Now let me invite you please to take your Bibles in hand and to turn with me once again to Paul’s first letter to Timothy, chapter 3. We come this morning to 1 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 16. In verse 14, Paul tells Timothy that he plans to revisit Ephesus, but should he be delayed, he intends this letter to help Timothy know how one ought to behave in the household of God. And so that is the target at which Paul takes aim in 1 Timothy. Behavior, how one ought to behave in the household of God. He wants behavior that pleases God in His church; what he calls “godliness” in verse 16. Which makes this letter immensely practical, doesn’t it? It does not purport to be a comprehensive statement of Scriptural doctrine like Ephesians or Romans. It doesn’t trace the central themes of the Old Testament, showing us how they all lead to the person and work of Christ like Hebrews. Instead, 1 Timothy is a letter about behavior – how we ought to behave in the household of God, how we are to live as Christians in the church under the gaze of God and before the watching world. It is a divinely inspired how-to manual for church life and for basic Christian godliness. If you want to change your ways and live a life pleasing to God and growing in practical holiness, 1 Timothy is for you.
And in our passage this morning, verses 14 through 16, Paul says to grow in practical godliness, two things are especially important to understand. First in verse 15, he tells us to grow in practical godliness we must understand what the church is. And secondly, verse 16, to grow in practical godliness, we must understand what Christ has done. What the church is and what Christ has done. These two truths are especially productive of godly behavior in the lives of all who come to grasp their meaning and significance – what the church is; what Christ has done. Before we look at each of those, let’s bow our heads and then we’ll read God’s Word together. Let us all pray.
Lord our God, You are near to all who call upon You, and so we call on You now that by Your Word and Spirit You would draw near to us and match the truth of God to the hearts of Your people, to the needs of our souls. Show us Christ and lead us to Him. We would be godly men and women in Your church, under Your gaze, before the watching world. And so we ask that by this portion of Your Word, You would accomplish that in us for the glory of the name of Christ. Amen.
First Timothy chapter 3 at the fourteenth verse. This is the Word of God:
“I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:
He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”
Amen.
First of all, if you want to grow in practical godliness you need to understand what the church is. King Charles III and his son, Prince Harry, are famously estranged. Last Father’s Day, the king posted to social media a happy picture of himself with Prince William and Prince Harry together while they were both young boys along with the caption – “To Dads everywhere, we wish you a very special Father’s Day today.” The image was seen by royal observers at the time as an attempt by the king to remind the prince of better days and to help him remember, “what really matters and where his loyalties really lie.”
Now Paul, in writing to Timothy, might have said rather prosaically, “I’m writing to you so that you’ll know how to act in church,” and just moved right along. But instead, he gives Timothy this helpful three-part description of what the church is. Do you see it in verse 15? The church, he says, is “the household of God, the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.” Like King Charles to Prince Harry, Paul is sending Timothy a picture of the church to remind him what really matters and where his loyalties really lie. Each of these three descriptors highlights another dimension of the church’s character. “The household of God” speaks about community. “The church of the living God” about communion. And “a pillar and buttress of the truth” about our commission. Community, communion and commission.
We are a new community, first of all. The church, Paul says, is “the household of God.” In the New Testament, the word translated here in verse 15 as “household” can sometimes refer to a physical building, a house of bricks and mortar construction. But much more often it refers not to the building but to its inhabitants. It’s a way of talking about family, which we know is how God intends it here because that’s how he’s already used this word three times over in fact earlier in the chapter. Back in verses 4 and 5 to describe the qualifications of overseers, that is, elders, and again in verse 12 to describe the requirements of deacons. Paul says in both cases officers of the church “should manage their own households – there’s our word – “their own households well.” He’s talking there, very clearly isn’t he, not about the care of a building but about the leadership and care of a man’s family. And so now here again in verse 15, when Paul talks about “the household of God,” that’s still what he’s talking about. The church itself, he says, is a spiritual family.
