CONTEND FOR THE FAITH 1 Timothy 1:3-11
Pastor Dennis Bone
1-17-16
In athletic events we often hear the word “contend” used in terms of competing or winning a title or a championship. Boxers contend for the heavyweight crown; and football teams contend for the Super Bowl trophy. To contend for something means that you are committed to it and will work hard to get it or keep it. This is Paul’s first exhortation to Timothy in his first letter to him, after greeting him in verses 1 and 2. Paul’s message is to contend for the faith, specifically the Christian faith, established and built upon the person of Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection.
Contend so as to guard the truth of the gospel; the gospel that has been revealed by God through the Scriptures; the gospel that saves sinners like us from our sins; and the gospel that has been entrusted to you and to the church. Paul begins the letter much like he ends it in chapter 6: “Fight the good fight of the faith.” Again, the allusion or analogy to sports points us to contend for the Christian faith and the salvation of Christ’s gospel.
In order for us to do this as Christians, and as the church, we need to know what we are contending against – what’s the challenge? We need to know what we are contending for – what’s the goal? And we need to know how to contend in order to win. What are the tools or resources we need to be successful? Paul begins to lay this out for Timothy, and for us, in verses 3 – 11 of I Timothy chapter 1:
As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies.
These promote controversies rather than God’s work – which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers – and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
The theme and key message is this: you must guard the gospel, and the wonderful truths that flow from it, by contending for the faith. The first task necessary in order to do this is to purge false teaching. Paul tells Timothy that his job is to remove, and if possible to eliminate false teachers and false doctrines from the church. This is so important that it’s something that the church should be doing on a regular basis, and it was something that Paul had already urged Timothy to do, thus he begins this letter by reminding him to exercise this pastoral authority. He says in verse 3: “Command such men not to teach false doctrine.”
The reason that this is front and center is because the church must defend and protect sound doctrine. Paul gives Jude this same command saying: “I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith entrusted to the saints . . . there are godless men who change the grace of God into license and immorality by denying Jesus Christ.”
This issue is not new, but we need to be aware of it, and strive to do whatever we can to keep it out of the church. There is three practical points that we need to understand. First, the church must teach truth and teach against falsehood. This might seem obvious, but there are many people in churches who don’t know the difference; and are not being taught the difference. It’s been said, “Whatever is only almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because by being so near the truth it is more likely to lead astray.” Most people will know and avoid the blatant lie, and not be deceived by what is clearly wrong; but it’s those things that sound true, or that people want to be true, that leads them astray and away from the truth.
In a time such as ours when so many people within the visible church are so ignorant of God’s Word, that this kind of teaching gets a lot of traction and produces naïve followers. We live in a culture that is not unlike what Paul encountered in Athens. In Acts 17 we read: “All the Athenians and foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” So what’s trending now? When the church simply accepts and even incorporates the worldviews of the culture into the church, it is asking for confusion. Sound doctrine must be clearly taught to guard against this.
This leads to a second point: the church must be aware of the danger of syncretism – this is the word of the day – which means the merging or uniting of opposing principles and practices. Paul writes about this in Colossians 2 when he says: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human traditions and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of Deity lives in bodily form.”
An example of syncretism would be saying, “I believe in Jesus as the Son of God but not God.” I believe that Jesus is a great prophet, but so were Buddha and Mohammed.” It’s a blending of philosophical and religious teachings designed to damage the Christian faith and lead people astray. In verse 4 Paul is saying that these false teachers were merging myths or fables with the sound teaching of Christ; and focusing on endless genealogies (probably from the Old Testament – the ancient version of ancestry.com) as a way to take the primary focus away from the gospel. The purpose, like all false teaching is to undermine the uniqueness of the gospel, the deity of Jesus Christ and the exclusivity of Christ’s salvation.
As Paul says at the end of verse 4: “These promote controversies rather than God’s work – which is by faith.” They are a distraction which harms the church as well as the people within it. So third, the church must purge false teaching because all false teaching attacks the faith, creates divisions, and undermines God’s work through Jesus Christ. When the church is unwilling to stand up against false teaching, clearly point it out, and challenge it with the truth of God’s Word, we have seen the adverse impacts throughout church history. I believe this happens, and is happening in many sectors of the church today, primarily because many Christians and church leaders today do not see this in the same way Paul saw it. Paul says in verse 5 that the goal of this command to purge false teaching is to promote love. What!
Yes, Paul’s command to eliminate false teaching within the church was based upon the command to love. Despite what many people say today, true love never calls us to be tolerant or accepting of falsehoods preached or practiced within the church. Paul is not telling us to impose Christian truth on unbelievers, or to not show love to sinners.
