1 Timothy 1:1-2

Friends, welcome back.
Thanks for being with us.
Sorry about a one day delay as Michael and I,
neither were feeling well,
but we are into the text today of First Timothy.
We did a little background in our last video.
If you haven’t seen that,
you may wanna call it up and take a look at that.
But today we get into the book itself,
a book
traditionally thought to be written by Paul
to Timothy and he says as much,
or the author says as much in the notes this morning
in our verses this afternoon, sorry.
And when we move into this,
I think it does help
a couple of obvious things as we get started here.
The most obvious being though we call this a book,
it is a letter.
This is one of the letters of Paul.
It’s written as a letter.
I would guess, Michael, that most of us in this day and age
are not big letter writers.
That’s not as common as it used to be.
But if we were to sit and write a letter,
we know how it would go.
Dear so and so,
and then we start with some stuff
and then we would end.
And that’s the way our culture writes a letter.
Well,
Paul’s culture had a way of writing a letter.
It’s a little different than ours
and we’ll tell you why this fits exactly the pattern of a letter.
But I think it’s helpful, Michael, to remember
that at its heart,
this letter, and maybe particularly first and second Timothy and Titus, these pastoral epistles,
are letters.
They’re conveying information.
They’re relational.
They sort of move around a little bit.
They’re personal in the sense that there are some moments
where he speaks directly to something he knows about Timothy.
And I think that helps us because this isn’t
Paul sitting down to write a book to the church.
This is a letter to someone who’s serving the church.
Now, having said that,
Paul knows that this will be read
by the church and that’s important.
We’ll talk about that a lot in this letter.
Paul knows, in fact, we’ll see that in the first line here.
Paul knows that others are going to read this,
but the core of this is he’s sending a letter to Timothy.
Yeah, so this is a part of the makeup of the scriptures
that is easy to forget and essential
to understanding them rightly is that each letter does come
with its own context,
its own reason for being written,
its own moment in the life of the author.
And this is particularly true in the New Testament,
whereas the Old Testament has such age,
a book like Genesis has seen so much time.
It’s been copied by so many different people at different times.
And just the sheer age of the text makes it impossible
really to know some of that provenance kinds of questions
with the same kind of confidence that we can have
with the New Testament.
And as we look at even the letters of the New Testament,
Clint, what we discover is that there are different
sort of breaths implied by the letter.
When you have a book like Romans,
Paul’s very clearly making a case building idea upon idea.
It’s open from the very outset
to an entire church community.
It’s written that way.
Here in this letter, the Timothy,
it is written with a very specific person
with this idea that there’s a church kind of
overlooking the shoulder at the same time.
It’s a letter much the same way that the other is a letter.
They were both sent the same way.
They were both received and opened,
but yet they have slightly different intentions
and even sort of models in how they’re addressing it.
So there’s a kind of diversity
in our New Testament is my point.
And if you’re aware of that, Clint,
it will change how you read some of these books
in the New Testament,
because it gives it a little bit of a different lens.
Yeah, I agree.
And I think it helps to know the context,
Michael.
So in our culture,
we would put the other person’s name first.
In Paul’s culture,
the typical letter will start
with something about the one who’s sending it,
almost more like a memo as we would write it.
And so we begin with the words here,
Paul,
an apostle of Christ Jesus,
by the command of God, our savior,
and of Christ Jesus,
our hope.
Now,
again, that may seem strange to us
that Paul begins a letter by writing his own name,
but this is very typical.
And then he gives his station.
This, again, this is very common for the kind of letter
that Paul’s writing in his day and time,
an apostle of Jesus Christ.
It’s very interesting.
If you go and look at Paul’s letters,
usually something he says about himself
in the first couple of verses
will give you some connection to the content of the letter.
So in Galatians, which is a very combative
kind of conflicted letter,
he appeals to his authority.
In Philippians, which is a letter about humility,
he appeals to God’s authority
and his subjectness to God.
Here,
he calls himself an apostle of Christ Jesus,
which firms his station.
And if it seems odd that he would say this to Timothy,
I think it helps to remember that he knows,
this is, I think, where we see evidence,
he knows this is going to be seen by the church.
He doesn’t need to tell Timothy
he’s an apostle of Jesus Christ,
but in giving Timothy later in the letter instructions
about what to tell people and what to do with people,
I think Paul is giving Timothy a document of authority here
so that when Paul says,
hey, tell that person this
and Timothy has to do it,
they know it’s coming through Timothy from Paul,
ultimately then by God in Jesus Christ,
by the command of God.
