In service of our teaching theme this year, The Household of God, which focuses on the Bible’s teaching on the Church, we are working our way through the pastoral epistles – that’s 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus – here on Sunday mornings. And we’ve come today to the last section of 1 Timothy. So if you would, take a Bible in hand; let me invite you now to turn with me to 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 11 through 21. If you need to use one of our church Bibles, you can find that on page 993.
Now throughout this letter, as we have seen, Paul’s concern has oscillated back and forth between a focus on Timothy’s life and ministry as a pastor of the church there, on the one hand, and on the needs of the church itself in Ephesus on the other hand. And here in this final section, verses 11 through 21, those twin concerns are repeated again in a number of concluding exhortations that serve to sum up in many ways the message of the book as a whole. We’re going to consider verses 11 through 21 under three simple headings. First, in verses 11 through 16, there is a call to godly living. A call to godly living for Timothy and for all of us. Secondly, 17 through 19, there is a call to generous investment. There is another word here for the wealthy in the congregation and how they are to invest what God gives them for the glory of His name. A call to godly living. A call to generous investment. And finally, verses 20 and 21, there’s a call to guard the truth, to ensure that the good news about Jesus is preserved in its integrity and proclaimed in all its clarity. So a call to godly living, a call to generous investment, and a call to guard the truth.
Before we look at each of those, let’s bow our heads and pray one more time and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
O Lord, Your Word is living and active, sharper than a double edged sword. It pierces to the division of joints and marrow, soul and spirit. It lays bare the secret thoughts and intentions of our hearts. And so as we bow before You, we come tremblingly to Your holy Word, to Your voice addressing Your church. Grant now, by the illumination of Your Spirit, grace that we may meekly receive and feed upon and be nourished by the pure spiritual milk of Your Word. Wield the sword of the Spirit in all our hearts, for Your honor and glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
First Timothy chapter 6 at the eleventh verse. This is the Word of God:
“But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time – he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.
O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge,’ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.
Grace be with you.”
Amen.
Well we all know, I’m sure, about the fight-or-flight instinct, that deep-seated response of the nervous system to threat scenarios. But it’s not always reliable, is it? How many of you have found yourselves wanting nothing more than to run away and avoid a confrontation, when actually you really ought to stand your ground and fight on a point of principle? Or haven’t there been moments when you felt so triggered that you wanted to provoke a conflict when of course wisdom really ought to have led you to beat a strategic retreat? I suspect that some of our deepest, relational mistakes stem from our inability to manage our fight-or-flight instincts. We flee when we should fight, and we fight when we should flee.
Now we said earlier that the first part of Paul’s concluding exhortations to Timothy here in verses 11 through 16 comprise a call to godly living. But if you’ll look at it with me, you’ll see that he tells Timothy, in effect, that godliness largely consists in knowing when to flee and when to fight. Godliness largely consists in knowing when to flee and when to fight. Look at the passage please. In verse 11, Timothy is told to “flee” from certain behaviors. Do you see that? Then in verse 12, he is to “fight the good fight of the faith.” We need to know when to fight and when to flee. Practical Christian holiness turns on our ability to know when to do which.
If you’ll look carefully at verses 11 and 12, you’ll notice there are three parts to this exhortation. The first, in verse 11, has to do with Timothy’s character. Do you see that? “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” Now these things that Timothy is to flee refers back, of course, to the kind of behaviors we considered last Lord’s Day in which the false teachers of verses 3 through 10 of this chapter were engaged. They imagined, do you remember, that godliness was a means for selfish material gain, and it led them ultimately to a departure from the faith and a piercing of themselves through with many pangs.
“And so Timothy, I don’t want you to mess with that stuff. Don’t entertain it. Don’t let greed or a desire for a bigger platform or personal recognition allure you. No, Timothy, you need to run from it. Flee these things. Put some distance between you and these sorts of temptations. And once more, while you run from greed and false teaching, I also want you to run towards holiness.” You see that in the text? “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness.”
