1 Timothy 1:3-4

Vers. 3, 4. According as I besought thee when setting out for Macedonia, [so I do now], to abide still at Ephesus, in order that thou mightest charge some not to teach any other doctrine, nor to give heed to fables and endless genealogies, inasmuch as they minister strifes rather than God's dispensation in faith. The sentence is elliptical in the earlier part, to be explained, with Winer ( Gr. § 64), by the rapidity of the apostle's style, throwing into the protasis what should have been expressed in an apodosis, such as οὕτω καὶ νῦν παρακαλῶ : As before I besought, so now also I beseech. Our translators, after Erasmus ( ita facito), have supplied, at the end of the entire sentence, so do which makes the sense plain enough; but it seems better to introduce the supplement a little earlier. The verb expressive of Timothy's continued residence at Ephesus, which as to the sense betokens a kind of prolonged present, is put in the aorist (προσμεῖναι), because dependent on an aorist which precedes, according to the principle of the parity of tenses, which the Greeks particularly regarded (Winer, § 45, 8). The preceding verb itself παρεκάλεσα, I besought was viewed by Chrysostom as indicative of the apostle's gentleness and affection toward Timothy: he would not authoritatively enjoin his prolonged stay at Ephesus, but would only give an earnest expression of his desire regarding it, as in a matter that deeply concerned the interests of the church. There appears ground for the remark; and Titus 1:5, where a stronger word is used in regard to the evangelistic labours of Titus in Crete “as I appointed,” or ordered thee (διεταξάμην) is no argument to the contrary, for the cases were not strictly similar. Titus stood in a somewhat different relation to Paul from Timothy, The latter, like a beloved son and bosom companion, had his appropriate place beside the apostle; and any arrangement which involved a departure from this rule, was rather a subject for mutual consent, or at the most for earnest entreaty on the one side, and submissive compliance on the other, than for express command. Titus, however, was simply one of various fellow-labourers in the gospel, and by the nature of his office stood under the authority and direction of the apostle. So that, viewed with respect to the relative position of the parties, there was a fitness and delicacy in the choice of the words applied to each, such as might quite naturally present itself to the mind of the apostle, though by no means likely to occur to another person. The difficulties connected with the apostle's going into Macedonia, and leaving Timothy to tarry on at Ephesus, in a historical point of view, have already been considered in the Introduction.

The more special and immediate object of Timothy's continued residence at Ephesus, was that he might charge some not to teach any other doctrine ἑτεροδιδασκαλεῖν. By ἕτερος; is meant other, or different, in the sense of diverse, or of another kind; so that the teaching meant was teaching after a different type of doctrine from that which bore on it the sanction of apostolic authority. This, it is implied, was the standard; all right teaching must conform to it; what did not do so was an unwarranted deviation a heterodoxy. So, at an earlier period, the apostle had designated the Jewish leaven introduced into the churches of Galatia; it was another gospel (ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, Galatians 1:6) which they had received, and the persons who had pressed it on their acceptance were false teachers. But in neither case might there be any formal abjuration of the essential facts of the gospel, such as to constitute them heretics in the modern sense; the error lay rather in superinducing thereupon foreign elements, and giving way to considerations and practices which were at variance with the proper genius of the gospel, and inevitably tended to corrupt its character and mar its design. Here, the false admixtures are described as fables and endless genealogies. The application which began to be made at an early period of these words to the generations of aeons in the Gnostic systems of the second century, has already been noticed in the Introduction: it was an accommodation, as there stated, rather than a just and proper interpretation; both because the term genealogies could not, except in a kind of secondary and figurative sense, be understood of such ethereal fancies; and also because alike here and in Titus they are connected directly with Jewish perversions and misuses of the law.

We have undoubted evidence, that about, and even previous to, the gospel era, the minds of a certain portion of the Jewish dispersion took a set in that direction, and from a strange, incongruous combination of their own religion with the spirit of heathen philosophy, formed a sort of Cabalistic system, made up of allegory, fable, mystic notions, and legal technicalities. Philo partly reflected and partly also aided this false tendency, though with him it was kept free from many of the extravagances which discovered themselves among the inferior class of Jews, who often sought through such things to secure their own carnal and selfish ends. But with whatever view prosecuted, as they were in their nature entirely speculative and fanciful, they necessarily tended, as the apostle says, to give occasion to questions and strifes which admitted of no proper settlement, and yielded no real profit: αἵτινες ζητήσεις παρέχουσιν, being such as do so, having that for their natural consequence.

The converse of this has unhappily been obscured by a corruption in the received text. Following this, the A.V. reads, “rather than godly edifying,” a fair enough rendering of οἰκοδομίαν θεοῦ. But it should undoubtedly be οἰκονομίαν θεοῦ, which is the reading of all the older mss.; and this can only mean God's dispensation, or economy His specific plan or arrangement for the administration of His kingdom. So it is plainly used by St. Paul in other parts of his writings, as at 1 Corinthians 9:17; Ephesians 1:10; Ephesians 3:9. The method of salvation by Jesus Christ unfolded in the gospel is God's dispensation, as connected with the fulness of the times (Ephesians 1:10); and as an apostle of Christ, Paul had this dispensation entrusted to him; as a steward, he was put in charge, to a certain extent, with the direction of its affairs (1 Corinthians 4:1; 1 Corinthians 9:17). The idea, it is true, does not exactly suit the verb in the preceding clause (προσέχουσιν); as one can scarcely say, “do not minister God's dispensation;” and hence, no doubt, the tendency in the later copyists and the versions to substitute edification for dispensation. But it is merely an example of what is of frequent occurrence in Greek of construction by zeugma, which requires that a verb, when coupled with words too diversified in import to be strictly applicable to each, be taken in a looser sense with its more remote than with its more immediate object. Here, the apostle chose a verb that was quite appropriate to the things which were foremost in his regard namely, the frivolous disputations which the fondness for fables and genealogies naturally generated; and he left it to the good sense of his reader to make the requisite adaptation of the import to the matter subsequently presented: they minister questions rather than subserve what belongs to God's dispensation. And he indicates the reason, when he adds τὴν ἐν πίστει, that is in faith, has its sphere therein, or stands vitally related to that humble, confiding principle in the soul, as the bond more especially which connects men with it, and the avenue through which it developes spiritual life and hope in their experience. But fables and genealogies of whatsoever sort belonged to a different category; they did not address themselves to the principle of faith; they merely exercised the fancy and the intellect, and did so in a manner fitted rather to create a distaste for the proper objects of faith. The more one might give himself to such a line of things, the more would he find himself carried away from the sphere of God's merciful economy for the salvation of sinners.