Wenstrom Bible Ministries Marion, Iowa Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom wenstrom

1. Wenstrom Bible MinistriesMarion, IowaPastor-Teacher Bill Wenstromwww.wenstrom.org

2. Sunday January 30, 20111 Timothy: 1 Timothy 1:5-7-Paul Wants Certain Pastors In Ephesus Who Desired To Be Teachers Of The Law To Be Faithful and Exercise God’s LoveLesson # 16

3. Please turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy 1:1.

4. This morning we will note 1 Timothy 1:5-7.

5. 1 Timothy 1:5 records Paul writing to Timothy that the result of his and Timothy’s instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.

6. 1 Timothy 1:1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope,

7. 2 to Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

8. 3 As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines

9. 4 nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith.

10. 5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (NASU)

11. Verse 5 presents a contrast between the negative ungodly results of these pastors in Ephesus teaching false doctrine and being occupied with myths and useless genealogies and the positive results of their being faithful in administrating God’s household.

12. The negative result of the former is that the church in Ephesus will be involved with pointless arguments.

13. The positive result of the latter is the church will function in God’s love for one another since the result of obeying Paul’s apostolic teaching is love for God and love for each other.

14. “The goal” is the noun telos (τέλος) (the-loce), which does not mean “objective” or “purpose” but rather “result.”

15. The reason is that Paul is contrasting the negative ungodly results of these pastors in Ephesus teaching false doctrine and being occupied with myths and useless genealogies and the positive results of their being faithful in administrating God’s household.

16. “Our instruction” is the noun parangelia (παραγγελία) (pahr-ahn-ya-lee-ah), which refers to Paul’s prohibition that appears in 1 Timothy 1:3-4, which prohibited a certain group of unidentified pastors in Ephesus from teaching false doctrine and being occupied with myths and useless genealogies.

17. “Love” is the noun agape (ἀγάπη) (ah-gah-pee), which means “divine-love” and refers to the exercise of divine-love that is produced by the Holy Spirit through the believer who is obedient to the command to love one another since Paul wants the Ephesians to reflect God’s love for them in their relationships with each other.

18. “From a pure heart” teaches that a pure heart is the source from which God’s love is exercised towards one’s fellow Christian.

19. This prepositional phrase teaches that when the Christian obeys the command to love one another as Christ loved him it is from a heart that is experiencing fellowship with God and being influenced by the Holy Spirit.

20. This prepositional phrase refers to the state of the Christian’s soul that does not have any known sin in its stream of consciousness.

21. It refers to the believer experiencing fellowship with God and being influenced by the Spirit.

22. It speaks of the believer bringing his thoughts into obedience to the Spirit.

23. “A good conscience” refers to the Christian’s conscience or norms and standards being in accordance with the Father’s will because the Christian is being influenced by the Spirit.

24. The Christian is filled with or influenced by the Spirit when they bring their thoughts into obedience to the teaching of the Spirit, which is heard through the communication of the Word of God.

25. Therefore, the conscience, where the norms and standards reside, is divine in quality and character because the teaching of the Spirit as recorded in the Word is the basis for the norms and standards.

26. It describes the Christian’s conscience as being intrinsically valuable, intrinsically good, inherently good in quality but with the idea of good which is also profitable, useful, benefiting others, benevolent because their norms and standards are based upon the teaching of the Spirit in the Word of God.

27. “A sincere faith” speaks of the Christian’s post-conversion faith in the Word of God or in other words, their faith in the Spirit’s teaching that is revealed through the communication of the Word of God.

28. It does not refer to saving faith or faith in Jesus Christ for eternal salvation but rather the Christian’s faith in the Word of God since in context Paul is addressing the conduct of Christians as a result of their pastors teaching sound doctrine rather than false doctrine.

29. This prepositional phrase indicates that love for one’s fellow believer originates from a faith in the Word of God that is sincere.

30. It is sincere in the sense that the Christian does not simply talk about loving his fellow believer he demonstrates it by both his words and actions since obeying the command to love one another is the direct result of exercising faith in the Spirit’s teaching in the Word of God.

31. Paul is saying that love for one another is without hypocrisy.

32. It also indicates that loving one’s fellow Christian as Christ loved all men finds its source in a faith that is sincere.

33. In 1 Timothy 1:6, Paul is presenting the reason why these unidentified apostate teachers were turning aside to fruitless discussion.

34. 1 Timothy 1:6 For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion. (NASU)

35. “Some men” refers to certain unidentified Christian pastor-teachers who taught false doctrines in fulfillment of Paul’s prophesy recorded in Acts 20:28.

36. In the plural form it means that there was more than one pastor in Ephesus who was teaching false doctrines.

37. However, it does not mean that all the pastors were doing so.

38. “Straying from these things” means that these pastors deviated from loving one’s fellow Christian from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith and refers to unbelief in the Word of God.

39. Therefore, these pastors did not operate in God’s love and administrate God’s household in Ephesus by teaching the command to love one another because they were not thinking right and they were not thinking right because of a lack of faith in the Word of God.

40. It indicates that because these unidentified pastors in Ephesus deviated from obeying the command to love one another, which stems from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith, they turned aside to fruitless discussion, which in verse 4, Paul describes as “pointless arguments.”

41. “Haveturned aside to fruitless discussion” teaches that these pastors turned away from obeying the command to love one another from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith and instead were occupied with pointless discussion or conversation.

42. It denotes that they were following the right path in the sense of learning the Word of God and exercising faith in it, which results in obedience but instead they “turned away to” being occupied with Jewish myths and useless genealogies that resulted in their teaching false doctrine.

43. In 1 Timothy 1:6, the word mataiologia, “fruitless discussion” means “pointless discussion” or “meaningless talk” and is synonymous with the noun ekzetesis in verse 4, which we noted means “pointless arguments.”

44. 1 Timothy 1:7 wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions. (NASU)

45. “Wanting to be teachers of the Law” indicates that these unidentified pastors in Ephesus were unsuccessfully attempting to be teachers of the Mosaic Law, even though they did not understand the purpose of the Law.

46. “Even though they do not understand what they are saying” implies that these unidentified pastors in Ephesus lacked understanding of the true purpose of the Mosaic Law even though they desired to be teachers of it.

47. “Or the matters about which they make confident assertions” indicates that this particular group of pastors in Ephesus were making dogmatic assertions about the Law, which they were ignorant of since Paul goes on in verses 8-10 to describe one of the usages of the Law.

48. So as Mounce correctly observes “verses 3-7 set the historical state for the epistle.” (Page 28)

49. Certain pastors in Ephesus were not faithful in fulfilling their responsibilities to administrate the household of God (verse 4) by teaching false doctrine (verse 3) by being occupied with myths and useless genealogies (verse 4) that were Jewish in nature as implied by their desire to become teachers of the Mosaic Law (verse 7).

50. Paul’s purpose for urgently requesting that Timothy prohibit these pastors from doing these things was love.