And so let’s be clear, these are our options. We are all running a race, but the Scriptures ask us, “What is your direction of travel?” Have you thought about your Christian life in those terms? “What is my direction of travel today? Am I running toward holiness, Christlikeness? Am I running toward righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness? Or am I actually running after the very things that the Word of God says will pierce us through with many pangs?” So the first part of this call to godliness focuses on Timothy’s character. It is a call to flee, to run from temptation and toward holiness.
The next part of the exhortation focuses on convictions. Character, then convictions. Timothy has been told to flee these things, but now he’s also told he needs to know when to fight for certain other things. Verse 12, “Fight the good fight of the faith.” Don’t miss the definite article there. It’s not “fight the good faith of faith,” as if Paul were referring to a fight that consists in the exercise of our subjective faith in Jesus. No, Paul says, “Fight the good fight of the faith.” Every time the expression “the faith” with the definite article like that is used in 1 Timothy, it refers to the doctrinal content of the Christian message and not to the subjective experience of believing in that message. So 1 Timothy 4:1, Paul says, “In the latter times some will depart from the faith.” In chapter 4 verse 6, if he puts Paul’s teaching before the church, Timothy will be a “good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine.” In chapter 5 verse 8, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” In chapter 6 verse 10, it is through craving for money that some have wandered away from “the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” And in chapter 6:21, right at the end of the letter, Paul says again those who claim to have discovered hidden, esoteric knowledge “have swerved from the faith.” Timothy is to content, he is to fight for Biblical convictions.
When it comes to moral questions, to ethical questions, a man of God is to flee temptation and pursue holiness. Let’s be clear now, you don’t fight temptation; you flee temptation. You are to make like Joseph – remember? When Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him, make like Joseph and get out of there! Flee temptation. Trying to fight temptation is like walking into a rainstorm, telling yourself, “I can avoid getting wet by ducking between the raindrops.” Right? You can’t do it. You’ve got to get out of there! Flee temptation.
But when it comes to doctrinal questions, a man of God isn’t to flee, he’s not to go along to get along. He is to stand and fight. Why? Well one reason is that without the truth preserved in its integrity, our ability to flee temptation and pursue holiness will be fatally undermined. I wonder if you’ve been going about your Christian life with your fight-or-flight instincts all confused? Your fighting temptation when you ought to be fleeing from it, and you’re fleeing from doctrinal error when you ought to stand your ground. No wonder, no wonder temptations prevail over you as much as they do! No, no, flee temptation, Paul says, and fight for the faith.
And then notice the last part of this opening exhortation, this call to godliness – so character, convictions; the last part has to do with commitment. Look at the second half of verse 12. “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” Now we often misread the phrase, “eternal life,” that Paul is using here as if it focuses only on the world to come. We read it to mean, “eternal life,” we read it to mean something like, “going to heaven when you die.” But in the New Testament, eternal life doesn’t refer only to the unending duration of life forever with Jesus; it refers also to the quality of life possessed by everyone who believes in Him already, right here and now. It is the life of the eternal realm that erupts right into the middle of the drab, gray world of sin and death that we all live in through faith in Jesus who rose from the grave. And Paul reminds Timothy here that he had been called by God sovereignly, out of death, into this new life, the life of the world to come, into eternal life, when he was converted. And he made, subsequently made the good confession. That is to say, in our terms, he publicly professed his faith in Jesus Christ before many witnesses and was received into the fellowship of the church.
But then Paul says to him, “Now Timothy, this life that you have already in Jesus, I want you to take hold of it. This life to which you were called, I want you to take hold of it.” You see that expression in verse 12? “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.” The Greek phrase there, translated “take hold of,” means something like, “to take personal possession of something, to seize it, capture it, possess it, to make it your own.” If you are a Christian today, you already have life eternal. The eternal realm has invaded your heart and taken up residence there. The life of the world to come is already yours. You’re not dead anymore. You live in union with Christ, the living one. And in Him, you are alive forever. But John 10:10, Jesus says, “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.” Some of us, I think, truly living Christians, are not living an abundant Christian life. We’re not taking hold of eternal life. We’re not possessing it, making it our own, enjoying it, reveling in it. I wonder, would you say your Christian life is an abundant life? Are you taking hold of the fullness of life that you have in Jesus? This is a summons, to be clear, out of mediocrity, out of lukewarmness. Take hold of eternal life in Christ.
