Chapter 1

MSB Book notes:

First of two inspired letters to Paul's "son in the faith".  Timothy was from Lystra, in Galatia.  Timothy was probably late teens or early 20's when Paul asked him to accompany him on his second missionary journey.  Paul often sent Timothy to various churches/places as his representative.  MSB says that some "modernist critics" delight in attacking the plain statements of scripture, and for no real reason insist that Paul did not write the pastoral epistles of 1, 2 Timothy, Titus).  They ignore what the letters themselves say, and the testimony of the early church fathers - who's endorsement of Paul as writer of these is as strong as of any book in the NT except for 1 Cor and Romans.  These say the book was written by a devout follower of Paul in the second century.  They offer 5 "proofs":

1)  The historical references in these epistles cannot be harmonized with the chronology of Paul's life given in Acts

2)  The false teaching described in the Pastoral Epistles is the fully-developed Gnosticism of the second century

3)  The church organizational structure in the Pastoral Epistles is that of the second century, and is too well developed for Paul's day

4)  The Pastoral Epistles do not contain the great themes of Paul's theology

5)  The Greek vocabulary of the Pastoral Epistles contains many words not found in Paul's other letters, nor in the rest of the NT.

MSB says it is not necessary to dignify such unwarranted attacks by unbelievers.  Pretty strong language there.  Yet he does answer them:

1)  The historical events of the PE's are only incompatible if Paul was never released from that first imprisonment.  Acts does not record Paul's execution, and in Philippians, Paul clearly expected to be released.  Therefore, Acts as a book was completed before the events of the PE's occurred.  We wouldn't therefore expect to find them in Acts.  2)  The Gnosticism in the PE's was by people still within the church and was based on Judaistic legalism.  This was not the case in the second century.  3)  Church organization is consistent - in MSB evaluation - with Paul's recommendations.  Many verses cited. 4)  The PE's do in fact mention some of Paul's theology, including the inspiration of Scripture, election, salvation, the deity of Christ, His mediatorial work, and substitutionary atonement.  Verses are given for each of these.  I did not read them all.  5)  The different subject matter of the PE's required a different vocabulary than the other epistles.  Surely anyone at all would use different vocabulary in a personal letter to another pastor than in a work of systematic theology.  A number of additional reasons are given as to why this work was not done by an imposter/forger, based on the claims made and so on.  Again, a lot of references are given.

MSB concludes that Paul wrote 1 Tim and Titus shortly after his release from Roman imprisonment (around 62-64 AD) and 2 Tim from prison during his second imprisonment in Rome (66-67 AD), shortly before his death.

The list of "Interpretive Challenges" for this book is quite long.  I won't list them, but will try and note them as I come to them in the reading.  On the list though, are the qualifications for deacons, and the role of women in church leadership.

Paul opens with a customary greeting, but skips past the usual recounting of his prayers for the addressee(s) and gets right to the business of the letter. 

2025 - We see this pattern over and over with Paul:

2 To Timothy, [my] true child in [the] faith: Grace, mercy [and] peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. [1Ti 1:2 NASB95].

Father and Son are regarded by Paul as individually addressable.  He prays for grace mercy and peace from EACH of them, not from just one or the other.  We tend to lump them together, to make little if any distinction.  Surely in this we are mistaken?

Paul reiterates his desire for Timothy to remain at Ephesus in order to counteract false teaching in several areas.  Some apparently had gotten OCD about "myths" and "endless genealogies".  Makes me think of the Nephilim, the giants in the earth, and then of Ancestry.com, and people trying to connect themselves to famous, important, or "really cool" ancestors.  MSB attributes it to "allegorical or fictitious interpretations of OT genealogical lists.  MSB also makes it clear that the doctrines being taught by these false teachers differed from apostolic doctrine.  Paul is very explicit and uses "uncharitable language" about these false teachers:

6 Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. [1Ti 1:6-7 ESV]

(MSB implies that Paul had confronted these teachers himself in Ephesus, and started the process of confrontation and expulsion of Hymanaeus and Alexander, before leaving Timothy to complete the process).   This is the second time he has mentioned "myths and endless genealogies".  This morning, I am thinking people were filling in what they considered to be gaps, and then creating whole new ancestors for themselves in the gaps, thereby elevating themselves to importance because of where they came from rather than who they were.

