1 Timothy 1:1-2

The First Epistle to Timothy

Chapter 1

Vers. 1, 2. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Saviour, and Christ Jesus our hope; to Timothy, [my] true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, peace, from God the Father, and Christ Jesus our Lord.

If this had been simply a private letter, having for its object the expression merely of kindly feelings, or the communication of prudent advice as from one friend to another, it would certainly have been unnatural in the apostle (as some have objected) to begin in so formal a manner, and to give such prominence at the outset to his divine call to the apostleship, with which Timothy was doubtless perfectly familiar. But the letter plainly bears an official character; and while partaking of the graceful and affectionate freedom which fitly arose from the intimate relations of the parties, it was designed to carry with it an authoritative value to convey instructions respecting church order and Christian work, which called for implicit obedience. Timothy, the youthful companion, was now coming in a measure to take the place of the apostle in ministerial agency; and he must have both the nature of the work, and the warrant on which he was to proceed with it, distinctly laid upon his conscience. He might possibly need such an authoritative commission to bear him up against others in the discharge of his delegated function; and therefore I would not exclude (with Ellicott) a regard to the due maintenance of his authority. He might have at times to exhibit, or even press, the grounds on which he spake and acted as he did. But for himself also it was needful. For it was evidently an irksome and delicate task which was assigned him at Ephesus, with so many germs of error sprouting, and headstrong, conceited men bent on carrying matters their own way. If himself, as would appear, of a meek, amiable disposition, and accustomed hitherto to be led rather than to lead, he might in some things be tempted to give way to the will or resistance of others. It was right, therefore, he should feel that necessity was laid upon him; that the voice which speaks to him is that not merely of a revered instructor or a spiritual father, but of a Heaven-commissioned ambassador, who has a right to declare the divine will and rule with authority in the Christian church. So Bengel: Hic titulus facit ad confirmandum Timotheum; familiaritas seponenda est, ubi causa Dei agitur.

St. Paul's mode of expressing his divine relation to the apostleship here is somewhat peculiar: he is an apostle of Christ Jesus, not, as he sometimes puts it, from being called thereto (Romans 1:1; 1 Corinthians 1:1), or as having received his destination to it through the will of God (1Co 1:1; 2 Corinthians 1:1; also in Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Timothy), but according to God's commandment (κατ ʼ ἐπιταγὴν θεοῦ), or by God's appointment (as κατὰ τύχην, by chance, κατ ʼ εὔοιαν, by good-will). His apostolic calling is thus brought into connection with the direct ordering of Heaven the active carrying out or result of the divine will. If it is asked, How or when was the commandment issued? we may point, with Chrysostom, to Acts 13:2, where the Holy Ghost is related to have said by certain prophets in the church at Antioch: “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them; “only, this command of the Spirit was but the echo, as indeed it professes to be, of a prior command or vocation given from above, which therefore was the fundamental thing. And so Chrysostom himself felt, for he presently refers the matter to that original source; stating, that while it was the glorified Redeemer from whom the command was directly received, it was not the less from God: for the things of the Father are the Son's, as those again of the Son are the Spirit's. So that whether we look to the Spirit's injunction to the church at Antioch, or to Christ's charge to the apostle himself on the road to Damascus, we see in each the expression of the Father's will and appointment. In two other passages Romans 16:26; Titus 1:3 the apostle has used the same expression of “God's commandment; “in the former case generally, with respect to the ministration of the gospel, in the latter specially, with respect to his own commission.

It is another peculiarity here that God is called our Saviour, a designation applied to God with great frequency in the Pastoral epistles (not only here, but at 1 Timothy 2:3; 1 Timothy 4:10; Titus 1:3; Titus 2:10; Titus 3:4), and occurs elsewhere only in Luke 1:47, and Jude, Jude 1:25. It is impossible to deny, however, that the idea involved in the designation is common to all the epistles of Paul; in some of the others, also, salvation is expressly and formally coupled with God (as in 2 Thessalonians 2:12; 1 Corinthians 1:21). So that it is merely the employment of Saviour as a personal designation of God in Christ which is peculiar to the Pastoral epistles. Why the apostle should in these have not only adopted, but evinced a special fondness for such a designation, can only be proximately determined. But it may not improbably have presented itself to his mind, as a kind of counteractive to the false teaching which in his latter days was beginning to corrupt the truth. In that presumptuous, self-willed spirit, which was striving to hew out new paths for itself, and aiming at heights of knowledge and virtue beyond those which were accessible to ordinary believers in Christ, the apostle could not fail to see what tended to separate between God and salvation; in fact, to change altogether the idea of salvation as a work originating in the purpose, and carried into effect by the agency, of God. Christianity would come to be viewed only as a higher sort of school instruction and spiritual discipline, which might be ever so much remodelled and improved upon by the efforts of successive theosophists. To associate salvation, therefore, not simply with Christ (which, however, is also done by the apostle, 1 Timothy 1:14; Titus 1:4; Titus 2:13; Titus 3:6), but directly and prominently with God, might seem a fitting mode of testifying against the false tendency of the times. It would certainly have been to believers a preservative against much of the evil then emerging, if they kept firm hold of the truth that salvation is of God; for thus would all arbitrariness in speculation and undue licence in practice be repressed.