Actually, the call to commitment in this opening section is true for all three parts of this exhortation, isn’t it? You noticed, I’m sure, how incredibly forceful and active each aspect of this call to godliness really is. Flee sin. Pursue holiness. Fight for truth. Take hold of life. The point is, you don’t grow in godliness automatically, certainly not passively. There is a kind of aggressive, dogged resolve to give it our all that we need to grasp and embody here. Some of us get very discouraged about how little progress we feel we are making with patterns of remaining sin still in our own hearts and lives. And to be fair, sometimes that’s just our perception and other people who know us can see very clearly, better than we can see, that we are in fact making real progress.
But sometimes when we feel that way, it pays to take personal inventory and ask ourselves honestly if perhaps we haven’t made more progress because we simply haven’t been making much effort. We have no consistent routine of personal Bible reading. We rarely spend time seeking the Lord in private. We never spare a thought for the sanctity of the Sabbath day. We are infrequent in attendance at church and in our use of the public means of grace. It’s been a year since we last sat at the Lord’s Table. We’re not in a small group Bible study. We’ve never even considered coming to the Tuesday lunchtime prayer meeting. We can’t recall the last time we told anybody about Jesus. If that’s you, no wonder you’re not making much progress! This is a call to strenuous effort in the pursuit of Christlikeness. How are you doing with that? You can’t run a race sitting in an arm chair. You can’t win a battle lying on the beach. You won’t make any progress in Christian holiness without hard, diligent effort.
Now of course that’s not easy, and Paul seems to see that right here, doesn’t he, because no sooner does he press Timothy to this level of commitment and resolve and activity than he supplies some glorious motivation to help him and propel him forward and help us to do the same. Look at the text. The charge of this whole first section is summed up again in verses 13 and 14. Timothy is to “keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach.” And as we’ve said, that’s hard work, challenging, weighty; it’s difficult. But it is a charge, nevertheless, that comes – look at the text – “in the presence of God who gives life.” “You have life in Christ now right already, Timothy. You’ve been called into eternal life. You’ve got it from His hand. Do not for a moment allow yourself to think that this God who gave life to you will desert you now as you seek to take hold of that life to which you’ve been called. And what’s more, this charge comes in the presence of Christ Jesus, “who in his testimony before Pontinus Pilate made the good confession.” Upholding our confession, living up to the calling God has given us, can be costly. No doubt, Timothy was feeling the weight of that, the challenge of it. He was daunted by it. Maybe you are too. You see how far you’ve still got to go. You see how pernicious and persistent your remaining sin is, and it’s challenging. You feel a little overwhelmed.
But Paul takes us back, doesn’t he, to the night of Jesus’ arrest and trial where in His interview with Pontius Pilate, Jesus made the good confession and acknowledged Himself to be a king, though His kingdom is not of this world. Nailed over His head as He hung upon the cross were the words of the indictment against Him, “The King of the Jews.” “And all this, Timothy, remember, all this He bore for us, endured for us. And now,” Paul is saying in effect, “if you want to find the motive to propel your dogged effort in making progress forward, you need to go back to Calvary and see from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. And then you’ll say, ‘Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.’” Look again at the cross. Look at the sufferings of Jesus. Jesus made the good confession. You can stand by your confession of faith in Christ and live for Him and take hold of eternal life because of what He has done for you.
But don’t just look back at Jesus’ sufferings. Also look forward to His coming, His approaching return. Glance down at verses 14 and 15 again. “Keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time.” The approaching day of Jesus’ return is a great Scriptural motive for our pursuit of present, practical holiness. He is coming. Get ready! Strive to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until He comes, whenever that will be. Give yourself to the pursuit of Christlikeness, so that when He appears, you will be ready to meet Him at last. When last did you meditate on the return of the Lord Jesus Christ? There is a future orientation to Christian sanctification that we badly need to recover. If you knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow, how would you live today? If you knew He was coming back tomorrow, how would you live today? Look back. Look forward.
