A Commentary in Simple English on 1 Timothy

CHAPTER 3

Verses 1-9 The last days

In verse 1, Paul speaks about 'the last days'. Here this means the whole of the time until Jesus comes again. (See Acts 2:14-17; Hebrews 1:1-2.) Now some parts of this time are not bad. They are good in fact. But other times are very bad. They are terrible. They are hard times for Christians to bear. It is hard to do anything to make them better. This is because most people are so bad. (See also 1 Timothy 1:9 and 10; 6:3 and 4). Then Paul gives Timothy a long list of ways in which many people are bad (verses 2 to 5).

These are:-

1. They love themselves. Their love is back to front. We ought to love God and other people. They are selfish.

2. They love money. See 1 Timothy 6:9 and 10. They are greedy and want to be rich.

3. These people 'brag'. They boast. They like big talk about themselves.

4. They are haughty or proud. They want to get their own way. They are so sure of themselves that they will not listen to what other people say.

5. They are 'abusers' or blasphemers. They say hard, bitter things against other people and perhaps against God too.

6. They are disobedient to their parents. God's law tells us to honour our father and mother (Exodus 20:12). One way to honour our parents is to obey them while they live.

7. They are ungrateful. There are some people who never say 'Thank you'. But with these people, if they do say 'Thank you', you can see that they do not mean it.

8. They are unholy or 'impious'. They show no honour to things which other people think are holy (verse 3). Their minds are full of bad thoughts. Their reason for what they do is bad too.

9. They are unloving. They have no good human feelings. They are 'callous' or hard with other people, even their close family. It is not only that they do not have Christian love.

10 They do not forgive. Sometimes when two armies fight, they agree to a few days of peace. This is called a 'truce'. It may be to bury dead soldiers and to help those who are wounded. These people do not forgive. They keep up their hatred for other people. There is never a truce.

11 They spread lies. They are 'slanderers'. They really do want to make trouble for other people. And they say things which they know will cause trouble.

12 They have no self-control. They drink too much. Anyone who wants to serve the church must have self-control (1 Timothy 3:2).

13 They behave like wild animals. They are fierce, violent, brutal or savage.

14 They hate good men, or good things - or perhaps both. They are enemies of everything that is good. They laugh at people who do good and they call them 'do-gooders'.

15 (verse 4) They are traitors. They often fail other people who need their help. Mostly here this means those who fail other Christians.

16 They are reckless, or rash, or perhaps 'headstrong' or 'foolhardy'. They do foolish things without thought of how they will hurt others, or even themselves.

17 They are conceited. These people are empty really. They look big because they are blown up with pride. They think that they are very important.

18 They love pleasure instead of loving God. We all ought to love God (Matthew 22:37). No one loves God as well as they should. Yet how few people feel any need to love him at all.

(Verse 5) They have a form of religion. But if religion has no power to do good, it is wrong. These people have religion, but it has no power to change their lives. They do not even want to change at all.

Paul does not mean that all these things will be wrong with any one person. But when Timothy sees people like this, he is to turn away from them.

In verse 6, Paul seems to move from the 'terrible' times. He speaks rather about the things that happen in his own day. There were many false religions in the Roman world. The false teachers often had men as their followers. They would be men with positions of power (Acts 13:6-8; 8:9; 19:13-14). Jewish teachers, it seems, had their ways to get money out of rich women (Mark 12:40). The false teachers at Ephesus found many of their followers among women. Paul calls these followers 'little women'. People used this word for women who were weak or silly or who did not want to work. Perhaps here he means 'small minded women'. The false teachers make 'prisoners of war' of these women. Paul says three things about these women.

1. They are loaded down with sins, or rather, their sins are piled up, heaped up on them. Now we know that when we sin, we must repent and go to God and ask him to forgive us. If we do not then our sins will 'pile up' on us.

2. Our great desire should be the glory of God. Our desire should be to know Jesus better. Our desire should be to follow him. These women had several different desires at work in them. They were all wrong desires. These wrong desires pulled them in different ways.