So in other words, Paul says,
I’m not doing this on my own authority,
which I have as an apostle,
but any of that authority comes from God.
And I think really,
as I read this,
Michael, this is clearly intended to prop Timothy up
in the eyes of the church and to strengthen him
for some of the difficult conversations
that may come out of this letter
that he’ll have to have with other people.
Yeah, and I’m gonna resist the temptation.
This will be a temptation throughout all of this book
to turn immediately to preaching,
but there are just some details that are worth noting
that we get within the first six words here,
we get Jesus Christ named.
The importance,
yes,
Paul puts his name
at the top part of the letter,
but much like an address,
the from address, that needs to be there so that it’s clear
who this letter was written by,
whose pen marked this out.
Notice how quickly he gets to the center of the church,
Christ Jesus, when he appeals to authority,
he’s going to say in one verse,
Christ Jesus two times,
he’s gonna name God,
even call God our savior,
the redeeming, the one.
What we discover so quickly is the essential nature
of calling the thing that brings us unity
out at the very beginning of the letter.
The subject and source and fountain of our faith
is ultimately Jesus Christ.
And here,
Paul names that explicitly right from the get-go.
That maybe to those of us who’ve been in the church a long time,
you say,
yeah, of course.
I mean, that’s what you start a letter with.
We know, we’ve read the Bible before.
We know that this is a way that letters get started,
but we need to slow down and recognize
that once again, as Paul does claim this title of apostle,
he does so under so quickly the heading of the one
who’s called by Christ Jesus,
by the anointed one,
by the one who is the source and center of the faith.
And it’s that person who ultimately,
both Paul and Timothy,
who we’re gonna see in verse two,
are both subject to,
and look at how quick he gets to it.
Yeah, and it may be of interest here that
these are in some ways not the words you expect
from God our savior and Christ Jesus our hope.
And typically, you would expect Paul
to refer to Christ as our savior.
But here, I think an appeal to the idea
that it is God’s saving work,
it is through Christ,
but it is God who stands behind the redemptive work of Jesus,
and in the community,
Jesus is our hope.
If we just say in the church that the church
is all the people who call Jesus savior,
yes,
that is true, but there’s something that sounds to me more personal when we say,
and Jesus our hope,
the collective group of people
who look to Jesus as their hope,
and who look to Jesus with hope.
So having then given who he is and what he is,
Paul then moves on to the recipient.
Again, all very standard in the way that these letters
are written in his time.
To Timothy,
my loyal child in the faith.
Let’s stop there, Michael.
Not a lot of words, but important ones.
So he names Timothy and then labels him
my loyal child in the faith.
Now, obviously, this is a wonderful compliment
to Timothy from Paul.
This is a wonderful affirmation of Timothy.
But what else is this?
This is a bona fide for Timothy.
This is a resume for Timothy.
When the church sees this letter,
they are reminded that this young man
who is trying to lead them in sometimes
in ways that they may not like,
he stands in the lineage of Paul.
He stands spiritually with Paul.
My loyal,
my trustworthy,
my faithful.
What does loyal mean?
But he sticks with me,
child in the faith.
And so I think Paul has,
in a subtle way,
done an absolutely beautiful job here
of just in a couple sentences,
reminding Timothy and the church
of the authority and the confidence
that Paul puts in this young leader.
Yeah, I don’t wanna slow this down,
Clint, but I will say that you’re already spoiling
some of the letter that come
because there’s gonna be explicit sections here
where Timothy is encouraged.
And when we become aware and we’re reminded
that this letter is fundamentally to Timothy
with the awareness that there are others
looking over his shoulder,
that this is going to be shared in a public
way,
then we begin to discover that encouragement
is also a form of direction.
And here,
the fact that
Timothy is called, in these words, my loyal child in the faith,
is to suggest that not only is Paul
the one with the title apostle,
but Timothy is following in his way.
And that the teachings of Timothy,
the exhortations that he brings to that community,
even his leadership as you name,
that these are things that that church
should take very seriously because as he’s the child,
he represents his father.
And his father,
Paul, is of course the one
who brings not just the resume,
he brings such a large force of the early church.
So this is,
though short line,
it certainly is a substantial statement for Timothy.
Yeah, I think so.
And one of the temptations that I’m going to face
in this letter, and I’ll just name it,
I am going to read pastor and pastoral leadership
into this text at every turn.
And so I’ll try to tell you when I’m doing that.
But as we move to the next line,
grace,
mercy, and peace from God the Father
and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now,
these are not unique words for Paul.
Grace and peace is the typical formula.
