Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Timothy 1

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.—The letter to Timothy, though addressed to a very dear and intimate friend, was sent with a twofold purpose. It was an affectionate reminder from his old master, “Paul the Aged,” to his disciple to be steadfast in the midst of the many perils to which one in the position of Timothy would be exposed in the city of Ephesus; but it was also an official command to resist a powerful school of false teaching which had arisen in the midst of that Ephesian Church over which Timothy was then presiding. So St. Paul prefaces his letter by designating himself an Apostle according to the commandment of God. The commandment especially referred to is to be found in Acts 13:2: Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.

God our Saviour.—This designation is peculiar to the Pastoral Epistles, but frequently occurs in the Septuagint. It is fittingly ascribed to the first Person of the blessed Trinity in reference to His redeeming love in Christ.

Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope.—The words “which is,” printed in italics in the English version, are better left out: Jesus Christ, our hope. As St. Paul felt the end of his course approaching, he loved to dwell on the thought of Jesus—to whom, during so many weary years, he had longed to depart and be with—as his hope, his one glorious hope. The same expression is found in the Epistles of Ignatius.

My own son in the faith.—Timothy was Saint Paul’s very own son. No fleshly relationship existed between the two, but a closer and far dearer connection. Saint Paul had taken him while still a very young man to be his companion and fellow labourer (Acts 16:3). He told the Philippian Church he had no one like-minded (with Timothy) who would care for their affairs. He wrote to the Corinthians how Timothy was his beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who would remind them of his ways in Christ.

Mercy.—Between the usual salutation “grace and peace,” in these Pastoral Epistles, he introduces “mercy.” The nearness of death, the weakness of old age, the dangers, ever increasing, which crowded round Paul, seem to have called forth from him deeper expressions of love and tender pity. Jesus Christ, his “hope,” burned before him, a guiding star, shining brighter and clearer; and the “mercy” of God, which the old man felt he had obtained, he longed to share with others.

That you might charge some.—Some time after the first imprisonment at Rome, and consequently beyond the period included by St. Luke in the Acts, St. Paul must have left Timothy behind at Ephesus while he pursued his journey towards Macedonia, and given him the solemn charge referred to here. The false teachers who are disturbing the Church at Ephesus are not named. There is, perhaps, a ring of contempt in the expression “some,” but it seems more probable that the names were intentionally omitted in this letter, which was intended to be a public document. The chief superintendent of the Ephesian community, doubtless, knew too well who the mistaken men referred to were.

That they teach no other doctrine.—“Other”—i.e., other than the truth. When the Apostle and his disciple Timothy revisited Ephesus, after the long Caesarean and Roman imprisonment, they found the Church there distracted with questions raised by Jewish teachers. The curious and hair-splitting interpretation of the Mosaic law, the teaching concerning the tithing of mint and anise and cummin, which in the days of Jesus of Nazareth had paralyzed all real spiritual life in Jerusalem, had found its way during the Apostle’s long enforced absence into the restless, ever-changing congregations at Ephesus.

Dangerous controversies and disputes concerning old prophecies, mingled with modern traditions, occupied the attention of many of the Christian teachers. They preferred to talk about theology rather than try to live the life which men like St. Paul had told them that followers of Jesus must live if they were to be His servants indeed.

Unless these deadening influences were removed, the faith of the Ephesian Church threatened to become utterly impractical. The doctrine these restless men were teaching, and which St. Paul so bitterly condemns, seems to have been no settled form of heresy, but a profitless teaching, arising mainly, if not entirely, from Jewish sources.

Neither give heed to fables.—These fables were, no doubt, purely Rabbinical. It was said in the Jewish schools that an oral Law had been given on Sinai, and that this Law, a succession of teachers, from the time of Moses, had handed down. This “Law that is upon the lip,” as it was termed, was further illustrated and enlarged by the sayings and comments of the more famous Jewish Rabbis, and in the time of our Lord constituted a supplement to the written Law in the Pentateuch.