3. These women learnt a lot from their teachers. There is a difference between this and 'a knowledge of the truth'. We can know all sorts of things and it does us no good at all. We need to know the great truth about God. We need to know the truth of the Good News about Jesus. Paul teaches us that we must love God if we want to know him. ( Ephesians 3:17; Philippians 1:9; Colossians 2:2; and also 1 John 2:5). If we have knowledge without love, it is no good (1 Corinthians 13:12).

It is in Exodus 7:11 that we read about the wise men of Egypt and how they opposed Moses. You will not find their names, 'Jannes and Jambres' (verse 8), anywhere else in the Bible. The names are found in other Jewish writings. The false teachers are like Jannes and Jambres. They failed when they tried to stop the work which God gave Moses to do. So the false teachers will fail too. They try to stop Paul and Timothy. Paul and Timothy do God's work. The false teachers will not get very far. But by the grace and help of God, Timothy will succeed in his work.

Verses 10-17 Suffering and Reward again

In verse 9, Paul said that people would watch the false teachers. In the time of Moses, people could see that Jannes and Jambres had failed. It will be plain to everyone that the false teachers have failed. Now in verse 10 we can see that Timothy has not watched the false teachers. For many years, he has watched Paul. So he knows all about him. Timothy knows three things about Paul. They are:-

a) Paul's ministry. In this Paul uses three words - 'my teaching, my way of life, my aim in life'.

b) Paul's life as a Christian. Here he speaks of 'my faith'. Paul believed what he taught to other people. More than that, he was faithful to God in all his life.

Then he speaks of 'my patience' (or longsuffering) After 'my love' he adds 'my endurance' (or steadfastness). 'Patience' and 'endurance' are words which are rather alike in meaning yet there is a difference between them. 'Patience' means that when people are difficult, we do not lose our temper. We still try to help them. When things are difficult, we do not try wrong ways to get away from them. 'Endurance' means that there is nothing we can do at all about our troubles. We have to live with them, but we do not become sad and just give up. We keep our hope and joy. Of course, love fits in with both these words. Love makes us patient with other people. We have endurance because we love God.

c) Paul's persecutions and sufferings (verse 11). We read in the Book of Acts what happened to Paul in the three places which he names. For Antioch, see Acts 13:45 and 50. This is Antioch in Pisidia, not Antioch on the Orontes. For Iconium, see Acts 14:5. For Lystra see Acts 14:19. Notice that Paul does not include Derbe. Acts says nothing about any attack on Paul at Derbe. What Paul suffered in the other three cities all took place before Timothy met Paul. When Timothy joined Paul in the work, he already knew what Paul had suffered. That is not the end of the story in Acts of course. See Acts 16:22-24; but this is only a part of what Paul suffered (2 Corinthians 11:23-27). God had saved him from his enemies over and over again (Psalm 34:17).

Verse 12 is a verse which we should notice with great care. Scripture does not let us think that life will be easy if we are Christians (See Acts 14:22). Those who want to live a life which pleases God will suffer. (See John 15:18-20; 16:33.) This is true even though they are 'in Christ Jesus'. He is already in glory, far above the power of the enemies who may attack us. Verse 13 says that bad men will go into wrong ways. They will be 'deceived'. The 'imposters' are people like Jannes and Jambres. The word Paul uses here may mean that these men pretend to use magic. They may be 'witch doctors'. Their work is to lead the people who listen to them into wrong ways. They 'deceive' them.

In verse 14, Paul moves on. Timothy and other Christians do not need to listen to 'imposters'. God has given his own word to us. Timothy has not learnt the truth only from Paul. Ever since he was a baby (verse 15) Timothy had had good teachers. He did not only learn, like the 'little women' of verse 7. He had a firm faith. That was the work which the Holy Spirit did in him.

Verses 15-17 are of the greatest importance because they give us teaching about the Scriptures. Paul says these things:-

1. Scripture is 'God breathed', that is to say, it is what God has breathed out. Our word 'inspiration' is not a good one. It makes us think too much about the writers of Scripture as though they 'breathed in' God's Word. The picture is rather like Genesis 2:7 where God breathes life into Adam. Also today the word 'inspired' is used in a very loose way. People talk about music and poetry as 'inspired' when it is nothing of the kind.