And that is vital to understand. The church is not a voluntary society that we selected from an array of options. It’s not a spiritual club or special interest group for those who are religiously inclined. Neither is the church an army into which we have been conscripted against our will. No, the church is a family. You don’t choose your family, but no one forces your family upon you either. You are a part of your family. They are a part of you. And if you grasp that idea with respect to the church, doesn’t it change your behavior? That is Paul’s objective, remember? He wants us to be sure that for all the messiness of church life – and haven’t we seen in these few weeks together in 1 Timothy that the church in Ephesus where Timothy is serving was really quite messy? False teachers. Men abdicating leadership responsibility. Women usurping roles God had not called them to serve. It was a messy thing, the church, and it still is. And Paul wants to be sure, given all of that, that we hang in there with one another.
If Timothy lived among us today, he might be inclined to do what we are often tempted to do when things get messy and awkward and difficult like that in the church – we bail. Don’t we? We move down this street to another church and then when things get messy there, we move on again and again and again and again, hopping from one place to the next, never really settling down or putting down roots. And we do that because we have a view of the church as nothing more than a provider of religious goods and services and we see ourselves as mere consumers. The church is a vendor selling a product. And as consumers, when that product no longer works for us, we just move on to the new outlet down the street. But you can’t do that with family, can you? You have to hang in there with family. You have to love your family and practice patience with family and forgive family and serve family and pursue family.
When you became a Christian, you were planted into a new community, into a family. You came into the household of God. God the Father is your Father now. The Lord Jesus your elder Brother now. The Spirit of adoption, of sonship, by which you cry, “Abba, Father” dwells in your heart now. You are part of the family. We belong together. All our mess and frustrations and failures notwithstanding. Community.
But then look again at verse 15. Paul says the Ephesian Christians have come to belong not just to the household of God but – look at this phrase – “to the church of the living God.” If the first part of this description is about community, the second part is about communion. It is likely that the total combined membership of the Ephesian church would be measured perhaps in the hundreds, certainly not in the thousands, which means that while the witness of the church in Ephesus was significant, its members were still really only a fraction of the total population of the city. And so the Ephesian church was a small island of bright Gospel light amid all the darkness of Ephesian paganism. In Acts 19, Luke tells us about the beginnings of the church. When Paul preached in Ephesus and people came to faith in Jesus, as an expression of their repentance, they burned their pagan books. And as you might imagine, that created quite a stir in this deeply pagan city. Pictures of weeping, penitential Christians were suddenly spread all over social media, and in no time, as they threw the emblems of their old devotion to the goddess Artemis, the patron goddess of the city Ephesus, they threw their books in the flames and these pictures are everywhere now. People are hearing all about it. There is a real stir in the city. In fact, in no time, the unrest and outrage turns into mob violence as they rampage through the streets shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Artemis, the pagan goddess of the city, her temple in Ephesus one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and yet this little group of Christians, beleaguered and under threat, Paul says this group is the church, the assembly of the living God. This is where you can find Him in Ephesus. The living God meets with people here, in their midst. His presence in Ephesus has its locus, not in a grand temple like the temple of Artemis, but in this ragtag band of Christian people who follow Jesus at great personal cost.
The title “the living God” – “the church of the living God” – the title “living God” of course has a rich, Biblical pedigree. It’s used, for example, in Acts 14:15 to highlight the fact that He is alive while all the idols of the nations are dead. At Lystra, when Paul and Barnabas healed a man, the people there wanted to worship them. And Paul told them, “We also are men of like nature with you, and we bring you good news that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them.” So the idols of the peoples are vain things, empty things, but the Lord alone is the living God. He’s the real thing. So don’t worship them, don’t worship us; worship only Him.
But there’s more to this expression, “the living God,” even than that. The expression is also used in Scripture to speak about the expectations of those who do in fact trust in Him, have turned from dead idols to serve the living and true God. Their expectation that they might know Him and meet with Him and have personal fellowship and communion with Him. So for example, Psalm 42 verse 2, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” Or Psalm 84 verse 2, “My soul longs, yes faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” Because He is the living God and not a dead idol like Artemis, Christian worship is not a one-way street. Did you know that? It’s not a one-way street. As a believer, when you pray and sing and read and hear the Word of God in the assembly of the church, you are entering into personal communion, into living fellowship with the living God. He is here. He is here!
And doesn’t that make what Paul says about the church in Ephesus actually quite stunning? These little congregations of Christians scattered all over this great city, under siege every day from a hostile culture, their leaders like Gaius and Aristarchus in Acts 19:29 dragged out by the mob and beaten. These folks, easy to overlook, despised by the great and the powerful, unpopular among their neighbors, not at all influential, these folks gathered in sacred assembly every Lord’s Day. They are the venue and the focal point of God’s personal interaction with human beings in Ephesus. They have living fellowship with Him. They come and appear before the living God. They long to come into His courts, and their hearts sing for joy to the living God.
