The Pastoral Epistles

THE same kind of objection which has been raised against the Epistle to the Colossians has been applied also to these epistles. In the case of the Epistle to Timothy, the very objection which I considered, as to the antedating of Gnosticism, is urged with even greater plausibility. But the similar objection, that these epistles suppose an organization of the Church which did not exist till a period after the death of the Apostle Paul, bears upon them in their common character of pastoral letters, and affects, in a much less degree, those which are addressed to the different societies in Italy, Greece or Asia.

The subject is a very interesting one, and I should be forgetting the purpose of these lectures if I passed it over. There is, I conceive, the best possible ground for the assertion, that the nature of the Church in the Apostle’s days ought not to be deduced from what we read of the Church, even at the commencement of the second century. For instance, it would be the greatest possible mistake to suppose that the feelings of the Roman Empire, under the worst of its rulers, were as adverse to the Christians in the first period as they were under the very best in the subsequent period. Nero did not treat the Christians more cruelly than he treated his other subjects. It was by accident, or impulse, or for a motive of temporary convenience, that he persecuted them at all. Trajan persecuted them upon principle, in conformity with the very same policy which made him benignant to his subjects generally. This is an amazing difference, which presupposes the existence of other differences. Since it was the organization of the Church in the great cities of the empire which alarmed intelligent rulers like Trajan or Marcus Aurelius, there is abundant excuse for imagining that such an organization was wanting in the earlier time. And this opinion is strengthened in many minds by the observation, that so little is said in the canonical epistles of that which seemed the most conspicuous feature of the Christian society afterwards. “Though the names of bishops, or presbyters, or deacons, occur here and there in the letters to the Churches, yet how accidental the introduction of them appears to be; how little the doctrinal or even the practical part of the epistle would seem to be affected by their presence or their absence; how easy therefore it is to suppose that they have been introduced at a later time when they were felt to be indispensable to the very existence of the Church! If they put themselves much more distinctly and prominently forward in these letters, is not that a reason for suspecting them to be spurious?”

Supposing the conclusion we arrived at in considering the Epistle to the Thessalonians to be the true one, we must certainly expect to see the Church standing forth much more substantively in the age that was coming, after the great crisis of which the Apostle speaks, than in the previous time. And if we consider the nature of that crisis, the reason is evident. That national organization which the Jew regarded as sacred and divine, the central organization of the world, was to be shaken and broken up. The expectation was that the Church would emerge out of this wreck and chaos, to be the beginning and root of a new human community. Only when it took this form, would it be the completely developed society, of which the society that grew up on the day of Pentecost was the germ; only then could it be felt as a really rival kingdom by the world which the Cæsars ruled. Before that time, it was still in the eyes of Romans one of the Jewish sects. In that character the opposing Jews were always seeking to represent it. And how would it seem to the members of the Church themselves, to their teachers, and to the Apostles? We have seen that it is not easy to give a single answer to this question. The answer comes out gradually in different aspects. St. James and St. Peter were most anxious to recognize the old organization of the Jewish people, to speak of the twelve tribes, to make their countrymen conscious of their peculiar calling, to present Christ as the son of David, who was come to gather them in one, however they might be dispersed among the Gentiles. These Apostles of the circumcision would of course be reluctant by any means to convey the impression that they were setting up a society. They wished only to be a body of witnesses for the true Lord of the society to which they did belong, and of which they rejoiced to think themselves members. Still they were a body of witnesses. They had need of ministers to do their work. Deacons were chosen to meet a new necessity. The apostles held the office which had been given them by Christ. The old forms of the Jewish commonwealth, reviving and recovering their old family character, suggested the position of the Elders. When an ecclesia, consisting of Jews and Gentiles, grew up in the cities which St. Paul visited, all different functions and gifts, as we find in the Epistles to the Corinthians and Ephesians, appeared, and were referred to the one Lord and the one Spirit. Whatever was necessary to a body politic was found in each of these bodies. And St. Paul was careful to remind each of them, that it was a divine society called out by God Himself, not one which he had constructed or could organize. In these, as in the Church of Jerusalem, we hear of the Elder and of the Deacon. But their existence is taken for granted. No formal account is given of their creation. They have unfolded themselves like any trees or flowers in the outward world. They have not been put into the society, according to any plan or paper constitution. The other name of “Overseers,” which becomes so important afterwards, stands out with no formality or distinctness in the Ecclesiastical Epistles. The name itself is pregnant with meaning; but the meaning is not brought out. We feel that we are in an order; but an order that is in the midst of another, which it is not yet in a condition to displace, and which, till it perishes by God’s decree, is dear and venerable in the eyes of the Apostle of the Gentiles, as well as of the Apostles of the circumcision.