And also continue, Paul says, to make sure you are looking up. Verses 15 and 16, “He is, God is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” Your God is the sovereign King. Your God is the immortal one in whom all life natively inheres. Your God is unknowable and unapproachable and invisible. He’s not, He’s not your servant, He’s not small, familiar, tame. He can’t be used or manipulated or deceived. He is Lord, exalted over all things, and we live every day under the gaze of the infinite, eternal and unchangeable triune God. And so the next time you throw up your hands in defeat and say, “I can’t do it!” the next time you feel ready to quit because your sin seems so strong and so persistent, you just can’t seem to shake it, look up. Look to the one on the throne. Nothing is impossible for Him. Yes, flee temptation, pursue holiness, fight for truth, take hold of eternal life. Keep the commandment unstained and free of reproach, but do it all, do it all looking back to Christ crucified, forward to Christ coming, and up to the living, sovereign God, the giver of life who rules all things and works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. You are quite right, you know. You are small and puny and weak and your sin is strong, but your God is mighty to save. He is stronger than all your sin. He will help you. He will. So the first part of Paul’s closing words here is a call to godly living.
The second part you will see in verses 17 through 19 and it is a call to generous investment. A call to generous investment. You might think based on Paul’s words that we considered last week in verses 3 through 10 that he is really negative about material wealth. But that’s not the case at all. Look at verse 17. “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” That is a remarkably positive view of wealth. God provides us with everything good in our lives, including material wealth should He give it to you. And He gives it to us to enjoy it. You are allowed to enjoy your stuff. You got that clear in your thinking? Sometimes there’s a sort of protestant aestheticism that can creep over us, leading us to imagine that if we are really being faithful we probably ought to be miserable. And if we really like something, “Probably God doesn’t want me to have it.” Have you ever been tempted to think that way? That’s not at all Paul’s perspective here, is it? God richly provides us with everything to enjoy, to enjoy. Perhaps you need to hear that today to give yourself permission to enjoy God’s good gifts in your life.
But as you do, do not miss the warning. Make sure that your enjoyment of God’s generosity in your life does not become idolatry. Do not begin to love the gifts and forget the Giver. That’s what Paul is saying here essentially. There are two types of idolatry in the passage. Can you see them? The first is the idolatry of self, the idolatry of pride. “Do not be haughty,” Paul says. Don’t think that your wealth makes you superior to others. Don’t boast in your own accomplishments as if your own hands provided all that you had and not the God who made you. Rupert prayed earlier, “What have we that we have not received?” It’s all gift. It’s all gift. That’s the idol of self that seeks to take credit.
The second idol here is the idol of money, making money itself our god. It is hoping in the uncertainty of riches. Paul has in mind the person who thinks that cash solves everything. He thinks, “If only I could close the deal, make the big sale, get that one big payout, win that one big bet on the game, well then all will be well.” But riches are uncertain. In other words, you can’t trust them. They will disappoint you. Stock markets crash. You’ll lose the bet. The deal won’t come through sometimes. Riches are uncertain. But if you boast not in yourself nor in your money but in your God, if you’ll rest your hopes not in the uncertainty of riches but in Him, then whatever He gives you, you’ll take it from Him as a gift, undeserved and precious, and you’ll enjoy it as a token to you of His kindness and love and favor. And it will set you free from the snare of material gain and enable you to avoid, like the false teachers in the verses prior to this, “piercing yourself through with many pangs.” Hope in God, not in your business plan. Hope in God, not in your portfolio. Hope in God, and not in your financial future. When you do, not only will you begin to enjoy what you have at last, you’ll begin to see it not as an idol to be served but as an opportunity to invest in riches that really last.
