Forbidden Bible Verses — 1 Timothy 6:20-21

The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

1 Timothy 6:20-21

²⁰ O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge”, ²¹ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.

Grace be with you.^[a]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Last week’s post covered Paul’s command — charge — to Timothy on ministering to the rich.

Today’s verses conclude 1 Timothy.

The Apostle repeats what he has said before, emphasising the importance of remaining true to the Gospel and avoiding the traps to which the false teachers of Ephesus fell prey.

Paul begins with a plea — ‘O’ — then tells his younger protégé to guard the deposit — the truth of Scripture — entrusted to him; he also warns Timothy against the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’ (verse 20).

Again, we have a splendid serendipitous Scriptural moment, because in the Gospel reading for today, the Fifth Sunday after Trinity 2023 (Year A), Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30, Jesus mentions the folly of notional wisdom and intelligence (emphases mine):

11:25 At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants;

11:26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

Among His Apostles Jesus chose a tax collector — a social pariah — and fishermen: spiritual infants and social non-entities. He did not choose a scribe, a Pharisee or a Sadducee, supposedly the most learned religious men in Jewish society at that time.

Those who followed Jesus were, for the most part, other humble people. Rarely did anyone notable follow Him, although we know about Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

Returning to Paul, that ‘O’ is the sign of a petition, in the same way we pray, ‘O Lord’. We hope that He will grant our request. Similarly, Paul is pleading with Timothy to do what he asks.

John MacArthur says:

“O,” that word … lets the heart of Paul leak a little bit with passion. “O, Timothy.” His name means one who honors God.

Scripture and the Christian doctrine it teaches are sacred:

… it just sums up handling truth. First, there is a duty to fulfill, a duty to fulfill. “O, Timothy, guard that which is committed to your trust.” Stop at that point. That’s the duty to fulfill. The word guard, phulassō. It’s used of valuables kept in a safe place. The interesting word “that which is committed to your trust,” that’s one word in the Greek, parathēkē, the deposit. “Guard the deposit.” What has been it could be translated, “What has been deposited with you, guard.” Guard the deposit. And what is the deposit? Truth … “O, Timothy,” he cries at the end using his name, “please,” as if he’s pleading, “guard what has been deposited with you as a sacred trust.” That’s the most sacred thing of all. The Christian message is not something which the minister invents. The Christian message is not something which the minister works out for himself and is entitled to embellish. 

At the time MacArthur delivered this sermon — 1987 — The PTL (Praise the Lord) Club was embroiled in sex and financial scandals, all the while its presenters were waving Bibles around on television:

The Christian message is a divine trust which cannot be diminished or added to without serious consequence. And I would say to you if God was scandalized and moved in against something like the PTL, we could say he was angry with their immorality. We could say he was angry with their misuse of funds, but I would venture to say the thing which broke his heart and grieved him and angered him even more was their perversion of his word. That’s the sacred trust. That’s the sacred trust. What a duty, what a duty we have.

MacArthur continues:

Secondly, a danger to avoid. “Avoiding,” verse 20, “the profane, empty babblings.” Profane, interesting word, bebēlos. It originally was used in Greek to refer to everything outside the sacred grounds of a temple, anything common, anything open to everybody. It then came to mean anything unsacred, something outside the sacred place. So these pseudointellectual musings that attack the Scripture, these liberal neo-orthodox new-idea kind of theories that approach on Scripture, these private interpretations that people come up with, all of the supposed stuff that attacks the Scripture is unsacred, common, outside the holy place, not sacred, not holy, having no connection with God, having no connection with his truth, having no connection with his unholiness, unrelated to what he really desires to communicate. All that stuff, Paul says to Timothy, avoid it. And the word avoid means to go out of the way, to turn aside from. Present tense, continually clear steer of such stuff.

Some people think that education is spending your whole life learning error. Not so. Not unless you want gangrene, spiritually. Preserve the truth. Guard the truth. Protect the truth, and stay away from error. Stay in the truth. Stay in the sphere of truth. Stay away from the empty voice. The word there for babblings is empty voice, empty utterances, useful arguments, vain jangling, meaningless talk unrelated to truth. It’s amazing how when it comes through some scholarly mode people want to bow to the shrine of this babbling. And then he calls it oppositions of knowledge, falsely so called. Oppositions is antithesis. Counter-affirmation, it’s a technical term used in rhetoric for counterproposition in a debate, those who just want to argue the Scripture, who want to attack the Scripture, who want to offer the counter-affirmations, their contradictions. Pseudointellectualism falsely called knowledge. Nothing but Satanic lies, Satanic heresy, and he says, “Stay away from it. Turn to another path. It eats like gangrene.” So a duty to fulfill: Guard the truth. A danger to avoid: Error. Stay away from it. I can’t stress how strongly I feel about the necessity of avoiding false teaching. It destroys it eats like gangrene. It mitigates against your spiritual strength. It sucks your life blood out. It creates doubts. Deadly stuff.