The conclusion then to which I come, is this. There is nothing in the Epistles to the Churches, and I think we shall find that there is nothing in the pastoral Epistles, which anticipates the existence of that complete and expanded society which we meet with, after the Apostles have left the earth. But there are all the seeds and preparations for that developed order, just as we found the seeds of the different kinds of Gnosticism that were afterwards developed, at Colosse. The pastoral Epistles carry us a step farther than the Ecclesiastical Epistles in the history of the Church’s constitution. But it is just such a step as is made necessary by what we read there, just such a step as makes the facts which we read of in the second century, not incredible or unintelligible.

First Epistle to Timothy

It is generally admitted that the Overseer and the Elder are not distinguished with any accuracy in the Acts of the Apostles or in the Ecclesiastical Epistles. But when a certain person is left to watch over the affairs of the Church, we feel at once that the first name has an appropriateness to his function which the other clearly has not. Without assuming that the Elder had necessarily any connection with age, we may at least take it for granted that a young man like Timothy would not have borne that name, in a Church to which he locally belonged. At the same time, the opening of this Epistle affords the clearest evidence in support of the remark which I made just now, that the offices in the Church evolved themselves by a divine law, not in obedience to an artificial rule.

The Apostle is on his way from Ephesus to Macedonia. He perceives, in the Church at Ephesus, certain persons who are introducing strange doctrines, who are giving heed to fables and interminable genealogies which awaken disputations. He desires Timothy to remain that he may warn these men of the mischief of which they are likely to be the cause. Here we have at once the indication, in a particular case, how the need of a Christian overseer might arise. Starting from this point we may expect to learn by degrees what other duties devolve upon him, what else is implied in his office.

The phrase “interminable genealogies” has been supposed to lead us to a step further into the history of Gnosticism, than we advanced in the Epistle to the Colossians. The descent of the different æons and their spiritual relationships to each other, form so conspicuous a part of the heresies of the second century, that we assume at once that they must be pointed at here. The opinion seems to me not an unreasonable one. But the language of the Apostle in the context obliges us to check and qualify it. These genealogists were evidently Jews, men who set great store by the law. If they owed any thing to Persian or Greek teachers, that lore was entirely subordinate to what they received from the Hebrew sages. We should then, I think, interpret the words rather by what we know of Jewish conceits concerning angels and archangels, than by what we read of Gnostics in Tertullian or Irenæus. Possibly we may hereafter find it needful to make much more account of the Jewish element in Gnosticism, than some modern ecclesiastical historians are inclined to do. But at all events the persons whom St. Paul set Timothy to control, were men who substituted law for Gospel, and thereby, as St. Paul tells him, “hindered that which is the true end and issue of the commandment, love out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.”

The words which we translate, “godly edifying which is in faith,” are made rather more difficult by Lachmann, who reads οἰκονομίαν instead of οἰκοδομίαν. But either reading, Lachmann’s perhaps even more than the ordinary one, suggests a valuable hint as to the character of Timothy’s office, which is abundantly borne out by the rest of the Epistle. The preservation of the order of the Church, of all that conduced to the true fellowship of its members, was to be his first and his special object. He was to understand distinctions, that he might be a preserver of unity; to hinder notions from substituting themselves for belief and action; for that end to detect what is true in each notion, that the assumption and exclusiveness which made it false might be rejected. The great cardinal opposition of Law and Gospel immediately supplies the instance and the test. “The law is good, if a man use it lawfully.” But the Law is for the coercion and condemnation of crimes which counteract and oppose the healthful doctrine of the Gospel of the glory of God, with which the Apostle felt that he had been entrusted. To substitute the mere denunciation and prohibition of evil for the power by which men are delivered from it, the righteousness of letters for the righteousness of a Person, the righteousness which merely condemns the sinner for the righteousness which saves him out of sin, is to destroy the life of the Church as well as the life of the individual. He who truly watches over one, will be also the protector of the other.