2. Still it is true that men wrote down the truth which God breathed out. (2 Peter 1:21) God chose men to whom he would make known his truth. We know that many of them were great men of God, like David, Isaiah and Daniel. Some of these men had great gifts. We know little or nothing about some of the other writers. Some of these writers sat quietly and thought about the truth (Ecclesiastes 12: 9 and 10). Some were made ill by what God said to them (Daniel 8:27). God did not speak to them all in the same way. Yet God's Holy Spirit 'inspired' the Scripture. We must pray to God for the help of His Spirit when we read Scripture. You will see from these verses the right ways to use Scripture. First in verse 15 Paul says

a) Scripture is able to make us wise. Wisdom is more than knowledge. Wisdom shows us how to use our knowledge. It makes all the difference between success and failure.

b) This wisdom teaches us to have faith in Christ Jesus. Then we shall know that God saves us.

3. Then in verse 16, Paul lists four more uses of Scripture:-

a) For teaching.

b) For 'rebuke' or 'reproof'. When people go wrong in their lives, we should not just tell them about it. We should show them from Scripture how they have gone wrong. And we should show them the right way from Scripture too.

c) For 'correction' or 'restoration'. If a Christian has fallen down because of sin or for some other reason, we use Scripture to help him to get up again.

d) For 'training in righteousness'. We are all like children. We need to be taught and trained so that our lives will please God. We must give this teaching from Scripture.

4. To do all this work, the 'man of God' must get to know his Bible. So this is another use of Scripture. It makes God's servants ready to do their work. Scripture prepares us.

Now there are several other things that we ought to say about these verses.

a). We believe that the Scriptures as God first gave them were free from mistakes.

b) The first writers used mostly the Hebrew and Greek languages. Even before the time of Jesus the Old Testament had been translated from Hebrew into Greek. Hebrew was not used much. The church very soon made translations for people who lived in Syria and in Egypt. This work has still not finished. Today, at least some part of the Bible has been printed in more than 2000 languages. Work goes on now in hundreds more. Many more people around the world want the Bible in their own languages.

c). This is right and good. Every human language will have a share in the worship of God in glory (Revelation 7:9). Yet we must not forget that these translations or 'versions' are the work of men. God uses them for his glory. Many Bible versions are very good. People love them and use them for many years. Yet versions are not perfect.

d). We have to remember that God's truth is so great that no one human language is fit to set it all out. Some people do not know what snow is. Some peoples have never seen the sea. Some do not know what a sheep is. Yet mostly when translators make a new version, they see new ways to look at God's truth. We must remember, too, that languages change and often there is a need for a new version because of this.

e). Some parts of Scripture may not seem to help us much. We have to remember that God gave Scripture for men in every place. He gave his Word to rich and poor. He gave his truth for every age. So what does not help me very much may be the very thing that some one else needs.

f). In Chapter 2:23, Paul warned Timothy not to ask silly questions. Now there are some questions to which we shall not find an answer in Scripture. We must be careful to use the Bible in the ways that Paul tells Timothy here to use it. There is danger if we look at just one verse on its own. We must look at different verses to see how they agree with each other.

g). The Bible is God's Word to men, so there is always more truth in it. Yet we must be careful. What we think is new truth may only be an old mistake! We must honour and love the Word of God and use it with care.

h). People try to find fault with the Bible. There have been times when people who tried to find fault have been proved wrong. There are words in the Old Testament which no one really understands. We do not know enough about the laws and customs of the people of Bible times to understand some other things. The dates which we use in history may be wrong by about 250 years before the time of David. So often when people try to tell us that the Bible is wrong, they are wrong themselves. They do not know as much as they think that they do.

What Paul says here is that we should use the Bible. When we use it in the ways he sets out, we shall find that we can trust it. All that we need of God's truth is there. We must not add anything to it. Indeed, churches need to look again at what the Bible teaches. Customs grow up in the church over the course of years. People think these customs are holy. We need to go back to the Bible to see whether it teaches us to do these things. Our customs usually do not help us at all; they may even stop us from doing what the Bible says we should do.