Now let me ask you, honestly, today this morning – Is that how you came to church? Did you come with that expectation, that you were coming to meet the living God? You’re meeting Him! He’s here to deal with us by His Word and Spirit. I think if we really grasped that, if we felt it and understood it, I dare say we would come eagerly, wouldn’t we? We’d come reverently. We’d come grieving our remaining sin. We’d come rejoicing in the wonderful provisions of God’s grace in Christ for sinners. We certainly wouldn’t need to be prodded or cajoled or nagged into it ever, would we? We are going to meet the living God today! Who ever would want to miss that? The church is “the household of God,” speaking about community. The church is “the church of the living God,” speaking about communion, supernatural fellowship. Do you know anything about it for yourself? Living, personal fellowship with the living God.
And the third thing Paul says about the church is it is “a pillar and buttress of the truth” or “pillar and foundation of the truth.” This third image highlights the church’s commission. We have work to do, and here are our marching orders. Imagine for a moment in your mind’s eye, please, that great temple of Artemis – a wonder of the ancient world. It would have taken your breath away. One hundred twenty seven massive stone columns supporting a huge, wooden roof. And those pillars were designed to make the structure soar. They held the temple high, drawing the eye of every visitor to the area. You couldn’t miss it. The temple of Artemis. That’s what pillars do, right? They hold the structure high. The church, Paul says, is a pillar of the truth. That is our work. We hold the truth of God high for all to see.
But Paul also says the church is “the buttress of the truth” or perhaps “the foundation of the truth.” Either way, the image is one of structural support. Think of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris with its flying buttresses all around the outside walls, supporting the enormous pressure bearing down on those walls by this huge, vaulted, gothic ceiling. Those flying buttresses on the outside support the structure and give it stability. They hold it firm. A pillar holds the truth high. A buttress or a foundation holds the truth firm. And here is our commission, these two things. Here’s what we are to do as the church, as members of the church. Here is our task given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what we are trying to get done around here. We want to hold the truth high like a pillar so that everyone can see it – the good news about Jesus Christ. And we want to hold that truth fast like a buttress or a foundation never moving from the Word of God in the Gospel of His Son.
Listen, if we fail to hold the truth fast, if we let it go, depart from it, forsake it, compromise it in any way, if we fail to hold the truth fast, it doesn’t matter that we hold it high for everyone to see. We will draw no one to Jesus Christ. If our message about Him is compromised, we must hold the truth fast. But if on the other hand we fail to hold the truth high, but merely keep it to ourselves and become ingrown and inaccessible to others, then all our steadfast commitment to the faith once for all delivered to the saints, our devotion to unwavering truth, will become nothing more than a fossil, a petrified relic of something that once lived but lives no longer. Hold the truth fast, never wavering from it. And hold the truth high, so that everyone can see and be drawn to it. That’s our work. That’s our commission.
And so, Paul says, if you want to grow in practical godliness and in behavior that honors God in the church under the gaze of God, before the eyes of a watching world, you need to mature in your understanding and learn to live from these three great images about the church. A community – we are family. You don’t walk away from family. You press toward family. You bear with family. You forgive family. We are a communion. We meet God here. We meet God Himself. And we are under a divine commission – to hold the truth high and to hold it fast.
The second thing we need to understand if we are going to grow in godliness and in behavior that pleases God now has to do not just with the church but with the church’s Lord. So first what the church is, now secondly, what Christ has done. Look at verse 16 please. Many scholars believe that Paul is quoting here possibly from an early creed or perhaps from an ancient hymn text currently in use in Ephesus as Paul wrote to them. It is comprised, you’ll notice, of three stanzas with two contrasting lines in each stanza. All of those lines focused in some way on the person and work and the implications of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The first stanza deals with Christ’s earthly ministry. Look at the text please. Verse 16, “He was manifested in the flesh,” Paul says, “and vindicated by the Spirit.” The phrase, “He was manifested in the flesh,” clearly refers to Christ’s incarnation, His birth. And don’t miss how this language clearly presupposes His pre-existence. Jesus is the eternal Son of God. He didn’t come into being at the virgin birth. He was manifested, made known, disclosed in the flesh. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.” In Jesus, God Himself came into the world as one of us, and as one of us, He obeyed and bled and died for sinners. And then, though He died the shameful, accursed death of the cross, as though He were the worst of all sinners, yet because He was in fact holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners, God raised Him from the dead on the third day by the power of the Holy Spirit. Or as Paul puts it here, “He was vindicated by the Spirit.” Literally, “He was justified by the Spirit.” God declared His Son righteous. He justified Jesus in the court of heaven by raising Him from the dead because Jesus paid in full for all our sin without ever sinning Himself.
