We continue to work our way through the first letter of Paul to Timothy here at First Presbyterian Church, and we’ve come this morning to 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 6 through 10. So do please take a copy of God’s Word in your hands or turn with me in one of our church Bibles to page 992. It will help you to have a copy of the Scriptures open before you.
Thus far in 1 Timothy, Paul has been instructing his young protege, Timothy, on what to preach and teach and how to lead in the good order and the spiritual health of the church in Ephesus. He’s warned about false teaching. He’s called for a culture of prayer. He has corrected misunderstandings about the roles of men and women in the church. He has established standards for officers – the offices of elder and deacon. And last time in the opening five verses of chapter 4, we saw him exposing the dangers of aestheticism and legalism that had begun to find their way into the bloodstream of the Ephesian church.
And in the passage now before us, beginning in verse 6 and really running through to the end of the chapter, though we are only focusing on verses 6 through 10 this morning, Paul is offering something of an aside so that he may speak more directly to Timothy about his own life and ministry as a pastor in the church there. He wants Timothy to be a good servant of Christ Jesus, verse 6. And here’s how, he’s going to say, here’s how you can become a good servant. And so these verses have a great deal to say to those of us who are serving as teaching elders and ruling elders in God’s church, and much to say to all of us who are engaged in vocational Christian ministry in all its forms. But along the way, these verses also provide a good deal of instruction to every believer in Jesus Christ about the basic pattern of Christian growth that we all must follow, whether we are officers in the church or engaged in vocational Christian service or not.
If you’ll look at the passage with me for a moment, you’ll notice the word “trained” in verse 6, “train” in verse 7, “training” in verse 8. So the big idea is that to be a good servant of Christ Jesus, training is required. If you want to be a good servant of Christ Jesus, training is required. And there are four components of Paul’s training regime for Timothy that I want us to notice. Four parts of the necessary training of a good servant of Christ Jesus. If you want to serve your Savior faithfully and well, you need these four things. Number one, you need to attend to your diet. We’ll see that in verse 6. You need to attend to your diet. Secondly, you need to work on your discipline. That’s verses 7 and 8. Thirdly, you must have a clear design in view. That’s also in verse 8. And finally, you must be sustained by the proper drive in verse 10. So those are the four parts of Paul’s training regime for all who want to be good servants of Christ Jesus – diet, discipline, design and drive.
Before we look at each of them, let’s pause to pray and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
Lord our God, we have Your Word before us and we are before You. Here assembled in Your presence, we ask You please to take Your Word, and by the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, bring Your Word to bear upon us. Rebuke us where we’ve wandered away. Correct us where we are captured by misunderstanding. Train us that we might indeed be good servants of Christ Jesus for Your honor and glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
First Timothy chapter 4 at the sixth verse. This is the Word of God:
“If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word.
Well the first part of the training plan for a good servant in Christ Jesus, Paul says, has to do with diet. That’s now really pretty standard advice, isn’t it, for anyone engaged in physical training. Diet is key. I read a story from a sports dietician who had been training to run the New York City marathon. And she wrote, “I remember the exact moment I really understood the term ‘hitting the wall.’ It was at mile 20, and taking one more step felt impossible. I had trained for over four months, so I was physically and mentally prepared, but something failed me – my nutrition.” What she had been eating, the way and the timing of her meals, her nutritional intake direction affected her ability to finish the race. And we all understand, I think, that an athlete who wants to compete effectively cannot afford to ignore diet and nutrition.
In our text, Paul wants Timothy to be a good servant of Christ Jesus. And in order to do that, he says in verse 6, Timothy is to “put these things before the brothers.” That is, he is to teach the Ephesian Christians the truths that Paul has been pressing upon him, certainly in the verses immediately prior to this, but likely also throughout the letter thus far. A good servant of Christ Jesus, in other words, will teach apostolic truth. But look at the second half of verse 6. A good servant of Christ Jesus is “being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.” In other words, Timothy’s ability and readiness to teach apostolic truth as a good servant of Christ Jesus reveals that he is “being trained in the words of the faith and of good doctrine.”