2022 - Vs  7. Confident assertions about things they don't understand.  That would be/that is my problem.  Until recently, when it seems more like I am learning more and more and know less and less.  I keep "loosening up" the things that I though I had firmly established.  Grasped.  Apparently I am not the only one.

Paul goes on to explain what the Law (Mosaic Law) is actually for, in contrast to what these who don't understand it are saying.  MSB includes that these false teachers were trying to impose keeping of the law as a requirement for salvation.  The early church was "plagued" with those who taught this way.  Paul shows at some length that the law is to show that all sin, all are under condemnation, none is good, and so all need salvation.  The Law does not bring salvation in and of itself, but illuminates the fallen state of sinful man and so the great need for salvation by faith.

Paul gives a whole list of sins condemned by the law.  He says the law is not for the just, but for the lawless - and then he lists the lawless, beginning with those who strike their fathers and mothers (violation of the first commandment with promise).  In fact, all the sins listed have to do with the last half of the 10 Commandments.  NASB says "those who kill their fathers", ESV says those who strike their fathers and mothers.  Hmm...ESV is alone in not translating this as the murder of one's father or mother.  ALL the others translate it the same.  Note also that in this list of sins, we find homosexuality - not at the head of the list, but definitely in there.  There in all the translations.  Those who are "slave traders" are also in this list.  The old KJV used the term "menstealers". NKJV changed it to kidnappers.  NASB also says kidnappers.  But most translate it either slave traders or enslavers.  At any rate, it is quite a list of those that the Law is there to condemn.

2021 - I don't think I realized that this list of sins was here.  I know there is a long list in Romans that includes homosexuality, and a long list in one of the Corinthians that includes it.  But it is here too, along with a clear and distinct prohibition of forcing people into slavery.  Historically, in the Bible, slaves either sold themselves into slavery, sold their children into slavery, or were made slaves when they lost a battle/war.  But by this time, apparently the rounding up of free people - stealing them from the lives they had minding their own business - in order to profit by selling them was in full swing and the Bible here condemns that without equivocation.

So the Law is not written for people who are doing the right things already.  The law is not to save, but to condemn.  The Law was given to people who'd been slaves for 400 years, and who were immersed in a pagan culture as their way of life.  They didn't know what was ok with God, they new what was ok with Isis and Osiris.  The 10 Commandments were to show them how the people of a Holy God behaved.

2025 - About the Law

8 But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, [1Ti 1:8 NASB95].  How interesting is this?  Surely it implies that sometimes the Law is not good.  How would one use the Law UN-lawfully?  Perhaps if it is made a requirement of salvation?  That's what the Judaizers were trying to do.  So what does Paul say?  The Law is not for those made righteous by the gospel, but for those still in sin.  The Law is for the "ungodly and sinners".  He must mean the lost here, this cannot apply to saved people.  So trying to force the Law onto those saved by the gospel is just a misapplication, a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of the Law. 

Paul next says that he was one of those sinners, but that through Christ, he received mercy.  This fine verse, explaining why some pretty horrible people are saved:

16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. [1Ti 1:16 ESV]

2025 - Oh my!  Just look at what we learn in vs 13!

...Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; [1Ti 1:13b NASB95].  This explains the thief on the cross.  It explains death bed conversion.  Why would God forgive an entire lifetime of sin and save someone who clearly does not deserve it, snatching them from the very edge of hell?  Because they DID NOT KNOW!  A dead soul cannot comprehend the knowledge that comes with belief.

2025 - God is not prejudiced against the sinners who are only behaving in a way he made available to them to behave. Bill Burr again!  Yes, God built choice into us so that we can sin if that is what we choose.  And Adam chose it, instilling that same choice in all of us, so that we are born into it.  WE didn't choose it originally...and yet we all choose it individually.  If God was the meany he is accused of being by so many unbelievers, if he had indeed created a totally UNFAIR predicament for us by requiring that we be born deserving hell, then He would be antagonistic toward us and impose the penalty for sin on us with no chance to revoke that penalty. 

2025 - God considers the actions we take before salvation as offenses committed in ignorance, because we were born that way.  But even in our modern day legal system, ignorance of the law is NOT a valid defense.  If you run a red light and kill someone in the resulting accident because you are color blind and did not know the light was red, it is still manslaughter and you still go to prison.  Who would dispute that? 