Paul’s point is that false teachers do not love you, thus they should not be tolerated within the church. They harm people, not help people, thus the goal for Timothy and for the church is to promote true love, which is the second main point for us to consider this morning from verses 5 – 7: “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.”
Paul is saying, “I want you to speak the truth in love.” Even though these people are harming the church, are leading people astray, and don’t know what they are talking about, can you tell them that in love? Paul’s point, and certainly one that we need to learn and practice as Christians is: True love is self-giving and it edifies others by sharing truth and practicing truth. Love does not deceive people and should not tolerate or allow anyone in the church to do so as well. You see the way we defend and protect sound doctrine is by promoting true love. This is true because of where true love comes from. It comes from, as Paul tells us in verse 5, a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.
A pure heart refers to a heart that has been converted and cleansed. A pure heart is one that the Holy Spirit has regenerated and made alive; and one that the Spirit cleanses through the blood of Christ and the forgiveness of sins. One’s heart needs to be changed by God before we can respond in love. Peter says that we have been purified by obeying the truth about Jesus so that we can now love one another deeply from the heart. And as David reminds us, the cry of the believer is “create in me a clean heart.”
Thus true love comes first from a converted and cleansed heart. Second, it comes from a good conscience, which means a conscience guided by the Scripture. If conscience is your only guide, then it won’t always be good; and it will not always lead to true love. A good conscience is one that has an absolute standard for what is right and wrong – not one that is informed by situational ethics or whatever seems right at the time – but a conscience informed by God’s Word. And then third, true love comes from a sincere faith. The Greek word for sincere was used to refer to someone not wearing a mask or pretending to be something they were not.
Sincere faith speaks to what is on the inside, not just the outside. You see the false teacher could have all the outward trappings and the profession of faith, but is simply wearing a mask in order to hide what is truly inside. It’s not real or true, thus it will not lead to true love. In fact in verse 6 Paul says that some have already wandered away from these things; and all they have is meaningless talk. This is why Paul tells us, as does Jesus, you will know them by their fruit – the fruit of sound doctrine: what they believe; and the fruit of sound practice: how they live.
So we see a second key point when it comes to promoting true love: false teaching breaks the command to love by not telling the truth. If you are not telling people the truth, you are not loving them; you are not edifying them or serving them in the faith. True love is always seeking the best interest of another person in accordance with the truth. But as Paul says in verse 7, these men – these false teachers – want to be teachers of the law, but don’t know what they are talking about. Although they are misguided, they confidently affirm it. They are proud and arrogant in their ignorance and falsehoods.
Most false teachers, who draw a crowd or following, have a very confident persona and charismatic personality, yet not much substance to back it up. Thus a third point, false teachers promote themselves (not true love) and they use the law to lead people astray. They use God’s Word to their own advantage; and tell people what they want to hear. Paul will talk much more about this later in this letter, as well as in 2 Timothy and Titus. This misuse of the law is often the way false teachers control their followers, thus it’s the proper use and keeping of the law that Timothy must remind the church of; as he goes on to say in verse 8: “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly.”
So in order to contend for the faith, the third major point we see from our passage is: Properly keep God’s law. God’s law is not a list of rules and regulations to be misused and misinterpreted by false teachers, but one that when properly understood will not only lead us to Christ for salvation, but will be the source of sanctification for the true Christian. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ that teaches us the nature and function of God’s law, thus when false teachers undermine the gospel they will also pervert the law; and use it in false ways for personal gain. We see this early on in the life and ministry of Jesus: The misuse of God’s law through man-made traditions and moralism. The Pharisees were the experts and their legacy continues in the church through false teachers.
Second, the purpose of God’s law is to point out our sin and point us to Christ. I will talk more about this next week as we look more in depth at the final couple of verses of this passage. But what we do need to know and remember is that if we are to contend for the faith effectively we must rightly understand the instruction manual, and not allow the false teachers to re-write it. This is Paul’s first call to Timothy in this letter and it remains a clarion call to us as the church today.
The law is to be understood, interpreted and applied in the context of the gospel. It’s the glorious gospel of the blessed God, as Paul refers to it in verse 11, that God has entrusted to Paul and through Paul to His church. And it’s the gospel of Jesus Christ that is the measure of our sound doctrine; and it’s our sound doctrine that leads us to right practice; and that will continue to encourage us and equip us as Christ church to contend for the faith.
©You’re welcome to recycle these resources for your church free of charge. However, if you find them useful, please consider making a donation to the ministry of GCC.