Then after the assertion of this great theological principle, which Timothy is always to keep in sight, comes in one of those passages of personal feeling and thanksgiving which seem at first to break the tenor of the discourse, but which afterwards we find have done more to bring out the meaning of it, than the most apparent logical sequence could have done. He “thanks our Lord Jesus Christ, who has enabled him for the ministry into which He put him, having judged him faithful; him that was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious.” Why should these words come in here, more than anywhere else? Why should he speak of his receiving mercy because he did it ignorantly in unbelief? Why should he say that the grace of our Lord had abounded with the faith and love that is in Christ Jesus? Why should he add the saying, apparently more needful for a young convert than for a bishop, “Faithful is the word, and worthy of universal acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first?” Why, but because in this way he brings out most remarkably the inefficiency of the Law, to raise a man who followed its precepts most diligently, out of the most evil and godless habits of mind, to which he yielded through his very zeal for its authority? Why, but because he would show the power of the Gospel to do that for him which the Law could not do? Why, but because he would proclaim to the whole body of sinners, the blessings to which he felt that he had no right but as a sinner? And so the words that follow, “But on this account I found mercy, that in me first Christ Jesus might show forth all longsuffering for a pattern to them that should hereafter believe on Him unto life eternal,” acquire their full force. He himself is at once the sign to the most hard-hearted legalist, and the most corrupt Gentile, of the power which there is in Christ to raise them out of both conditions, to endue them with a faith and love which is in Himself, and so to bring them to that life eternal, which men crave for, and which they find in Him. And I know not whether it is an over-refinement to think that both in the use of these words, “eternal life,” and in the ascription which follows, “to the King of the Æons, to the incorruptible, unseen, only God, honor and glory for the æons out of æons, Amen,” there is a silent allusion to the opinions which were beginning to connect themselves with these words in the Church, and at the same time a striking testimony against them, inasmuch as the Apostle draws away all thoughts both from periods and from spiritual beings, to the one original ground of both. Be that as it may, the commission to Timothy evidently rests upon this Gospel and the relation between it and the law, as it was made necessary by the confused teaching of Rabbinical speculators and allegorists. The words, “according to the prophecies which went before on thee”—or rather that were leading or pointing to thee—seem to express clearly that the Apostle was not exercising an arbitrary judgment in the choice of his delegate, but was conforming himself to indications and admonitions which, in the case of every man if he will look for them, declare what he is intended for, and which an Apostle could never regard as otherwise than divine. I cannot tell how to explain the words, “in them” which occur in the next sentence. They may possibly signify that Timothy should carry on his warfare in the recollection of those warnings and fore-showings of his vocation; that he would need them when his belief of it was growing weak. But at any rate the words will signify that his life in himself and in the Church could be nothing else than a fight, and that the fight would be victorious, if he put on the armor of faith and of a good conscience, one of which he intimates is necessary to the security and preservation of the other. He had perceived a tendency to separate them, growing up in the Church. Hymenæus and Alexander had neglected to keep a clear conscience; therefore their faith had run aground, and they had been shipwrecked. He had delivered them to Satan (using the same formula, doubtless with precisely the same meaning, as in the case of the Corinthian offender), not in this case or in any other that they might be excluded from the kingdom of Heaven, but that they might be taught not to blaspheme.

Our second chapter opens with hints respecting the order of a Church. Nothing is more worthy of note than the Apostle’s primary exhortation to Timothy on this subject: “I exhort then first of all that there be made petitions, supplications, thanksgivings for all men.” The ground of the Church’s order is laid in these supplications. He who is left expressly at Ephesus to watch against strange doctrines, is yet bidden “first of all” to see that prayers be made for all men. If the Apostle’s end had been only to prevent the incursions of Gnosticism, no diviner means than this could have been conceived. For Gnosticism is, in its very nature, separating and exclusive, busy in dividing the initiated believer from the ordinary Christian and man. But as the Apostle’s zeal against the innovating teachers was altogether subordinate to the purpose of asserting the truth of the Gospel and the existence of the divine kingdom, we cannot assign any lower ground for this command and for the prominence which he gives to it, than that he looked upon common and united prayer for all men as the very expression of the Church’s mind, the sign of its vocation, the mode by which its triumphs were to be effected. He adds, “For kings and all those in authority, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all piety and reverence.” But lest this explanation of the prayer should be mistaken for the reason and ground of it,—lest Christians should suppose that they were praying for Nero in order to disarm his hostility against them, or to procure themselves an immunity from the miseries which he was inflicting upon the world,—the Apostle adds immediately, “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of our Saviour God, who willeth all men to be saved, and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” A most wonderful and startling assertion, the strangeness of which we can hardly appreciate. You are to pray for all men; you are to pray for the worst man, the greatest tyrant; for this is—not proper and decorous in the sight of men, but—good and acceptable in the sight of God, who hates all mere appearances and proprieties; because it is His will that all men should be saved, and should come to a knowledge of the truth. He must mean that the prayers of a Church, and therefore the life of a Church,—which depends on its prayers, which is realized in its prayers,—are possible only while it acknowledges a Will to good, a Will to salvation which goes down deeper than any thing Christians can think or imagine, which is so profound, that we are bound to suppose the whole world, and the very worst man in it, to be an object of the divine care and interest, and therefore a fit object for the care and interest of those whose wills are seeking to be in conformity with His. And lest it should be supposed that this Will of God was some other than that which Paul had been proclaiming in his Gospel, he adds, “For there is one God, one Mediator also of God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, He that hath given Himself a ransom for all (the testimony to be made in its own times, or, as our translators render it, ‘to be testified in due time’); unto which have I been appointed a herald and an apostle. I say truth, I do not lie, a teacher of nations in faith and truth.” That Will of God then that all men should be saved, is the Will that is revealed in the one Mediator Jesus Christ. When we speak of Him as a Mediator or a ransom, we speak of this or we speak of nothing. He is a ransom for all, or He is a ransom for none. If any person is excluded, the Incarnation and the Sacrifice mean nothing: there is no Gospel from heaven to earth. Therefore the Apostle speaks in that vehement way, to which all who know his style are aware that he resorts only when some great cardinal point is at stake, when the matter at issue is one of life and death. He avers, he swears, that he is not a liar, but a truth-speaker, when he says that this, even this Gospel, so contrary to all the narrow notions of men, so utterly outrageous to the pride of Jews and of Christians, is the glad tidings with which he has been entrusted, that if he may not say this, he is not a teacher of the Gentiles at all. Such language is not new to us. We have found it in every Epistle. But here it comes out more broadly and distinctly than in almost any other place, because he would have Timothy understand that if he does not set forth this as the ground of the acts and life of the Ephesian Church, he will be failing in his office, he will not be a true overseer.