And so this first stanza summarizes Jesus’ earthly ministry, doesn’t it? This is the center and the core of the Christian Gospel. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” He was raised for our justification – that’s our message. It’s not a message of personal improvement or moral reformation. It’s not a call to action particularly or a program of social reform. It is a declaration to the world of good news in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has acted once and for all to provide a way of salvation for sinners.
The second stanza, so lines three and four, deal with what is to be done with that declaration of good news. Look at it please. The first stanza is about Christ’s earthly ministry. The second stanza is about His global mission. He was seen by angels and proclaimed among the nations. The contrast in the first stanza was between flesh and Spirit, earthly life and resurrection life. But the contrast in the second stanza is between angels who merely saw the events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the nations to whom the good news is proclaimed as good news for them. Angels, 1 Peter 1:12, “Angels long to look into these things.” Angels were present – you remember in the story of the life of Christ – they were present at every step of the way, in every major moment of Christ’s earthly ministry. And yet, they were always only ever witnesses and spectators and assistants to Him in His work. They were never the recipients of Christ’s saving ministry. He wasn’t born for angels. He did not obey for angels or die for angels or rise to reign for angels. No, He came to give Himself for sinners from every tribe and language and nation. The angels saw it all unfolding but only as third-party bystanders, as it were, mere stagehands at the central drama of history as it unfolded in the life of Jesus Christ. But the nations? They get to hear this good news proclaimed as urgent, vital, pressing news for them. Christ has come. He has died and risen for sinners everywhere.
Who is Jesus for? Have you ever asked that question? Who is He for? Who is warranted to have Jesus? Who may come and be sure to find a welcome from Jesus Christ? Some of us really wonder if Jesus could ever want someone like me. And so it’s worth asking the question, “Who is Jesus for?” And the answer in the Word of God is that the brightest angels of heaven have no warrant to come to Christ. He’s not for them. But the lowest and the worst sinner, he has warrant to come because Christ is for sinners. He came for them. And not just a few sinners here and there, specially qualified, a select group. No, Paul says, Christ is proclaimed among the nations. He is to be proclaimed indiscriminately to the ends of the earth. He is for sinners everywhere, wherever they are to be found. Sinners, Thomas Boston, a great old Scottish theologian used to talk about, “Sinners of mankind lost.” That’s a good expression, isn’t it? “Sinners of mankind lost.” That’s us. All of us and all people everywhere. Christ came for them. For sinners of mankind lost.
If you’re a sinner, and you are, me too, God the Father has appointed His Son for you, for your use and for the use of all nations. You look in the mirror and there’s shame and there’s regret and there’s disappointment and there’s grief. And you feel your failures, your sin, like a weight. And you can hardly look yourself in the eye. Nevermind imagine that God would want anything to do with you. But the Word of God says you are quite wrong. God the Father has appointed His Son for the use of all nations and He has sent the church out to proclaim that good news to the world. He brought you here. You’re listening to this message today in order that you might know that His Son, Jesus Christ, is for you. He’s for you. Not even the angels have such privilege. They have no right to Him. He did not assume an angelic nature; He was manifested in the flesh, Paul says. He came as one of us, not as one of them. He came as one of us so that we, you, might have Him. You have a right to Jesus Christ. God has signed Him over to you for your use. He’s not available to angels that way, but He is available to you. And so, guilty sinners, ashamed and hesitant, hesitate no longer and come to Him, take Him, cry out to Him. His is proclaimed among the nations as a Savior for the world for you.
