It’s not hard to read the Bible in a year if you simply read one book a day….wow. Six whole chapters in one day. Okay, here we go….Read 1 Timothy 1-6
Well, right off the bat we know that this letter isn’t chronologically in the right place. At the time of Philippians Timothy is in Rome with Paul, and Paul hopes to send him to the church in Philippi. In this letter Paul places Timothy in Ephesus. After writing this first sentence I realized that I wasn’t sure when Timothy was with Paul and when he wasn’t. I didn’t realize that nobody really knows exactly what Timothy’s travel itinerary was. It seems that Timothy was in Ephesus and Corinth, and apparently in Rome with Paul.
Anyway, this first letter of Paul to Timothy is most well-known for his address of Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism.
Gnosticism: Gnosticism is based on two false premises. First, it espouses a dualism regarding spirit and matter. Gnostics assert that matter is inherently evil and spirit is good. As a result of this presupposition, Gnostics believe anything done in the body, even the grossest sin, has no meaning because real life exists in the spirit realm only.
Zoroastrianism: a little more convoluted to try and describe, this religion was founded in Iran and propagated by the prophet Zoroaster. He taught that there is good and evil “god” but didn’t define a place called “hell”. It seems close to Christianity, but would have denied that Jesus was the only son of God, and could redeem people from sin.
Dualism: One of the ways that the church “wandered” was from the false teaching of dualism. In this philosophy the spirit and the body are two separate entities that do not depend on each other. For instance, a dualist could accept that his/her body could sin while the mind (or spirit) stayed pure. I think that they also believed that the body could exist independent of God who created it, where as the Christian is monistic….believing that our spirit is part of the spirit of God, and that we will all co-exist together in heaven. And, that we cannot exist independent of God. Also, the monistic person believes that when the mind or the body sins, both parts are guilty since both are part of the whole. This of course is what the Bible teaches…and one of the reasons it teaches it is to refute the false teachings that were popular in the day.
I don’t think I will go through section by section and comment on what Paul said to Timothy…I mean, it seems pretty clear what he wanted him to do, why try and explain it?
Today I did notice that when Paul encouraged Timothy to pray I think we was talking about the whole church, and not just Timothy. All men were to lift up hands in prayer, not just the leaders. I am leaning toward reading and studying on prayer in 2018, and lines like this seem to catch my attention lately. Honestly, it’s kind of exciting.
Faithfully,
PR