And then he goes on to exhibit this united prayer, as that which is to preserve the men and the women of the Church in their proper relation to each other, uniting them together in Christ, but yet teaching them the Divine and original distinction between them, the subordination which is due from the weaker to the stronger. He wills “that the men pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without wrath and disputation;” these being their special temptations—springing up as readily in the Church as in the world, from questions of theology as from questions of civil business, to be cured only by the awfulness and the fellowship of prayer. He wills also that the women should join in these prayers, avoiding those outward vanities of dress which were their special temptation, which interfered with the humility and the reverence of prayer, and from which the cultivation of that reverence in prayer, and those higher adornments and graces which are sought for and obtained in it, are the deliverance. But the woman also might have another infirmity, arising not from that which belongs to her own sex, but from the ambition of being like the other. She was to pray with the man. There they were one and equal. But he was to teach and she to learn. Quietness was her special ornament. Adam was first formed, and then Eve. The woman was deceived; the man fell by yielding to her. Yet that promise of a child, which was the deliverance of the first woman, shall be a deliverance and blessing to all who follow her, if they remain in faith, and love, and holiness, with modesty.¹

After laying down these fundamental principles respecting the constitution of the Church, the Apostle proceeds to speak of the office of him who was to be its guardian. I suppose most persons who have read the description of a Christian overseer or bishop in the third chapter, have been somewhat startled at finding that the ideal is not more elevated, that the qualities which are described are in the main such as one would demand of an ordinary superintendent of a village or a city, not those spiritual and transcendant qualities which we suppose must have belonged to an ecclesiastical ruler in Apostolical primitive times. I think much is to be learnt from this observation. If the Apostle had been setting up an order which was to be separated from the world, and to propose to itself objects with which the world had nothing to do, the commonplace morality which forbids a ruler to be “a striker, given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre,” would have been passed over, or taken for granted. Only those tokens which mark the divine, abstracted, spiritual man, would have been dwelt upon. If, on the contrary, the Apostle believed that he was speaking of a society which God was setting up in the world, and not he, which was to explain what human society is, which was to be a light of the world, and salt of the earth, he would rather take for granted the internal and spiritual qualities which were presumed in the very nature of the society, and in its relation to the eternal invisible God, and would explain to him who governed its members and directed its proceedings, how he might in his own person exhibit that simple, broad, manly character, which the world honors, but which it cannot produce, how in his daily walk he might prove to men that there is another life than an animal one,—another end of existence than the acquisition of money,—a power which can restrain passion, not in those who cultivate apathy or indifference, but in those who eschew it, and are full of burning zeal. Probably if we considered the history of the Church a little more, we should find that the preservation of this kind of gracious, orderly, humane demeanor, in the midst of the provocations and degrading influences of society, has been harder work, more rarely performed, more mighty in its influence, bringing less honor to man—greater glory to God—than the maintenance of that separate and ascetic devotion which is often set up in disparagement of it. There are those who have been called, like Bernard, to the other kind of service, and they are entitled to all admiration, gratitude and love. Between the dangers of the two positions there may be little to choose. He who rushes into either, without a vocation, may have bitterly to repent his rashness. But it must be a great mistake, in the face of the Apostle’s teaching, to maintain that he who can order God’s household, and can preserve in it the character of a Christian family, is not bearing at least as true a witness for His kingdom, as those who retire from the haunts of men, and beget the impression that heaven is for solitaries, and not for society. If people would read the Epistles literally, and not bring their own notions with them, it would be almost needless to make another remark closely connected with this, that the Apostle does not merely permit, but command, that the Overseers should be taken from those who are already husbands and fathers. I see no way of avoiding this inference from his words. And I believe the further we read in ecclesiastical history, the more we shall find the explanation of the command in the nature, functions, and temptations of the office.