Now the Greek word that is translated “being trained” actually refers not to physical exercise but to the supply of essential nutritional needs. Like the New York City marathon runner who discovered to her cost that diet really matters if you want to run and finish the race, Paul is saying here to Timothy a faithful minister, a good servant who is equipped to set apostolic truth before the people, must himself feed upon that truth for the nourishment of his own soul. “You must be trained in the words of the faith and good doctrine, Timothy. You can’t give to other people what you don’t have yourself. You can’t feed them unless you are feeding on the truth yourself.” The irony of the New York City marathon runner’s testimony about hitting the wall at mile 20 because of the wrong diet, the irony of that is that she is a sports dietician by profession! She ought to have known what would fuel the race!
And how like her we all can be. How many elders, pastors, Christian workers, Bible study leaders, Sunday school teachers, how many of us are trying to minister the Word to others – that’s good – but we are not feeding by faith on the soul-nourishing Word for ourselves. You will run out of steam. You will run out of steam. You will hit the wall. You won’t be able to run another step. As one old ministry adage has it, “If your output exceeds your input, your upkeep will be your downfall.” Right? “If your output exceeds your input, your upkeep will be your downfall.”
And before we move on, don’t miss the present tense of the participle, “being trained.” Do you see it in verse 6? “You will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being nourished in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine.” Paul isn’t saying, “Timothy, to be a good servant you must have been nourished to a sufficient degree. You must already have completed the necessary nutritional training and put it all behind you now as something from which you have graduated once and for all.” No, the training Paul has in mind is more like the training a soldier does, and not like the training an actor does. An actor’s training for a physically demanding role, his training can end once the role has been played and the movie has been shot. He trains for the role and then it’s done. But a soldier’s training must be constant. It needs to be every day. He must make sure that he is at a minimum standard of physical fitness and readiness. It has to become part of his life and his routine because he can be called upon to fight at any time.
And so Paul doesn’t have an amount of training in view here, after which Timothy can finally stop. This is a present, continuous, daily, constant, unending necessity for all who wish to be good servants of Christ Jesus. “If your output exceeds your input, your upkeep will be your downfall.” Are you feeding on the words of the faith and the good doctrine you have followed day after day? Are you? Your race will stall without it. Diet. Diet is the first part of the training regime Paul prescribes for a good servant.
The second part now is discipline. Look with me please at verses 7 and 8. Verses 7 and 8. “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” Now Paul is using a different word, translated in the same way in English but it’s actually a different word in Greek, also here translated as “train” and “training.” The first word for “trained” in verse 6 is about the necessary dietary requirements to be effective and faithful. But the words translated “trained” and “training” here come from the Greek word “gematzo.” We get English words like “gymnasium” and “gym” and “gymnastics” from it. It really does mean “physical, bodily exercise; bodily training; physical exercise.” And he says that is, physical exercise is of some value.
I imagine Paul sitting down to write this letter to Timothy at this point, remembering the hall of Tyrannus which is where the church met during Paul’s ministry in Ephesus for about three years. And I imagine him reminiscing about how the hall of Tyrannus was right across the street from the local CrossFit gym, and there were always gym-bros, you know, coming and going, working on their physique, flexing in front of the mirror when they think no one’s looking, grunting obnoxiously as they left weights! You know the type? How do you know if your friend does CrossFit? Don’t worry, he’ll tell you! Right? You know those types?
