Sermon Book: 1 Timothy

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 4, 1994.

About this sermon

Theological liberals have long disdained the pastoral epistles, and even the orthodox have defended them weakly, with Machen and Meredith Kline as notable exceptions. 1 Timothy 3 shows why that neglect is a mistake. The plain exhortation is to read these letters.

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Sermon transcript

This morning we are turning to Paul’s first letter to Timothy, and we are reading chapter three. This is 1 Timothy chapter three. Now give your attention to God’s inspired and infallible word. This is a true saying. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth the good work.

A bishop, then, must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach. Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy as filthy lucre, a patient, not a brawler, not covetous, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, lest, being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

Likewise, must the deacons be brave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. Let these also first be proved, then let them use the office of a deacon being found blameless. Even so, must their wives be brave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. For they that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree of great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.

These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I carry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of the angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. Strike us down, O God, if we would fail in our attentiveness to your word. And lay us low, O God, if in our pride we are an offense to you. heal our souls as your spirit with the word works in us. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Now I have in mind a couple of messages on the last verses of this third chapter in 1 Timothy, furthering our series that we have been pursuing now for some time to the theme of the doctrine of the Church. But this morning, my intention is to be a bit more general, and to provide some orientation for us as we look at the pastoral epistles.

Now, Paul’s pastoral letters are in need of a general retrieval and a deeper study by the Church of Jesus Christ Now, if you are confused as to what the pastorals are, let me identify them to you. They are the letters that Paul writes to pastors, specifically Timothy and Titus. He writes two to Timothy, he writes another to Titus. These letters were written by Paul after his first Roman imprisonment in the early A.D. You will recall that Paul had been taken to Rome. The account of that is found in the latter chapters of the Book of Acts, and while at Rome he had written a number of letters. Those which we possess in the New Testament have been identified as the prison epistles, specifically Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Those are letters from the first imprisonment of Paul.

But Paul was released from prison and spent at least two more years in ministry to the churches in Europe and Asia. And it was during this period, leading up then to his rearrest and his death, it was in this period that Paul writes the so-called pastoral letters to Timothy and to Titus.

Now, I say that these letters are in need of a general retrieval and a deeper study by the Church of Christ because, for one thing, they have been beaten into the backwater of the Church’s consciousness by the liberal assault that began almost two hundred years ago. The liberals were not particularly partial. to the pastorals, they seemed to attack everything in sight. But there was a specific focus for them as they approached the pastoral letters of Paul. For instance, I have in my library a book that is the fruit of the liberal assault upon the writings of Paul. It is a book that deals with Paul’s theology.

But interestingly, that book religiously avoids any reference to the pastoral letters. Why? Because the liberals are convinced that Paul didn’t write them. Paul did not write 1st and 2nd Timothy or Titus, so say the liberals. This particular liberal denies Pauline authorship. He does that in the face of the fact that the Church has uniformly recognized Paul to be the author of these letters, and that for over 1800 years.

Now, the charge that the liberals lay out is this. The writer of these letters, in their judgment, is much too formal. He is much too rigid when it comes to the structure and the offices of the Church. They say, this writer’s doctrine has arrived at a much too precise, settled, and formulated stake.

He can actually encapsulated in faithful sayings. You find a number of those faithful sayings throughout the pastoral letters. He can encapsulate it in compact confessions, such as we find in the 16th verse of that third chapter in 1 Timothy. at least the Paul that we embrace, is the apostle of the Spirit. He is not the apostle of precise, settled, formulated statements. He is not the apostle of structure and office. He is the apostle of the Spirit. He is the apostle of spontaneity. He is the apostle of liberty.

Our Paul wrote Galatians, and set before the Church its message of personal faith and freedom from restraint and law and commandment. Our Paul wrote the Corinthian correspondence, writings that exhale the free exhilarating air of charismatic endowment. gifts.

But the pastoralists, so say the liberals, are hemmed in by order and restrictiveness. Such order and restrictiveness that binds the Holy Spirit now specifically to office, of all things, and to doctrine carefully worded. Gone then from the pastorals is the spacious and personal and practical proclamation of Paul’s message of personal faith, vital faith. And in its place now, here in the pastorals, there appears Instead, a definition of faith that is unacceptable to us. For here, it seems as if faith means adherence to an institutionalized set of dogma.

Obviously then, the pastoral letters were not written by Paul. The best we can do is to say that they were written by some admirer of Paul, later on a disciple, but one who never quite captured the Apostle’s spark, and one who represented the Church’s decline into a cold and moribund rigidity. Now, the response of orthodox and conservative Protestantism to this liberal assault and denial has been steady and consistent, but the focus of even this response has been, by and large, disappointing. The interest has been, rightly, a defense of Paul’s authorship of these letters, but at the same time, even among the Orthodox and the Conservatives, there has been a near exclusion of any deepening appreciation of Paul’s specific orientation in these letters. where interest has been paid to the message of the pastorals, the approach has been rather piquant.