Those who have accepted the maxim that there are three orders in the Church, merely as a maxim, without much considering what is implied in it, are puzzled by finding no allusion to the presbyter here, the Apostle at once passing from the overseer to the deacon. I am anxious to draw attention to this point, in which I feel much interest, precisely because I attach very great importance to the office of the presbyter, and because I do not think that the ordinary objections, which are raised against the opinion that his office in the developed Christian Church is the expansion and flower of the office of the Jewish priest, are tenable objections. I hail the omission of any allusion to him in this place, as proof that, while the Jewish polity was standing, while sacrifices were still offered daily in the Temple, his office,—though existing in the Church, though possessing a much more domestic character than the Jewish office, from which it was translated,—had not acquired its full meaning, had, as yet, more to do with the arrangements and discipline of the Church than with its worship. I believe it is a confirmation of remarks which I have made before in commenting on the Epistle to the Hebrews, and to which I shall have again to call the attention of my readers, when, at the close of this volume, I connect that Epistle with the Epistles to the churches in the Gentile cities. But I must not leave this subject without observing that the allusions to the deacons, are conceived in precisely the same spirit as those respecting the overseers. They all betoken the existence of a Divine order, but of one which, because it is Divine, is also human and natural, so far as natural is opposed to artificial. The deacon is to be tested before he is admitted to the office, and one of the chief tests is that he be the husband of one wife, ruling his children and his own house well. His wife also is a part of the Church order. Her gravity, sobriety, freedom from gossiping, are taken to be the signs of a divine calling. In both cases, as throughout the New Testament, work or service is not considered chiefly as a means to a reward, but as itself a reward. He who does a less work well, may hope for a wider sphere of work. But to be discharged from work in this world or any other, would be a penalty, not a prize.

The memorable passage in the 16th verse of the 3d chapter has been the subject of infinite disputation, a disputation, on one side, surely most unnecessary. Those who feel that the Bible, from beginning to end, is setting forth the manifestation of God in Christ Jesus, can scarcely be very solicitous whether the word θεός occurs here or not. Perhaps, if it does not, they are justified in connecting it with “the living God” in the 15th verse, regarding what comes between as parenthetical. Perhaps it may be right, in spite of grammar, to connect it with “mystery,” though then the use of the masculine should be explained. Perhaps “Christ” may be understood, and the relative used, however strangely, for the demonstrative. In no way can the evidence of the doctrine depend upon this passage. In every way it must bear witness of some divine mystery that “was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” And, since such language is utterly monstrous and unreasonable, except in reference to a person, those who believe the mystery at all, will identify it with a person. What, I conceive, is much more important than any of this word-fighting, is the Apostle’s assertion that the Church is a Church of the living God, and that being so, the truth upon which it stands, and of which it is the pillar, is the truth of the union of flesh and spirit, of the visible and invisible, of the human and divine.

