers and deacons (1 Tim. 2-3)
  3. Timothy’s own conduct and ministry amid the false teaching (1 Tim. 4-6)

Major Themes

Sound doctrine defended against false teaching

The letter opens by naming the problem it means to correct: teachers occupied with speculation rather than the truth of the gospel (1 Tim. 1:3-7). Paul sets against them his own testimony to that gospel: “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” (1 Tim. 1:15).6 Timothy is charged repeatedly to guard this “sound doctrine” and to hand it on faithfully rather than let the church be drawn after myths and controversies (1 Tim. 1:10-11; 6:3-5, 20).

Qualifications for overseers and deacons

Much of the letter addresses who may lead the church and by what standard. First Timothy 3:1-13 sets out detailed, examinable qualifications of character, not merely of gift or office, for both overseers and deacons.7 Paul introduces the office in terms meant to be taken seriously: “if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach…” (1 Tim. 3:1-2).7 The same concern for tested, publicly examined character governs Paul’s later instructions about elders who rule and teach (1 Tim. 5:17-25).4

The mystery of godliness

Paul calls the church “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15) and follows that description with a confession of what that truth is: “he was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” (1 Tim. 3:16). Strauch calls this “the grand and glorious gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord, crucified, risen from the dead, and coming again,” the very truth an elder must know and be able to teach accurately.8

Godliness with contentment

Against teachers who treated godliness as a means of gain (1 Tim. 6:5), Paul answers that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim. 6:6). Van Mastricht points to this verse as the apostle’s own call to be content with God himself rather than with what one might possess, adding that Paul “lights our way in it with his own example,” his own contentment in whatever circumstances he faced (Phil. 4:11-12).9

Related Doctrines

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References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 476. ↩

  2. Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), chap. 5, “The Apostolic Origins of the Canon”: “Much of critical scholarship is convinced that many of these writings are pseudonymous, including the Pastoral Epistles, Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Peter, Jude, and others.” ↩

  3. Barrows, 477. ↩

  4. Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), chap. 12, “1 Timothy 3:1-2–Above Reproach and the Husband of One Wife,” 131-140. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Barrows, 478. ↩

  6. James Petigru Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology, 2nd printing (Baltimore: H. M. Wharton & Company, 1887), 335. ↩

  7. Strauch, chap. 4, “Qualified Leadership,” 61-68. ↩ ↩2

  8. Strauch, chap. 13, “1 Timothy 3:2-3–Sober-Minded … Not a Lover of Money,” 141-150. ↩

  9. Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), chap. 6, “The Spirituality and Simplicity of God,” 191. ↩