Isn’t that what Paul says in verses 18 and 19? Look there please. Verses 18 and 19. How should the wealthy act who have been given such generous gifts from God? Paul says, “They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” You’ll really begin to live when you live like this. Store up treasure. Build up a good foundation. Take hold of that which is life. This is an investment worth making, isn’t it? So be good, do good, be rich in good works, generous and ready to share. In other words, invest your material resources in eternal gains. Use your money for the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
What are you planning to do with what God has given you, I wonder. Have you given any thought to the ways you could use your wealth for the advancement of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? How can you leverage what you have to reach the lost and care for the poor here at home and support mission around the world and help train more men for Gospel ministry at our seminary and provide for the spiritual needs of the saints right here in your own local church? Is it time that you sat down with your bank statements and prayerfully asked yourself before God whether you are or have been investing the resources that God has given you for an eternal gain?
A call to godly living. A call to generous investment. And finally, verses 20 and 21, Paul returns to Timothy with one last call – a call to guard the truth. Guard the truth. Verse 20, “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge,’ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. Grace be with you.” The deposit, the good deposit really continues this idea of riches and treasure from verse 19, only now the treasure isn’t material wealth; the treasure is the apostolic Gospel itself, entrusted to Timothy to steward and proclaim. And part of the way to guard the good deposit of apostolic truth is, he says, to “avoid irreverent babble and the contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge.’”
Now you might have heard of the ancient heresy called Gnosticism. They claimed secret access to “gnosis.” That’s the word Paul uses here for “knowledge.” The Gnostics claimed to hold the keys to esoteric spiritual insight. And Paul is likely referring to an early iteration of that ancient heresy here. “The Gnostics,” he’s saying to Timothy, “the Gnostics can’t give you access to special knowledge. It’s a dead end, a wrong turn. People swerve from the faith that way. So avoid all of that. If you want to guard the truth, avoid error. But there’s more to it in guarding the truth than simply avoiding the mistake because the Gospel treasure isn’t like other treasures. If you guard earthly treasure – money in a bank vault, say – your intent is to keep it safe from anyone ever getting to it. You guard earthly treasure to keep it away from those who want to take it for themselves. Right?
But that’s not how you guard the treasure of the Gospel. You guard the Gospel, you protect the Gospel by giving it away as much as possible. You don’t hoard it, keep it to yourself. You preach it, you teach it, you share it with others, you tell your neighbors and your friends and your family about it. You give it away. And the more you give it away, the more it is protected against the various distortions and counterfeits that threaten it. The reason that false doctrine like Gnosticism spreads and finds a footing, is because true doctrine isn’t being taught and proclaimed and shared by all of us with urgency and clarity and power. You can’t guard the good deposit in a defensive posture, circling the wagons, hunkering down and keeping the world out. You have to propagate the truth everywhere you can so that the weeds of error wither and die and a glorious harvest for the Lord begins to ripen in more and more people’s lives.
Or to change the metaphor, the Gospel is like a living organism. If it’s not reproducing, it becomes extinct. If you want to conserve it, protect it, guard it, you must become an instrument of Gospel multiplication. And so let me ask you, “When last did you tell someone about Jesus? When last did you invite someone to come with you to church to hear the Gospel? When last did you share something you’ve been learning, that the Lord has been teaching you from His holy Word? Are you praying for Gospel opportunities?” If you will, God will give them to you. A Christianity that doesn’t advance, dies. Guard the good deposit. Go and tell the world – “We have good news for you in the Lord Jesus Christ!”
So there’s a call here to godly living, isn’t there – in our character, in our convictions, in our commitment. To obey that call, we must look back to the sufferings of our Savior, forward to His glorious appearing and return, and up to the sovereign God who gives life, to reigns over all. And there’s a call here to generous investment. God often blesses us with material resources, good gifts. He wants us to enjoy them. But when He does, beware of loving the gifts more than the Giver. Instead, let us invest our riches for an eternal gain, leverage our resources for the advancement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And finally, there is a call to guard the truth here. Guard it, yes by avoiding error, but guard it by spreading the Gospel about Jesus Christ to everyone who will listen. Go and tell the world, “We have good news for you!”
May God help us to do it. Let us pray.
Our Father, how we bless You for Your holy Word, for its riches, its wisdom, its clarity, its power, for the way that it exposes our sin and instructs us in the paths of righteousness for Your name’s sake. We ask, O God, that Your Word yet might bear much fruit in all our lives for the praise and glory of Your name. Amen.