For example, pastorals have been scoured by Orthodox, Evangelical, and Conservative Protestants in the interests of the subject of church government. as those involved in this enterprise have been concerned to find proof texts upon which they can hang their particular version of church government. Now, it’s not as if we can’t find out important things about church government from the pastoral epistles. But by merely concentrating on that, Are we overlooking even deeper matters? Conservatives have looked at the pastorals further because they have found in them a defense for the doctrine of biblical inspiration.

I suppose at some time in our lives we all have memorized 2 Timothy 3.16. A text that comes to us, then, out of the pastorals.

But even more than that, the pastorals have been looked upon as useful by conservatives because of what they have to say about apostolic authority. Beyond this, the pastorals have been judged to be very practical, in that they serve up worthy advice to preachers and ministers of the gospel. But it is precisely this practical interest that brings to attention just how limited the pastorals are in their appeal. They are written to pastors, and therefore, by and large, they have been judged to be of little importance to the man and the woman in the pew. They are appropriate at ordination services, to cite, to preach on. but little else.

Something of a testimony to this attitude among the Orthodox and conservative Protestants is found in the fact that the pastoral letters have not been generally the New Testament books of choice when those conservatives have sat down to write biblical commentaries. They simply are not. good, substantial, weighty commentaries on the pastoralists, given to us out of the orthodox and conservative world over the last 200 years.

But if there has been a failure in the conservative response now to the liberal attack and denial One reason for this, as sad as it is for me to say, has been the mood, the very subjective mood that has settled over the Church of our time. It is almost as if conservatives, while disagreeing with liberals about a number of particulars, like the authorship of the pastoralists, have nevertheless agreed with the liberals as far as the general mood of things is concerned. If the pastoral smack too much of objective truth, of historical objectivity, of the verifiable witness to the events of the gospel, to a genuine ecclesiology and to doctrinal orthodoxy, and not enough of personal, subjective, and somewhat mystical and undefinable character of religious experience than the worst to the pastoral.

Dismiss that. You see, conservatives have been just as responsible as liberals for the incessant clamor of our time. demanding the eminently and intimately personal and practical side of religious life, even to the point of clouding, if not eclipsing, the historical factuality and objective finality of God’s mighty acts, which make up the Bible’s central concern. That incessant clamor is also doing damage to our appreciation of the Church. For because of it, we are likely to disregard the substantive, historical, corporate, and organized objective reality that is found in the Church. Say this enough. My story saves nobody. And everybody has a story. Even Muslims and Buddhists. It is only the story of Jesus Christ that saves. Now, telling you my story may be a help to you. It may be an encouragement. But it isn’t the gospel.

What is happening, tragically, is that the subjective, personal side of our religious experience is likely to eclipse the historical objective reality that is found in the Gospel and with the Church of Jesus Christ. Now, there was one man who stood consciously against the modern consensus and the rise of the subjective in appropriating the message of the word. And that man was J. Gresham Meacham, a man who had a lot to do with the organization of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936.

Now, Machen applied himself without hesitation and without embarrassment, even to the question of the pastoral’s perceived irrelevance. His comments opened a door for the pastoral’s retrieval and for a greater insight into their message. About the pastoral, Machen said this, they may be regarded as marking the beginning of the second stage in the life of the Church. The age of origination, the gospel events, the apostolic witness, the age of origination was nearly over, and the age of conservation had begun.

The Church must now be looked upon as an established institution. You cannot avoid it.” That’s editorial comment. You cannot avoid it. I know the pressures that are on you, away from the institutional church, away from the form and the order and the structure of the institutional church. If you want to have a vital Christianity, you have to let the church go. That’s baloney! Now, I can say it’s strider, but I’ll spare you. The Church must now be looked upon as an established institution. In dealing with Jesus Christ, you’re not going to be able to avoid the question of the established institutional Church, and remain faithful to Him.

Nation goes on, great principles were needed for the Church’s guidance, principles which should serve not only for special circumstances, as in some of the other epistles, but for all generations. Say, the Apostles have been just jacked up a few notches with respect to their importance.

Now, according to Machen, the uniqueness of the pastels, then, is traced to the fact that Paul is dying. The apostle is going to die. He’s not going to be there anymore, and that’s going to create a new circumstance in the Church and for the Church. So these are not just more letters from Paul, they are his last letters. Think of it. These are his last communications. They serve as something of a last will and testament from the man. And you can think of other last will and testament from biblical figures.

Jacob, the latter chapters of Genesis, speaking to his son. Moses on the plains of Moab, speaking to the children of Israel before they enter into the land, the entirety of the book of Deuteronomy. David to his son, speaking to Solomon about what he can expect and what he is to do. And Jesus himself to his disciples. on the eve of his crucifixion.