For centuries this supplementary code was preserved by memory or in secret rolls, and doubtless was constantly receiving additions. It contained, along with many wild and improbable legendary histories, some wise teachings. This strange collection of tradition and comment was committed to writing in the second century by Rabbi Jehuda, under the general name of the Mishna, or repetition (of the Law). Around this compilation a complement of discussions (the Gemara) was gradually formed, and was completed at Babylon around the end of the fifth century of our era. These works—the Mishna and the Gemara, together with a second Gemara, formed somewhat earlier in Palestine—are generally known as the Talmud. The influence of some of these traditions is alluded to by our Lord (Matthew 15:3).

Endless genealogies.—Genealogies in their proper sense, as found in the Book of the Pentateuch, and to which wild allegorical interpretations had been assigned. Such purely fanciful meanings had been already developed by Philo, whose religious writings were becoming at this time known and popular in many of the Jewish schools. Such teaching, if allowed in the Christian churches, St. Paul saw would effectually put a stop to the growth of Gentile Christendom. It would inculcate an undue and exaggerated, and, for the ordinary Gentile convert, an impossible reverence for Jewish forms and ceremonies; it would separate the Jewish and Gentile converts into two classes—placing the favored Jew in an altogether different position from the outcast Gentile.

In the Gentile churches founded by the Apostles, for some years a life and death struggle went on between the pupils of St. Paul and his fellow Apostles and the disciples of the Rabbinical schools. In these earnest warnings of his Pastoral Epistles the great Apostle of Gentile Christianity shows us how clearly he foresaw that if these Jewish fables and the comments of the older Jewish teachers were allowed to enter into the training of the new-formed congregations, the Church of Christ would shrink, before long, into the narrow and exclusive limits of a Jewish sect. “Judaism,” writes the anonymous author of Paul of Tarsus, “was the cradle of Christianity, and Judaism very nearly became its grave.”

Which minister questions.—Disputings, questions of mere controversy, inquiries, which could not possibly have any bearing on practical life.

Rather than godly edifying which is in faith.—The rendering of the reading in the more ancient authorities would be: rather than the dispensation of God which is in faith; or, in other words, the introduction into Church teaching of these Jewish myths—these traditions of the elders, these fanciful genealogies—would be much more likely to produce bitter and profitless controversy than to minister to God’s scheme of salvation, designed by God, and proclaimed by His Apostles.

So do.—The Apostle, in 1 Timothy 1:3, begins this sentence of earnest exhortation, but in his fervor forgets to conclude it. The closing words would naturally come in here: “For remember how I urged you when I left you behind at Ephesus, when I went on to Macedonia, to discourage and firmly repress all vain teaching, which only leads to useless controversy, so I do now;” or, so I repeat to you now. (This is better and more forcible than the words supplied in the English version: “so do.”)

Now the end.—The Greek word should be translated But the end. Though Timothy must resist and oppose these false teachers with all courage and firmness, still he must not forget what was the real end, the aim, the purpose of all Christian teaching, which, the Apostle reminds him, is Love.

Of the commandment.—There is no reference here to the famous commandments of the Law of Moses. “Commandment” may be paraphrased here as “practical teaching.”

With the false teachers’ sickly “fables,” which only led to disputing, St. Paul contrasts that “healthy practical teaching,” the end and aim of which was love, or charity.

Charity.—That love, or broad, comprehensive charity, towards men, so nobly described in 1 Corinthians 13.

Out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.—This broad, all-embracing love, or charity, emanates only from “a pure heart”; i.e., a heart free from selfish desires and evil passions. The pure in heart alone, said the Lord, in the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5:8), shall enjoy the beatific vision of God.

And of a good conscience.—This “charity” must also spring from a conscience unburdened of its load of guilt, from a conscience sprinkled with the precious blood, and so reconciled to God.

And of faith unfeigned.—And, lastly, the root of this “charity”—the end and aim of the practical teaching of the gospel preached by the Apostles—must be sought in “a faith unfeigned,” in a faith that consists in something more than in a few high-sounding words, which lay claim to a sure confidence that is not felt. The “unfeigned faith” of St. Paul is a faith rich in works rather than in words.

Without this faith, so real that its fruits are ever manifest, there can be no good conscience; without this conscience, washed by the precious blood, there can be no pure heart.

The error of the teachers of whom Timothy was warned, we see from the next verse, consisted not so much in false doctrines as in an utter neglect of inculcating the necessity of a pure, self-denying life. They preferred curious questions and speculative inquiries to the grave, simple gospel teaching which led men to live an earnest, loving life.