Those guys, I imagine Paul calling them to mind. “Think about those gym-bros from across the street for a moment with me, Timothy. It’s not that bodily training is useless, you understand. Better to be fit and healthy than not, for sure. But never forget what these guys certainly seem to have overlooked – there is no gym in the world, no amount of cardio, no amount of weight training that those guys can do that can stop death. No matter how good a shape you get yourself into, you and I both know, Timothy, that eventually time and age and creatureliness is going to win. And they and you and I, we’re all going to die. But think about those gym guys, Timothy. They’re dedicated, aren’t they? They’re up before dawn working on their physique. They have carefully designed workout routines – leg day, arms, back, core, cardio. They never miss a workout. They push themselves hard. They don’t get sidetracked. They don’t lose focus. That’s what it takes to end up looking like that. Now Timothy, if you want to be a good servant of Christ Jesus, don’t you get sidetracked by irreverent, silly myths. Train yourself for godliness. That is, work out your training in the words of the faith and the good doctrine you have followed in practical service and in Christian love. A good diet and a healthy life go together. A daily diet of the Word and a life of practical godliness out there in the world, they go together. But it’s going to take self control and determination and discipline. The gym has some limited value for the welfare of the body, but Timothy, you need to train yourself for godliness that has, as we will see in a few moments, a value that exceeds all else.”
By the way, do notice he says “train yourself for godliness.” Train yourself. Godliness isn’t something – let’s be clear now – godliness isn’t something that happens to you while you wait passively on God. Godliness takes the nourishment of the Word and builds the muscles of faith in the promises of God and the habits of prayer and the disciplines of kindness and generosity and service toward others. “Train yourself for godliness.” Are you training yourself for godliness? You can’t be a good servant of Christ Jesus unless you are. It takes discipline and resolve and sacrifice and determination. There is no passivity, not “Let go and let God.” “Train yourself for godliness.” The diet and the discipline.
Thirdly, notice the design that Paul sets before Timothy. In most gyms, whatever your fitness level, you can hire a staff member to work with you as a personal trainer. And often the first question they will ask you before you begin working together is, “What are your fitness goals? What is it you are trying to achieve? Where are we going with this? What is your design in all of this?” Now look with me at verse 8. Paul tells Timothy about the true design of God for Timothy’s godliness. Here is the intention Timothy must keep before him if he is to be a good servant of Christ Jesus. Verse 8 – “godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and for the life to come.” Bodily training is only of limited value, meaning that it is going to fail everyone at some point. Right? You can’t cheat death. Physical exercise is only valuable for this life. It cannot stop the march of time. But godliness, notice, “holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” Here and now and hereafter and forever, godliness is good for you.
This life is sweetened by godliness because godliness fetches the smile of God. Godliness gains the blessing of heaven. Godliness enjoys the felt presence of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Godliness sustains us in sorrow and strengthens us in suffering and mitigates the misery of our remaining sin by little victories along the way and making real progress in Christlikeness over time. Godliness, Paul says, shows that you are already right now a good servant of Christ Jesus for all the world to see. But more than that, godliness holds promise for the life to come. A godly life, let’s be clear, does not earn title to heaven. You can’t earn a title to heaven. Christ earns the title to heaven for us and we trust in His righteousness and not our own. But, a godly life is the necessary preparation to be happy in heaven. You never could be happy there if you are not also holy. Heaven, the new creation, it’s the home of righteousness. It is the realm, the natural habitat of holiness where the radiance of the Lamb’s countenance shines everywhere in everything. The glory of God is there. The exalted Christ is there. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of holiness is there. There is no stain of sin there. Nothing unholy can enter there. Train for godliness here because you want to be ready to live there, to take your place there. We are fitted for heaven by our godliness on earth.
And notice carefully that Paul says godliness “holds promise for this life and the life to come.” I think that’s a somewhat unfortunate translation because it uses an English idiom that makes it sound like godliness is merely promising something that leads us perhaps to anticipate good outcomes but it isn’t really giving us any real assurance that those outcomes will be reached. Like a coach reporting to parents about their child’s athletic potential. “Well Mrs. Smith, little Johnny shows real promise,” which might be code for “He’s not really very good at this, yet. One day, perhaps. Who knows? He shows promise. There’s some little indications that maybe, perhaps one day. It’s optimistic but it’s not sure.” That’s not really what Paul is saying. He’s saying, rather, the promise of God is attached to Christian godliness. God promises to bless a godly life here and hereafter. The gym will keep you fit, but it will fail in the end. The gym can’t stop death. But godliness gets hold of the promise of the living God Himself and He is more than a match for the mortality of our bodies. Get into training for heaven. “Get into training for heaven, not just for present usefulness, Timothy, but for eternal joy.”