The immediate reference after these words to those who in the latter times would revolt from the faith, explains, I think, the character of the teaching which St. Paul dreaded in the Ephesian Church, and how he desired Timothy to counteract it. To some it may seem that the doctrines which he speaks of, the forbidding to marry, and the commanding to abstain from meats, are not worthy of the strong language which he applies to them, and could scarcely be the tokens of a coming apostasy. But when one connects them with all that the Apostle has been saying previously, and especially with these last words, one perceives that any thing which put contempt upon human relationships, or led men to think that the earth had not been redeemed, was in fact a denial that Christ had been manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, received up into glory; it was a denial of the Gospel with which the Apostle was entrusted; it destroyed the very meaning and life of the Church, which existed to bear witness of the reconciliation between heaven and earth. And such a revolt from the Christian faith implied also a denial of the great truth which the Jewish people had been set apart to proclaim, nay, of every truth which was implied in the existence of civil polity among the nations of the world. If every creature of God is not good, if we may not give thanks to God for it, if it is not made holy by his word and prayer—the evil of it being not in the things, but in our selfish appropriation of them—then the earth is the devil’s property. Christ’s baptism and temptation and agony and bloody sweat have not taken it out of his hands. Every part of the Apostle’s exhortations, inasmuch as they have been showing how a truly heavenly society must be a truly earthly society, how there can be no inward spiritual root from which the fruits of common social morality do not proceed, had been striking at these errors. He now bids his son Timothy openly to denounce them as profane and old wives’ fables. But that he may do so with effect, that he may put down all these mock forms of piety, he must nerve and exercise himself to real piety, which has the promise of the life that is now, and of the coming life. I need not stop to remark that St. Paul is not in these words preaching the doctrine which he believed devoutly while he was a Pharisee, which he had renounced ever since it pleased God to reveal His Son in him, that men are paid for their piety to God by certain prizes in this world, and by a still larger reversionary interest in the world to come. His piety to God was itself the entering into possession of a life—a divine life, which is now, and is to go on hereafter. He exercised himself, he bade his son Timothy exercise himself, in faith, and trust in a God, “who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those who trust in Him.” For this he labored and agonized, because he hoped in the living God, this Saviour of all. To keep up that hope he had to fight with principalities and powers in high places. It was the cause of all the enmity of those who cast out his name as evil.

The exhortations which follow belong to Church-order and government, and will be understood and appreciated, I apprehend, best by those whose experience has been longest, even though their lot may have been cast in some commercial city of the west, not in Ephesus,—in the 19th century, not in the first. Timothy is bidden not to let any one despise his youth, to remember the gift that was in him, which was conferred upon him through prophecy, with laying on of hands of the presbytery. Having this gift, he can be a pattern of the believers in word, in conversation, in love, in faith, in purity. He can devote himself to reading, to exhortation, to instruction; he can meditate in these things, dwell in them; so that his progress will become manifest to all. He is to exhort elder men as fathers, younger men as brethren, elder women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity. He is to have a great respect for the true widow; but he is not to provide for them, if they have children or descendants who can take care of them. To do that is an acceptable thing in the sight of God. There were to be no “Corbans” in the Christian Church. If any one did not take care of his own house, and especially of his relations, he had denied the faith, and was worse than an infidel. Timothy was to have no respect for people who professed a great deal of zeal for the Church’s work, and did not see after their own. For this reason the younger widows were not to be generally used for the service of the Church. They were apt to be idle, and triflers, and gossips. It was much better for the younger women (even, it would appear from the context, for the younger widows,) to marry, to bring forth children to rule their households. The elders who had well presided over the Church (here we have the name, and an allusion, though not a very distinct one, to a special kind of government) should be held worthy of a double honor, that is, I conceive, of some pecuniary provision, as well as of mere respect, for he quotes the Scripture, “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.”

The discipline of offenders is then touched upon. No accusation against an elder is to be entertained, except in the presence of two or three witnesses. Offenders are to be rebuked openly before all, that the rest may fear. Timothy is solemnly adjured to remember these precepts. He is standing in the presence of God, and of Jesus Christ, and the elect angels; how dares he let any prejudice or partiality intrude into his decisions? Here we have another specimen of the way in which the spiritual principle of the Church, the faith that men are actually brought into the presence of God, and into the invisible world, becomes the security for ordinary human justice. And we cannot too often repeat the remark, that, whenever churches or churchmen forget or disbelieve the truth of their high calling, and the fact of God’s continual judgment of their reins and hearts, they become immeasurably more unjust, more partial, more utterly unprincipled, than states or statesmen are when they are at their very worst. Nay, they become the corrupters of states and statesmen, or else, while they retain any sense of their moral obligations, incur their righteous reproofs, and their bitter contempt. Therefore we should pray to fall into the hands of any judicature rather than a religious judicature, unless it is really possessed by the truth which St. Paul here inculcates, with such awful gravity, upon the bishop of Ephesus. He is further told not to lay hands suddenly upon any one, however eager he may be to send forth laborers into the harvest; for so he is making himself partaker of other men’s sins. Their false teachings and evil examples become his. He is to keep himself pure, and he is to be careful of the health of his body as well as of his spirit. How the following passage is connected with this I am not able to say, nor do I see clearly what it means. It might seem to indicate that all bodily weaknesses are in some sense the tokens of evils within; but that those in whom they come out and manifest themselves, are in no wise worse or more hardly treated, than those whose evils are not brought to light before the world. There is the same righteous judgment in all cases, the same revelation, by one means or other, to the man himself of what he is. This might be a needful comfort to Timothy, whose bodily weaknesses perhaps discouraged him, and, since they interfered with his activity, appeared to be sentences of God against him. Both the good and evil deeds of men, St. Paul would seem to say, come forth into manifestation before the day in which all secrets are revealed. And since that which doth make manifest is light, we are to receive such discoveries as coming from Him who is light. I do not affirm that this is the Apostle’s meaning; but I have not perceived any other, which is equally natural in this place.