Pastor Dennis Bone
1-17-16
In athletic events we often hear the word “contend” used in terms of competing or winning a title or a championship. Boxers contend for the heavyweight crown; and football teams contend for the Super Bowl trophy. To contend for something means that you are committed to it and will work hard to get it or keep it. This is Paul’s first exhortation to Timothy in his first letter to him, after greeting him in verses 1 and 2. Paul’s message is to contend for the faith, specifically the Christian faith, established and built upon the person of Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection.
Contend so as to guard the truth of the gospel; the gospel that has been revealed by God through the Scriptures; the gospel that saves sinners like us from our sins; and the gospel that has been entrusted to you and to the church. Paul begins the letter much like he ends it in chapter 6: “Fight the good fight of the faith.” Again, the allusion or analogy to sports points us to contend for the Christian faith and the salvation of Christ’s gospel.
In order for us to do this as Christians, and as the church, we need to know what we are contending against – what’s the challenge? We need to know what we are contending for – what’s the goal? And we need to know how to contend in order to win. What are the tools or resources we need to be successful? Paul begins to lay this out for Timothy, and for us, in verses 3 – 11 of I Timothy chapter 1:
As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies.
These promote controversies rather than God’s work – which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers – and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
The theme and key message is this: you must guard the gospel, and the wonderful truths that flow from it, by contending for the faith. The first task necessary in order to do this is to purge false teaching. Paul tells Timothy that his job is to remove, and if possible to eliminate false teachers and false doctrines from the church. This is so important that it’s something that the church should be doing on a regular basis, and it was something that Paul had already urged Timothy to do, thus he begins this letter by reminding him to exercise this pastoral authority. He says in verse 3: “Command such men not to teach false doctrine.”
The reason that this is front and center is because the church must defend and protect sound doctrine. Paul gives Jude this same command saying: “I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith entrusted to the saints . . . there are godless men who change the grace of God into license and immorality by denying Jesus Christ.”
This issue is not new, but we need to be aware of it, and strive to do whatever we can to keep it out of the church. There is three practical points that we need to understand. First, the church must teach truth and teach against falsehood. This might seem obvious, but there are many people in churches who don’t know the difference; and are not being taught the difference. It’s been said, “Whatever is only almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because by being so near the truth it is more likely to lead astray.” Most people will know and avoid the blatant lie, and not be deceived by what is clearly wrong; but it’s those things that sound true, or that people want to be true, that leads them astray and away from the truth.
In a time such as ours when so many people within the visible church are so ignorant of God’s Word, that this kind of teaching gets a lot of traction and produces naïve followers. We live in a culture that is not unlike what Paul encountered in Athens. In Acts 17 we read: “All the Athenians and foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” So what’s trending now? When the church simply accepts and even incorporates the worldviews of the culture into the church, it is asking for confusion. Sound doctrine must be clearly taught to guard against this.
This leads to a second point: the church must be aware of the danger of syncretism – this is the word of the day – which means the merging or uniting of opposing principles and practices. Paul writes about this in Colossians 2 when he says: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human traditions and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of Deity lives in bodily form.”
An example of syncretism would be saying, “I believe in Jesus as the Son of God but not God.” I believe that Jesus is a great prophet, but so were Buddha and Mohammed.” It’s a blending of philosophical and religious teachings designed to damage the Christian faith and lead people astray. In verse 4 Paul is saying that these false teachers were merging myths or fables with the sound teaching of Christ; and focusing on endless genealogies (probably from the Old Testament – the ancient version of ancestry.com) as a way to take the primary focus away from the gospel. The purpose, like all false teaching is to undermine the uniqueness of the gospel, the deity of Jesus Christ and the exclusivity of Christ’s salvation.
As Paul says at the end of verse 4: “These promote controversies rather than God’s work – which is by faith.” They are a distraction which harms the church as well as the people within it. So third, the church must purge false teaching because all false teaching attacks the faith, creates divisions, and undermines God’s work through Jesus Christ. When the church is unwilling to stand up against false teaching, clearly point it out, and challenge it with the truth of God’s Word, we have seen the adverse impacts throughout church history. I believe this happens, and is happening in many sectors of the church today, primarily because many Christians and church leaders today do not see this in the same way Paul saw it. Paul says in verse 5 that the goal of this command to purge false teaching is to promote love. What!
Yes, Paul’s command to eliminate false teaching within the church was based upon the command to love. Despite what many people say today, true love never calls us to be tolerant or accepting of falsehoods preached or practiced within the church. Paul is not telling us to impose Christian truth on unbelievers, or to not show love to sinners.