Now look with me please at verse 9. You’ll notice Paul adds, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.” “Bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, it holds promise, the promise of God for the present life and also for the life to come. That is a proverbial saying and you, Timothy, and all you guys in Ephesus, you really ought to commit this to memory, you know, because it’s going to help you press on toward godliness. I want you to trot this out to use on your hearts when you’re tempted to slack off and turn aside or get sidetracked with irreverent, silly myths. Tell your heart, ‘I am in training for godliness, like a marathon runner is in training to finish the race. I want to be a good servant of Christ Jesus. I want to claim the promise of God for this life and for the life to come. And so I am determined to go hard after likeness to Christ. I am in training for heaven, and I won’t stop, I won’t back off, I won’t slow down till I get there.’”
I sometimes have the privilege of talking with dying Christians in the final days of their life before they draw their last breath. And not infrequently they’ll say something like, “I’m ready to go. Pastor, I don’t know why I’m still here.” And I’ll say to them, “You’re getting ready for heaven, that’s why you’re still here. The Lord has given you another day, another hour, to prepare to see Him. That’s why you’re still here.” When your world closes in around you and your health or your material circumstances become curtailed and limited or limiting, and many of the outward, former ways of usefulness that you once enjoyed seem to have been stripped away from you, and you begin to wonder, “What am I for now? What is life for?” – this is what you are for! This is what your life is for! You are in training for that godliness that holds promise for the life to come, without which no one shall see the Lord. “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.” Use it on your heart to stay the course until you finally achieve your goal and fulfill God’s grand design and make it home to glory at last.
The diet of the Word that we need. The discipline of godliness we must exercise. The design of godliness we must pursue. And now finally, the drive. Notice the drive that Paul says that Timothy and we all need to help propel us forward in the pursuit of godliness. Look with me at verse 10 please. “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” Now right away you will have noticed yet again Paul isn’t passive, is he? Godliness isn’t something he thinks just sort of happens to Christians along the way. “To this end,” that is, “Toward the end of godliness, so that we can be good servants, Timothy and claim the promise of God for this life and the life to come, to this end we toil and strive” – blood, sweat and tears are required. Godliness comes often in painful increments across the whole course of our lives. Are you toiling and striving to be like Jesus? Are these adjectives that might reasonably come to mind when someone thinks about your Christian pilgrimage – toiling and striving, straining every nerve, pressing forward to take hold of Christ, to be like Christ, to be godly through and through. To this end, you toil and strive; you fight and work against sin, against temptation, against laziness, against the ungodly expectations of others, against mediocrity and excuses for coasting in your own heart, against pride and snobbery and lust and anger and vanity and greed. Are you still in the fight? Are you? Are you still in the fight?
But what can sustain the fight, toiling and striving for godliness? How do you not burn out in the battle? Paul uses the word for “striving” is “agonizomai” – agonized wrestling. If that’s the Christian life, how do you keep at it? Look again at verse 10. We toil and strive, we fight and agonize, we labor and work. In all of this we don’t quit, we don’t back away, we march into the battle because we have our hope set on the living God who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. Our hope does not rest in the strength of our own faith or some estimate that we have made about our own capacity to endure. Our hope rests outside of ourselves, do you see. It rests in the living God – He who defeats death, bringing Christ up alive again from the grave. He is the Savior of all people.
Now pause there. Paul has referred to “all people” already in 1 Timothy back in chapter 2 verse 1 when he called the church to commit itself to a culture of prayer. And clearly in that context he did not mean that we should try to pray for all people without exception. That’s impossible. We never can pray for every single person everywhere who has ever lived. He doesn’t mean all people without exception. When he uses the phrase “all people,” he means all people without distinction – all types and classes and categories of human being, regardless of background or inheritance or heritage or culture or pedigree. All types, all classes, all sinners of every size and stripe and shade – you, you have a Savior waiting for you in the living God. That is his message here – all people without distinction. Anyway, even you may come and find in God a Savior for you through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.