Which brings us to the last stanza. Look at lines five and six. The contrast this time is between Christ’s reception in the world and His reception in heavenly glory. Look how Paul puts it. “He was believed on in the world, taken up on glory.” The first stanza is about His earthly mission, contrasting His incarnation in the flesh with His vindication by the Spirit. The second about Christ’s global mission, contrasting the astonished witness of angelic bystanders with the privileged access of the least sinner among the nations. And now this third stanza is about Christ’s cosmic mastery. Because Jesus was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, because He was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, paying in full the wages of sin, quelling all the pangs of hell on the cross, because He was raised again on the third day by the mighty working of the Holy Spirit, because all of that is true, He is now, right now, King of kings and Lord of lords and heaven receives Him as its reigning master and rightful Lord. He was taken up in glory. The ascension of Christ was His coronation and enthronement, His investiture as the Lord of all at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
That is how heaven responds to Him. How ought earth to respond? What does Paul say? He is to be “believed on in the world.” The realms of heavenly glory gladly and immediately acquiesce in His rule. But on earth, in a world of rebellion and sin, we must turn to Him and rest our faith on Him. We must reject the reign of sin and self and Satan and refuse the controlling paradigm of worldliness. In other words, we need to repent and believe the Gospel and bend our knee to King Jesus. He is to be believed on in the world.
At the beginning of verse 16, Paul prefaced this whole quotation, the quotation of this Christ hymn, by saying, “Great indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh,” and so on. Now think about how Paul puts that – “the mystery of godliness” – that is his subject. That is his theme. And he tells us here “the mystery of godliness” – look at the text – “the mystery of godliness” is a person. “Great is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested.” If you have an English Standard Version you might see there’s a footnote which translates it, “which was manifested”; the mystery of godliness was manifested in the flesh. The mystery of godliness, Paul is saying, the mystery of godliness is Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry, in His heavenly reign. Grasping who He is, why He came, changes everything. Changes everything. Godliness in us is a consequence of believing in Him. Godliness in us is a fruit of knowing Him. Godliness in us grows out of our communion with Him. How one ought to behave in the household of God, verse 14, is downstream from grasping these fundamental truths about Jesus in verse 16.
And brothers and sisters, so many of us get this wrong. Even some of us who have been Christians for decades, we have to confess how easily we slip back into this most basic of errors. We think Christianity consists primarily in behavioral change, in moral effort, in outward duties. And we miss the mystery of godliness, the inner dynamic of a changed life. We’ve forgotten, or perhaps in some cases we’ve never yet begun to understand, that the mystery of godliness is the person and the work of Jesus Christ. The dynamic of a changed life, the real power of holiness, comes from knowing and being known by the living Lord Jesus. Too often we want behavior without believing, don’t we? We want change without Christ. We want a renovated life, but we are reluctant to submit to the reigning Lord. But Paul says the secret key to how one ought to behave in the household of God, the true mystery of godliness, the way to change – don’t you want to change? The way to change is found only here in Jesus Christ.
Have you been putting your own deadly doing ahead of Christ’s finished work as the grounds for your confidence before God and your hope for a better life? Do you think the Christian life consists mostly in your own moral efforts and being a jolly good chap and changing your ways and straightening out your behavior and being kinder to your neighbor and turning over a new leaf? Of course real Christians ought to be and do all of those things, of course they should, but the power to be and do them doesn’t come from yourself. The dynamics of spiritual change, the mystery of godliness is found here. Do you know Jesus Christ? Do you know Him? What have you done, what have you done with the message of the good news about Jesus Christ? Hell is full of church folks, hell is full of church folks who trusted their own good behavior to get them through. But apart from Jesus Christ, your best behavior will destroy you forever. A new life is possible. You can have it. It can be yours, but only by resting on the perfect life – the obedience, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
To know how one ought to behave in the household of God we need to understand two things – do you see them? We need to know what the church is. More than that, we need to know the church’s Lord, to rest on Him, embrace Him and what He has done – the Lord Jesus Christ. May God give us all grace to do just that. Let’s pray.Our God and Father, we praise You for the Gospel, that it is for sinners, for us. It’s for us. We confess to You that we turn to all sorts of alternatives. Some of us have been Christians, real Christians for decades, and we are still prone to rest on our best efforts and not on Christ’s finished work. So help us to hear the free invitation again and with joy to accept it and come running to Christ. Save us by Him for the glory of Your name, amen.