Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Timothy 1:3

"As I exhorted thee to tarry at Ephesus, when I was going into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge certain men not to teach a different doctrine," — 1 Timothy 1:3 (ASV)

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.