Mercy is less common,
but mercy is a common word of Paul in other contexts.
But in terms of the salutation of letters,
grace and peace are pretty standard fare,
but it is hard not to.
And again, this is my bias,
so keep that in mind.
It is hard not to read these words through the lens
of an older mission worker, church planter
to a young pastoral leader.
Because what would it take to serve a church faithfully?
Grace, both to give and receive,
the idea of undeserved favor,
that’s what grace means.
Mercy,
again, the ability to forgive,
the ability to be compassionate,
the ability to care,
and peace,
the promise of lack of conflict,
of good relationships, and of a certain
stability within the community.
Now, that may be, and I wanna admit this,
that may be reading far too much into three words.
But if you are going to give three words
to a young leader in a church,
these are pretty good ones.
And I think if Paul doesn’t do that explicitly on purpose,
certainly he knows that they fit well.
Christians have,
from the beginning of the faith at our best,
strove to connect our daily lived lives,
our real relationships,
with the higher order blessings
that have come from Jesus Christ.
And here in this letter,
we’ve made it two verses, count them two,
and we’ve already had hope,
grace,
mercy,
and peace.
That,
on its own,
should instruct us that as we seek to orient ourselves to others
within our faith community,
we do so not because of some shared interest
that binds us together,
not because we like them or they’re convenient,
but rather,
because of these inexhaustible gifts
that have become,
by the sheer grace of Jesus Christ,
ours to hold together as a community.
And so,
Clint, I think words like grace,
mercy, peace,
this idea of God being the Father Jesus Christ the Lord,
by the way, you see how that mirrors Paul
calling Timothy his own child.
Here,
Jesus Christ is the child of God the Father.
I mean,
we see Paul interacting
in a very earthly relationship
with a very heavenly-minded perspective,
and I think that’s important.
Yeah, well, I mean, not only that, Michael, but you’ve got three Christ Jesuses,
two God and one Lord.
I mean,
you’ve got a lot of
important theological,
Christian spiritual language
here condensed into a very short form.
Paul gets a lot out of his salutations.
If you read through his letters,
it is amazing how much he seems to work
in those opening lines.
And so, here we have the setting of this letter.
Paul, the apostle,
to Timothy,
the loyal child.
If you wanted to boil it all down,
I suppose you could say that.
Paul, the apostle, writing to Timothy, the loyal child in the faith,
with grace, mercy, and peace,
not from Paul,
but from God.
This is his wish,
this is Paul’s wish
for not only Timothy,
but for the church.
In all the church letters he writes,
he says something similar to this.
But it is a great place to start.
You know, I think we’re going to prove this case,
or at least we’ll have evidence for this case tomorrow.
But needless to say,
when Paul begins with these
very potent theological words,
you can be certain he’s not doing so flippantly.
You can know that this isn’t sort of a nice social gesture.
We’re going to,
within moments of jumping into the text tomorrow,
discover that Paul’s already prepping in the letter
to present right teaching,
to set himself against false doctrine.
And so the fact that he leads with these key words of true doctrine,
that he is leaning upon
some of these fundamental blocks of the faith,
it is not an accident that he starts there.
And the fact that his reader doesn’t know exactly
what he’s talking about yet is assumed,
Paul’s confident that Timothy knows
what mercy, grace, and peace are.
But I think that it’s fair to assume
that Paul knows by starting there,
he’s opening an opportunity later
to define some of these terms
and to use them as a way,
a mechanism for the teaching
that both he’s trying to offer positively,
but most likely also some teaching
that he’s trying to work against.
And Paul is a smart enough thinker
and a savvy enough leader that you can be certain
that he’s considered all of this
as he sits down to write something like this.
Yeah, Paul is careful.
I think that there may be,
if there’s a gap in what we consider a letter
to what Paul does,
it may be that,
that I think very few of us when we wrote letters,
I used to get a letter every few days from my grandmother
and she was a wonderful letter writer,
but her letters were not for any purpose
than conveying information, but Paul crafts this letter.
He has thought about where each section should go
and we’ll see that tomorrow.
You know, there’s no coincidence when you encounter,
where does Paul choose to start?
You’re going to see that he has a reason,
he has a thought in mind with why that is the first word that needs said.
Paul chooses his words carefully and I think wisely
and I think we can learn a lot from that.
And so yes,
do keep in mind as we go through this
that it has been prepared carefully
and I think that will often show through.
Well, we hope that you’ve enjoyed
this first couple of verses of Timothy.
I want to say thank you for joining us for it.
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Hope you have a great day and we will see you tomorrow.
Thanks everybody.