Paul’s point is that false teachers do not love you, thus they should not be tolerated within the church. They harm people, not help people, thus the goal for Timothy and for the church is to promote true love, which is the second main point for us to consider this morning from verses 5 – 7: “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.”
Paul is saying, “I want you to speak the truth in love.” Even though these people are harming the church, are leading people astray, and don’t know what they are talking about, can you tell them that in love? Paul’s point, and certainly one that we need to learn and practice as Christians is: True love is self-giving and it edifies others by sharing truth and practicing truth. Love does not deceive people and should not tolerate or allow anyone in the church to do so as well. You see the way we defend and protect sound doctrine is by promoting true love. This is true because of where true love comes from. It comes from, as Paul tells us in verse 5, a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.
A pure heart refers to a heart that has been converted and cleansed. A pure heart is one that the Holy Spirit has regenerated and made alive; and one that the Spirit cleanses through the blood of Christ and the forgiveness of sins. One’s heart needs to be changed by God before we can respond in love. Peter says that we have been purified by obeying the truth about Jesus so that we can now love one another deeply from the heart. And as David reminds us, the cry of the believer is “create in me a clean heart.”
Thus true love comes first from a converted and cleansed heart. Second, it comes from a good conscience, which means a conscience guided by the Scripture. If conscience is your only guide, then it won’t always be good; and it will not always lead to true love. A good conscience is one that has an absolute standard for what is right and wrong – not one that is informed by situational ethics or whatever seems right at the time – but a conscience informed by God’s Word. And then third, true love comes from a sincere faith. The Greek word for sincere was used to refer to someone not wearing a mask or pretending to be something they were not.
Sincere faith speaks to what is on the inside, not just the outside. You see the false teacher could have all the outward trappings and the profession of faith, but is simply wearing a mask in order to hide what is truly inside. It’s not real or true, thus it will not lead to true love. In fact in verse 6 Paul says that some have already wandered away from these things; and all they have is meaningless talk. This is why Paul tells us, as does Jesus, you will know them by their fruit – the fruit of sound doctrine: what they believe; and the fruit of sound practice: how they live.
So we see a second key point when it comes to promoting true love: false teaching breaks the command to love by not telling the truth. If you are not telling people the truth, you are not loving them; you are not edifying them or serving them in the faith. True love is always seeking the best interest of another person in accordance with the truth. But as Paul says in verse 7, these men – these false teachers – want to be teachers of the law, but don’t know what they are talking about. Although they are misguided, they confidently affirm it. They are proud and arrogant in their ignorance and falsehoods.
Most false teachers, who draw a crowd or following, have a very confident persona and charismatic personality, yet not much substance to back it up. Thus a third point, false teachers promote themselves (not true love) and they use the law to lead people astray. They use God’s Word to their own advantage; and tell people what they want to hear. Paul will talk much more about this later in this letter, as well as in 2 Timothy and Titus. This misuse of the law is often the way false teachers control their followers, thus it’s the proper use and keeping of the law that Timothy must remind the church of; as he goes on to say in verse 8: “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly.”
So in order to contend for the faith, the third major point we see from our passage is: Properly keep God’s law. God’s law is not a list of rules and regulations to be misused and misinterpreted by false teachers, but one that when properly understood will not only lead us to Christ for salvation, but will be the source of sanctification for the true Christian. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ that teaches us the nature and function of God’s law, thus when false teachers undermine the gospel they will also pervert the law; and use it in false ways for personal gain. We see this early on in the life and ministry of Jesus: The misuse of God’s law through man-made traditions and moralism. The Pharisees were the experts and their legacy continues in the church through false teachers.
Second, the purpose of God’s law is to point out our sin and point us to Christ. I will talk more about this next week as we look more in depth at the final couple of verses of this passage. But what we do need to know and remember is that if we are to contend for the faith effectively we must rightly understand the instruction manual, and not allow the false teachers to re-write it. This is Paul’s first call to Timothy in this letter and it remains a clarion call to us as the church today.
The law is to be understood, interpreted and applied in the context of the gospel. It’s the glorious gospel of the blessed God, as Paul refers to it in verse 11, that God has entrusted to Paul and through Paul to His church. And it’s the gospel of Jesus Christ that is the measure of our sound doctrine; and it’s our sound doctrine that leads us to right practice; and that will continue to encourage us and equip us as Christ church to contend for the faith.
©You’re welcome to recycle these resources for your church free of charge. However, if you find them useful, please consider making a donation to the ministry of GCC.