2025 - We are all born ignorant of the law because we are Adam's seed, and because we all at some point of our own free will choose to break the law.  We choose it out of ignorance, but it MUST STILL COUNT AGAINST US!  The sentence is still just. 

2025 - And what God did is find a way to have someone else stand for the sentencing and receive the punishment that cannot just be dismissed because that is NOT justice!  God provided another who is willing to serve the sentence for us, BECAUSE we sin unknowingly. 

2025 - All he requires before He makes this substitution is that we use the same ability that led us to choose sin in the first place to also choose to accept His Son to take our place!  Choosing Christ as our substitute CURES US of our ignorance, and we wake up to the laws of which we were previously unaware.  We still mess up, but we RECOGNIZE it when we do!

Lying, thieving drug addicted fornicators are sometimes saved, so that we all see just how truly merciful and loving to his enemies Jesus can be.

In vs 13 Paul says he "acted ignorantly in unbelief" before he was saved and knew better.  Paul a Pharisee among the Pharisees.  He was learned, trained, zealous for the law.  He was a brilliant man in the application of the law to those who were violating it, a great teacher, and a respected man.  And he was lost, completely.  Make no mistake, it can be quite difficult to tell the lost and the saved apart - except by their actions.  There was no love in the way Paul enforced the Law.  That was the tattle tale.

2024 - 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, [1Ti 1:13 ESV].  How many times have we heard people almost brag that it is too late for them because they have done so many things wrong, committed so many heinous sins, that they can never be saved.  Here is the very verse for responding to that assertion!  God will forgive it, because in you unbelief you didn't know any better.  Paul is describing himself when he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, when he almost certainly had the OT memorized, and knew all the rules and regs of the Synagogue in minute detail.  And yet he calls himself ignorant in his unbelief.  God knows WHY we sin before salvation, but nothing we do is more than his mercy can cover.

This excellent verse:

15 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. [1Ti 1:15 ESV].  The whole purpose of Christ in the world.  He didn't come to be a prophet or a great teacher.  He didn't come to make people radically good.  He didn't come to inject the peace of God into a chaotic world.  He came to SAVE SINNERS!  He died for us!

Vs 17 ends with an amen.

Then Paul charges Timothy to hold faith, and a good conscience, unlike Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom Paul has handed over to Satan.  The implication here is that these two false teachers, by their heresy, have lost their salvation, have wrecked it on the rocks, run it aground, sunk it beyond recovery.  Paul has seemingly given up on bringing them back into the fold.  What does MSB say?

MSB makes an analogy of good doctrine as the rudder that steers the ship, and loss of the rudder leads to shipwreck.  MSB maintains that having been in the church, having heard sound teaching concerning true doctrine, Hymenaeus and Alexander chose instead to embrace false doctrine.  They are apostate - defined as having turned away from the gospel, having once known it.  (If they go out from among us, they were never "of us").  So Paul's "giving up" is not about leaving the sheep lost, but about them not being sheep of this fold in the first place.  He's leaving them to the wolves.

Here are the verses:

19 holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, 20 among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. [1Ti 1:19-20 ESV]

"handing over to Satan" in this sense is putting them out of the church, out of the protection of other believers, and into the whole wide world dominated by Satan outside the church.  There are many reasons this might be done, very often to illuminate error, motivate repentance, and bring the rebellious - but saved - back into harmony with sound doctrine.  But sometimes, un-persuadable, un-convertible unbelievers are turned over to Satan for judgement.  That is what is in view with Hymenaeus and Alexander.

2024 - Yesterday, before church as I read 1Tim1, I was looking for this other verse about "handing over to Satan", and I thought it was in one of the Corinthians but I couldn't find it.  Today, I went right to it...but now I don't remember why I was looking for it!  But here it is, in case next year I remember why I wanted to find it:

1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. ... 4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. [1Co 5:1, 4-5 ESV]

(2024 - I think it had to do with the fact that even such a person, turned back over to Satan, and treated as an unbeliever, can in fact be saved but apostate.  It is almost as if yesterday's new notes have just disappeared...though more likely it is my memory that has disappeared!!!)