Then arose those questions which were perpetually tormenting the early Church concerning the master and slave. I shall allude to that subject again, when I speak of the Epistle to Philemon. Here the principle of Divine order, which would be ultimately the great principle of civil freedom, is asserted. Let the Christian slave pay all respect and honor to the heathen master out of reverence to the name of God and His doctrine. Let the Christian slave pay to the Christian master all the more honor because they are brethren. Then their services become mutual services, benefits received and returned; that becomes a relation which was a bondage.

These plain practical exhortations St. Paul speaks of as healthy words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the doctrine according to godliness. Those who set themselves against this teaching, who have another more refined Christianity, he treats with very little ceremony. Such men are puffed up; they have no real knowledge; they have a diseased love for controversies and word-fightings; out of which, he says, spring envy, disputation, evil suspicions, the busy altercations of men who are corrupted in reason and alienated from the truth, who suppose godliness to be gain. He dwells upon this charge. He evidently feels that he has touched the very root of the evil which he desires Timothy to extirpate from the Church of Ephesus. In that rich trading city, notions connected with trade were sure to mingle themselves with all the thoughts of Christian men. St. Paul, in his allusions to the bonded goods and the seal, had shown how they might be turned to spiritual profit. But they could and would be turned to a very opposite use, they could and would infect all the visions of the spiritual world, and so would make it utterly powerless for the reformation of the visible world. The fine Gnostical speculators were, in truth, trading speculators. They were teaching men how they were to get a greater return for the sacrifices that they made, than other men, how by pursuing certain trains of thought, or observing certain outward rules, they might increase their felicity in this or the other world. The Apostle admits that godliness is great gain when it is accompanied with contentment. The poorest man, with his food and clothing, has an infinite treasure. Though we come with nothing into the world, and can carry nothing out, we may have God for our eternal portion. “But those who will be rich,” he says, “fall into a temptation and a snare, and many lusts that are foolish and mischievous, which drown men in ruin and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil, through aiming at which some have wandered away from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” The reader is familiar with this language. But has he considered it, in connection with the warnings against false teachers which precede it, and with the whole tenor of the Epistle? Has he perceived that the love of money is not only the root of all evil, because it draws men away from the spiritual world, but because it leads them to make that spiritual world a mere collection of prizes which they are to pursue and appropriate, so that selfishness becomes the law as much of heaven as of earth?

“But thou, O man of God,” he goes on, “fly these things. But pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness.” These are the prizes of the kingdom of heaven; these are the treasures that are brought near to men, and which St. Paul called upon his dear Son as a man to claim for himself and for his brethren. “Fight,” he says, “the good fight of faith.” Believe earnestly that these constitute God’s own nature, and that He bestows them in Christ upon you. “Lay hold of eternal life,” the life of a spirit, the life of a man, the life which is opposed to that of an animal, to that of time or sense. Lay hold upon it, for you have been called to it, and you have confessed the good confession that it is yours before many witnesses. And you are not the first who witnessed this good confession. “Christ Jesus witnessed it before Pontius Pilate. Therefore I call upon you as in His sight, and the sight of that God who quickeneth the dead, to keep the commandment spotless, faultless until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, that manifestation which He will make in His own fit time, who is the blessed and only ruler, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, who dwelleth in light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen or can see, to whom be honor and eternal power. Amen.”

Here as in every other rhapsody of the Apostle, the practical end is never for one moment forgotten. He is still applying the most direct remedy to a direct and gross evil. This declaration of the heavenly wealth, of the wonderful and unutterable treasures which are laid up in God, and which belong to the spirit of man, terminates in the exhortation from which it should never be separated; “The rich in this world command not to have proud thoughts; nor to hope in the uncertainty of wealth, but in the God who giveth to us all things richly for enjoyment; to do good, to be rich in noble works, to be ready in giving, communicating; treasuring up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may have hold of that which is truly life.” Here is the proper earthly sequel to his vision of heavenly things.