With God as our Saviour the apostle couples Christ Jesus as our hope, precisely as in Ephesians 2:14 he calls Him our peace; and, with a still nearer resemblance to the present passage, in Colossians 1:27, the hope of glory in believers. He is so called, not merely because the reception of His gospel lights up the hope of blessing and glory in the heart, but because all that is hoped for is so indissolubly linked to Christ Himself, that our relation to Him carries also our relation to it. In co solo tota salutis nostroe materia (Calvin).

To Timothy, [my] true child in the faith. The rendering in the Authorized Version, “mine own son,” is not altogether correct, γνησίος being true, in opposition to false or spurious; hence genuine, real. Had it been used of a relation in the natural sphere, own might have been taken as the proper equivalent: one's own child, as contradistinguished from another's, from a supposititious offspring. But it is otherwise in the spiritual; for Timothy might have been a genuine child of the divine kingdom, though brought into it through the instrumentality of another than the apostle. But as having been so brought, brought as a mere youth, and almost from the date of his conversion kept in constant attendance upon the apostle, it was natural for the latter to use the term child rather than son to express the relation, even now when Timothy was in the ripeness and vigour of manhood; it was more distinctly indicative of tenderness and affection. The other would have been more natural to an imitator. The addition, in faith, or, in the faith, for there can be no doubt that it refers to the specific faith of the gospel, is made to prevent mistake, by defining the sphere to which the filial relationship belonged. So also, in 1 Corinthians 4:17, Timothy is described by the apostle as “his beloved child, and faithful in the Lord.” The endearing spiritual relationship subsisting between them had on Timothy's part been properly maintained.

Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and Christ Jesus our Lord. The only thing calling for special notice here is the insertion of ἔλεος, mercy, between grace and peace. In all the rest of Paul's epistles, except the Second to Timothy (in Titus the word, though in the received text, should likewise be omitted), mercy is not found in the salutation, but only grace and peace. It seems, however, a strange mode of reasoning to press this as an argument against the genuineness of the two epistles; for the very uniformity of the apostle's style in his earlier epistles would have been sure to catch the eye of a forger, and in a manner constrained him to adopt the same. It was not for him at the very outset to deviate from the beaten track; least of all to do so by such an addition to the two regular epithets as mercy, which has respect to sin and misery in the object of it. Grace and peace might fitly enough be sought for Timothy as an honoured member of the church of Christ, and more especially as one called to the discharge of an onerous and responsible commission in it; but who, save such a man as Paul, could have thought of mercy? If even in the case of the erring Galatians and the backsliding Corinthians, mercy was omitted from the apostolic salutation, was it for an unknown, a lying imitator, to conceive of Paul's dear child of faith, his substitute in the performance of what was properly apostolic work, as a subject for mercy? This, surely, was a very unlikely thing to come from such a quarter; and it may therefore be regarded as the apostle's own signature the impress of his peculiarly thoughtful and deeply exercised heart. He knew how much he needed mercy for himself, not merely at the outset of his spiritual career, when he was rescued as a brand from the burning, but also when engaged in his work as an ambassador of Christ. He knew that, even when he was outwardly doing all, he was still spiritually coming short; that evil was more or less present with him, when seeking to do what was good; therefore he must ever feel himself a debtor to mercy. And could he wish his dear child and deputy to feel otherwise? Would he not rather be disposed to consider it essential to Timothy's safety and success to live in the exercise of such a spirit? It came well from so richly endowed a workman, and so experienced a saint, to convey to his youthful disciple the important instruction couched under this word from him alone could it have so come; and it embodies a lesson for all future ministers of the gospel, which it well becomes them to ponder. While they are ambassadors of mercy to others, let them never forget that they need to be themselves partakers of mercy never more so than when they are engaged in the higher duties, and pressing the more sacred interests of the gospel. If they know aright what they are, and what they should be, they will be ever throwing themselves on God's mercy, and also looking for the glorious issue as the consummating display of that same mercy toward them in Christ Jesus unto eternal life (Jude 1:25).

The proof should not be overlooked which this impetration of grace, mercy, and peace for Timothy affords of the essential divinity of Christ; since He is coupled with God the Father as alike concerned in the bestowal of strictly divine gifts. Had our Lord possessed only a creature's place and prerogatives, even though it were the highest in creation, it had been impossible for a truly pious mind to have presented Him, without further explanation, in this apparently co-equal fellowship with the Father; such a mind would have instinctively shrunk from so unseemly a conjunction. We can only, therefore, regard the place given to Christ here as a virtual declaration of the apostle's belief in the truth enunciated by Christ Himself, “All things that the Father hath are mine,” and again, when He affirmed that the Son hath life in Himself, even as the Father hath life in Himself (Matthew 11:27; John 16:15; John 5:26).