1 Timothy 1:1–11
The people of God, in their handling of Scripture, promote the economy of God (in contrast to false teachers), for the goal of their instruction is love, the manifestation of godliness.
Timothy is Paul’s “genuine child”—a spiritual sonship. By extension, all God’s people, listening in on/reading this correspondence are enjoined to abide by the injunctions of God’s authoritative apostle. After all, all of God’s people are God’s leaders, in some degree, to some fashion, in some arena—home, marketplace, office, playground, classroom, mission field. And so, what God through Paul intends Timothy to obey and live by, is what God intends for all of his people to obey and live by.
Timothy, by virtue of being Paul’s proxy, is here being instructed to instruct others, particularly the false teachers. On the other hand, “some” (1:3, 6, 19) have no such authority (and two are named in 1:20). These, who “teach falsely” (1:3), were the ones seeking to be “law-teachers” (1:7). They were plying “myths” and “genealogies” (1:4; in contrast is Paul’s “sound teaching” [1:10]), and promoting “useless speculations” (1:4). They ought, rather, to have been promoting “the economy of God”—his administration, i.e., his management and stewardship of his creation: God’s way of ordering things. In other words, the “economy of God” is the gospel in its broadest sense of God’s grand, eternal plan to consummate all things in Christ. And this gospel, Paul declares in 1:11, is glorious, because it brings glory to God as the divine economy is transacted. Thus the rest of the “instruction” in 1 Timothy explains the economy of God, how things ought to be in church and in society and in life in general.
The contrast between false and true teaching continues with 1:5–7 (a single sentence), outlining the goal of Paul’s instruction—love sourced in “a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” In other words, love manifest and expressed is achieved by a heart cleansed of sin, a conscience cleared of guilt, and a faith cultivated in truth. This love, directed both toward God and neighbor, the zenith of godliness and the greatest of the commandments, is the mark of a person of God, living life God’s way, fully entrenched in, and promoting, the economy of God, becoming an inhabitant of God’s world in front of the text, the expression of a complete person of God.
In 1:8–11, the contrast between Paul’s ministry and that of the false teachers is detailed further: the law here, though referring to the Mosaic Law, is best seen as a metonym for Scripture and all divine demand, no matter what the genre of the text. The law is “good” when used “lawfully” (1:8), i.e., against the lawless (1:9) and against all manner of vices—all that is “contrary to sound teaching” (1:10). The lawful use of the law points out behavior that is divinely proscribed, thus condemning lawbreakers (the ones listed in 1:9b–10).
Thus the law was given to combat sin and unlawfulness, so that God’s people would live in accord with, or measured by the standard of, “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God” (1:11). This “gospel” of divine glory, the entirety of his plans and purposes for his creation, is the benchmark of “sound teaching.” And so it is such instruction, congruent to the gospel (i.e., the lawful use of the law: the right handling of Scripture), that brings glory to God—declaring and manifesting God’s glory in the godly lives of his people. Such a grave responsibility that was “entrusted” to Paul, and which he was, in turn, entrusting to his “genuine child in the faith,” Timothy, is by extension, being entrusted to all believers as well.
[For more details, see my commentary on 1& 2 Timothy, Titus.]
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.