Now, in conformity to that pattern, here we have Paul, as it were, delivering his last will and testament, his last words. These letters are of supreme importance, for they are transitional documents. As the time of the apostles comes to a close, and the post-apostolic period commences. They are letters of such weightiness for the whole of Christ’s Church, because what the Apostle writes in them is now of first importance to him as his life closes. in reading and in understanding the Apostle, we might even do well to start with the pastoralist and then work back to Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, etc. But it’s helpful and suggestive as Nathan’s remarks were, and continue to be, for the retrieving and deepening of our appreciation of the pastoralists. It has been the work of another that has provided a powerful analysis of the Bible’s structure in its entirety, into which now the pastoralists so beautifully fit. And I have in mind Meredith G. Klein. Now, Klein is an Old Testament scholar, not a New Testament scholar, as Nietzsche writes. But what Klein does is he observes the flow of Old Testament history. He marks it out in a threefold pattern.

First, the foundational narrative at the center of which is the record of God’s great work of salvation in the Old Testament, specifically the Exodus from Egypt. Secondly, a period of extraordinary charismatic endowment, of extraordinary charismatic gifts, in which there is the Holy Spirit’s direct interaction with persons most useful for the progress and growth of God’s covenant community.

The second period corresponds to the time running from Joshua through the judges, especially, through the judges to the days of Saul. And this brings us to the third and final period. The period of extraordinary charismatic endowment ends and the time of settlement and permanence begins in which God’s people are now ruled generally by their reflection upon what God has done and said previously and according to the wisdom that is appropriate for a right understanding of those wonderful truths. This is the period of the kingdom in the Old Testament and its establishment. It is the period of the moving of the Ark and the building of the Temple. It is the era that we observe specifically under the administrations of David and Solomon.

But now, interestingly, Klein goes on. we observe the same pattern in the New Testament. First, the foundational narrative of God’s great work of salvation in the Gospels, and this time, of course, dealing with the advent, the life, the death, the resurrection, and ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But secondly, there comes the period of extraordinary charismatic endowment. in the apostolic period with its signs and wonders, its miracles, its gifts of tongues and prophecies. Here we have in view the Book of the Acts and a great number of the New Testament letters that are given to us. But finally, even beyond this, we have the establishment of the Church and the cessation of the signs and wonders as the apostolic period comes to an end.

And this period is itself reflected within the pastorals, and also in other New Testament writings, such as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is a period in which the Church and its structure, its offices, and its exact doctrine are coming into precise focus. It is a time in which, in the words of Paul to Timothy, we ought to know, we all ought how we are to behave ourselves in the house of God, the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. 1 Timothy 3. And it is a time in which the content of the great mystery of godliness is not thrown into the realm of undefinable feelings, but clearly articulated in our common confession. 1 Timothy 3.

And by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh was justified in the spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up into glory.” Now, all of this is to say that the pastorals are of supreme importance to us and of great benefit, and are a further testimony to us about the sufficiency of Scripture.

Indeed, our New Testaments include us. We are in them. And that not just in the general sense, that we belong to the same age in which the New Testament was written, the age that commences with Christ’s coming and will be consummated at His return. But in a most specific sense, we live in a post-apostolic period. And these epistles, as Paul envisions that period, speak specifically to us. We then live after Jesus’ redemptive ministry. We live after the Holy Spirit’s descent at Pentecost. We live after the times, the time of signs and wonders and miraculous events in the history of the Church. We live in the time of the Church’s establishment, and these letters are particularly addressed to us. They are very pointedly addressed to us.

In this time, each of us is called As Paul called Timothy, in the last chapter of his first letter to him, to fight the good fight. And that fight will cause us to stand against the ravages of the assault and denial of the liberals. But that fight will also call upon us to stand upon the rampant subjectivism and sentimentality that has now overrun Christian conscience. Fight the good fight.

And if I were to define it even further, it would mean that you and I are to be found enveloped in the mystery of godliness spoken of by Paul at the end of that third chapter. The content of that mystery being nothing else than Jesus Christ himself, with his humiliation and his exaltation becoming our very life. What subjectivity we embrace and long for is that which expresses itself in terms of conformity to our Lord, so that even our lives begin to look like His. All of this is right at the center of what the pastorals are about. So read them again to your Father. Let’s pray. Later, in Paul’s testimony to Timothy, he will speak about his trial. And how none stood with him. In his hour of interrogation. How deserted of all of his friends. He was compelled then to confess the good confession alone. And thus face his death. in the certain hope of the resurrection and its reward.

And as we read that account, O God, we realize that Paul, in his subjectivity, is actually giving way to his Lord, and seeing the very patterns of his Savior, and his Savior’s demise, death, and resurrection. being expressed in him. O God, this is not a pattern which the apostle will lay out merely for pastors. It is a pattern that is laid out for all of God’s children. All, in fact, who would name the name of Jesus. Help us, Lord, to fight the good fight. And may we stand against the drift of our time in order to be secure in the certainties of your word. We ask it in Jesus name.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.