But the translation of the very last clause of verse 10 is again unfortunate. Look at the end of verse 10. “We hope in the living God who is the Savior of all people especially of those who believe.” That gives us the impression that God saves everybody but has a sort of special type of extra salvation for believers. But the word “especially” here is really better translated “that is,” or “specifically.” The living God is the Savior of all sorts of people, that is, of those who believe. How do you receive the salvation that God has for all sorts of people of any class or type? If you are a sinner, Paul is saying in the first part of verse 10, you qualify for the saving grace of God. You are welcomed and invited to receive it as a gift. But how do you receive it? You receive it by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ who obeyed and bled and died for sinners.
And Paul is saying, “Whatever progress I have made in the business of training myself for godliness, however hard I’ve toiled and striven to be a good servant of Christ Jesus, I don’t point to any of that. I don’t claim any of it as the ground for my hope for heaven or my confidence for acceptance before God. On the contrary, I am able to keep striving and toiling, I am only capable of continuing on in the hard discipline of training myself for godliness because I am looking away from myself to God my Savior who has brought up again from the dead the Lord Jesus Christ, who pays for my sin, whose obedience covers my unrighteousness with the robe of His righteousness and whose work on my behalf has purchased and supplies all the strength and all the grace that I need, and assures me that though I amy often stumble along the way, He will keep me so that I cannot finally fall. I trust Him. I hope in Him. I believe on Him. His covenant love and mercy. His unfailing grace. His Son who loved me and gave Himself for me. His Spirit who renovates my heart and indwells me, He is the driver of all my progress and the fuel of all my obedience.
The other day I was walking to Starbucks and I was working on an email on my phone, completely absorbed in what I was doing, and I nearly knocked a woman with her coffees in her hand, flying. My head was down; I was completely in my own little world, busy with my stuff. And I was on a collision course. If you want to walk a straight path without collisions, you’ve got to look up. If you want to finish your race, don’t look at your feet running along the road. Don’t focus on your toil, your striving, your training, your discipline. Look up. Hope in God your Savior. Believe on Him. “He who began a good work in you, He will carry it on to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.” He will. Look to Him. Rest on Him. Cling to Him.
To be a good servant of Christ Jesus we must give ourselves to training. First, we must get our diet right. Are you being nourished, day after day, on the words of the faith and the good doctrine? Are you feeding on the Bible or is the Bible a closed book on your nightstand? You will not finish your race that way. Secondly, we must develop discipline. Get into training. Bodily exercise is of limited value. Training for godliness is of value for this life and for the life to come. Are you toiling and striving to be holy? We must have a clear design in view. Godliness comes with the promise of God attached. Don’t you want to take hold of His promise, to see His smile and blessing resting on your life, on your labors in His service, and enabling you to enjoy the world to come? And we must keep a firm grip on the proper drivers for our obedience. That is, look away from yourself to God your Savior who supplies all the grace you need to keep putting one foot in front of the other until you cross the finish line. May God help us to do it. Let us pray.Our God and Father, as we bow before You, we pray, we plead with You, first, would You forgive us for being too easily distracted by irreverent silly myths, by the nonsense of the world, by the errors of false teaching. We leave our Bibles closed and we drink in the junk food of social media and screens and empty errors all around us. Our hearts are lying to us. The world is lying to us. You never lie to us. Forgive us for our neglect of the proper diet. Awaken in each of us now we pray an appetite for the pure, spiritual milk of Your holy Word. Help us to be nourished, day after day, on the truth of God. Grant to us fresh discipline, renewed resolve, to get ourselves into training, to toil and to strive, to see clearly before us Your grand design – in our godliness is Your blessing and favor. And to long for it till we come to enjoy it. And help us as we do all of that to keep our eyes fixed upon You, O Lord our God, who gives His Son for us and His Spirit to equip and strengthen us, that our hope may rest not in the strength of our own stride as we run the race, but on the supplies of Your help and grace that we may cross the finish line to the glory and praise of Jesus’ name, in whose name we ask it all, amen.