Some notional Christians feel as if doubt adds something meaningful to their faith journey. Why they think this is so mystifies me. It is important for doubters to work out why they are in such a spiritual state and do something constructive about it. I notice from personal experience that most of these people know little about the Bible; ‘I read it once at school’, someone once told me. You can spend your whole life studying Scripture and still find lessons to learn from it. Therefore, I would suggest that doubters understand Scripture better. Knowing what the Bible says dispels doubt. How does one begin to know the Bible better? By reading it and studying it. I cannot express how important this is.

Paul tells Timothy that professing ‘knowledge’ has caused some to swerve against the faith, then the Apostle signs off with a blessing that peace be with them (verse 21). The ‘you’ is plural, signifying that Timothy would be reading at least parts of the letter to the Ephesians.

Matthew Henry’s commentary warns against false teaching, especially if it sounds learned:

[3.] That science that opposes the truth of the gospel is falsely so called; it is not true science, for if it were it would approve of the gospel and consent to it. [4.] Those who are so fond of such science are in great danger of erring concerning the faith; those who are for advancing reason above faith are in danger of leaving faith.

MacArthur has more:

The duty to fulfill and the danger to avoid lead him to the development to consider. Here’s a motive, look at verse 21. These unsacred, unholy, useless babblings and counter-affirmations and antithesis of a false kind of knowledge pseudointellectualism. Some having proclaimed have erred concerning the faith. Some who picked up on that and started articulating and announcing and proclaiming that have deviated from the faith. They have deviated from the faith. And therefore, they have abandoned their sacred trust. And they have led a lot of other people with them. You know Peter says that they do this and many follow their pernicious ways, 2 Peter I think it’s 2:2. “Many follow their pernicious ways.” You see how we handle the treasure, that’s the issue. What is the church to be? Primarily a depository of God’s truth. What are you looking for when you look for a church? What do they believe about the Word of God and how do they affirm it? What do they teach? How do they handle the treasure, the real treasure, the treasure of God’s Word?

Henry says this of Paul’s benediction to Timothy and the Ephesians:

Our apostle concludes with a solemn prayer and benediction: Grace be with thee. Amen. Observe, this is a short, yet comprehensive prayer for our friends, for grace comprehends in it all that is good, and grace is an earnest, yea, a beginning, of glory; for, wherever God gives grace, he will give glory, and will not withhold any good thing from him who walketh uprightly. Grace be with you all. Amen.

MacArthur tells us:

So Paul closed this wonderful epistle with that simple reminder: Timothy, you are there to guard the truth. And then he says, “Grace with you.” No verb, “Grace with you.” Very abrupt, because he knows he can’t do this unless the grace of God is his portion, right? By the way, you is plural. He knows there are going to be a lot of other folks who are going to hear this letter, not just Timothy. And so he embraces the whole church because it’s their responsibility to guard the truth as well and he pleads the grace of God on their behalf for such a tremendous responsibility. Usually he would close with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, but he just cuts it off, “Grace with you. You know what you’re to do. And you need God’s grace to do it.”

MacArthur summarises 1 Timothy:

So the whole epistle has been a call to spiritual responsibility, and the primary issue in spiritual responsibility is to guard the truth. Listen very carefully, I’m going to tell you how you’re to respond to this. One, believe the Word of God. Believe it. It is the Word of God. “This is my beloved Son,” the Father said, “Listen to him. Believe it.” Secondly, honor it. Job said in 23:12 it was more important to him than his necessary food. Thirdly, study it to show yourself approved. Believe it, honor it, study it. Fourthly, obey it. John 8:31, “If you continue in my Word, you’re my real disciple.” Believe it. Honor it. Study it. Obey it. Love it. Psalm 119:97 David said, “Oh, how I love they law.” Psalm 19, “Sweeter to me than honey in the honeycomb.” Love it. Cherish it. Defend it. Earnestly contend for it. Believe it. Honor it. Study it. Obey it. Love it. Defend it.

And finally, proclaim it. Proclaim it. And I have found in my own personal experience that what I teach and what I preach I tend to remember best. Have you found that to be true? What you give away you keep. And so one of the greatest ways to guard the truth is to give it away, because by the time you’ve poured it through your own mind, your own heart and given it to somebody else, you’ve solidified it in your own understanding. We have a sacred trust, just like Timothy did. We have a war out there and we will stand for the truth. That’s what God has asked us to do, that we might pass it on to the next generation pure and unadulterated.

Next week, I will begin a study of 2 Timothy, which concerns his personal conduct more than his outward ministry.

Next time — 2 Timothy 1:15-18