And then the whole epistle is wound up with an exhortation to Timothy himself, which makes us feel what perfect unity there is in it, how the purpose which the apostle set before himself at the commencement, has been present with him to the end. “Oh Timothy, preserve the trust that has been given thee, turning away from the profane empty talkings and oppositions of that which is falsely called knowledge, which some professing, have gone astray about faith,”

Second Epistle to Timothy

The second Epistle to Timothy has a somewhat more personal character than the first—personal in reference both to the writer and the receiver of it. But all the indications respecting the Church of Ephesus are similar to those which we have noticed already; only that the Apostle’s sense of evils arising out of the false teaching which he had denounced to that Church and to all the churches, is keener and more distinctly expressed.

The passage from the third verse of the first chapter to the fifteenth, would seem to indicate that there had been great discouragement in the mind of Timothy, and something perhaps of the timidity which is a natural result of discouragement. According to the rule in all his letters the apostle dwells first upon the tokens which he had given of faith and earnestness, and strengthens him by the examples of his mother and grandmother; before he hints at all his infirmities. But neither his early zeal, nor the lessons he had received from others, could enable him to sustain his position at Ephesus. St. Paul reminds him of the gift of God that is in him by the laying on of his hands; He would have him recollect that he has received a Spirit, and that it is not a Spirit of cowardice, but of power and love and a sound mind. In the assurance that he has that mighty Friend and Helper with him, he can bid him “not to be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of himself His bondsman, but to be a fellow-sufferer in the Gospel in the strength of God, who hath saved us and hath called us with a holy calling, a calling and salvation not depending on our works, but upon His own purpose and grace that was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began;² but has now been manifested through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, Him who has destroyed death, and brought to light life and immortality through the Gospel.” I apprehend we have never felt the force of these words, or the relation in which the different parts of the message stand to each other—what need there was for the Apostle to speak of a purpose before time, what need to speak of a manifestation in time, what need to dwell upon a calling and salvation which do not depend upon men’s acts, but are the origin of them, what the death is which Christ has destroyed, what the life and immortality are which He has brought to light—until we have connected them with the feebleness and despondency of a minister of Christ’s Gospel, and have seen how the omission of any clause would have been a loss to him, of something which he needed to preserve him from utter hopelessness. And then come in, as always, the Apostle’s own experience and sympathy. He too is a herald, an apostle, a teacher of this Gospel like his son Timothy; he too is a sufferer for it; he too has all temptations to be ashamed of it. “But he knows in whom he has believed, and is persuaded that he is able to keep that trust which he has received against that day.”³ Let him keep before him the wholesome words which he has heard from him, interpreting them by the faith and the love which is in Christ Jesus. Let him too keep the goodly trust which is committed to him by the power of the holy Spirit that dwelt in them both.

One cause of Timothy’s depression is indicated in the next paragraph. There had been a general defection from the Apostle among his disciples in Asia. Two especially are mentioned. The Apostle trembles and hopes for another (Onesiphorus) who had often both in Rome and Ephesus stood by him bravely. But whatever others might do, he beseeches his own son to be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus, and he would have him commit to faithful men, who would be fit to teach others, the words which he had heard from him. He must remember that he is a soldier of Christ, and is to suffer with his Captain. To please Him he must not involve himself with any worldly traffic, which would interfere with his warfare. Or let him think of himself as a wrestler; then there is no crown for him unless he wrestles according to the rules of the games. Or let him consider himself a husbandman; then let him recollect that the fruits which ripen under his hands he ought himself to be a partaker of. These were parables which he must lay to heart, God would give him understanding to see the meaning and moral of them. Let him ever keep in mind what Paul’s Gospel had been, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, of Jesus Christ who is risen from the dead; or rather let him keep Him in mind Then he would understand how the servant suffered as a malefactor, for the Master had so suffered. Then he would understand that the word of God is not bound because he who utters it is in bonds. Then he would understand too the great reward of suffering. He suffered for the sake of the elect, that they also might obtain the salvation that is in Jesus Christ with eternal glory. The word may be trusted. Fellow-suffering is the way to fellow life. If we endure with Him, we shall share His kingdom. If we deny Him, He will deny us. But our faithlessness will not make Him unfaithful; for He cannot deny Himself.

These grand maxims and proverbs for the Christian minister himself, were also those of which he was to bear witness as in Christ’s sight, to other men. He beseeches him again to have nothing to do with word-fighting. He was to try to present himself as an approved workman to God. Not that words were not very sacred. He had a word of truth which he was to divide accurately and rightly, not to set up one part of it against the other. Those who used words for the opposite purpose were cultivating impiety. Their words became mere vain talk, nay, they became cancers that destroyed life instead of nourishing it. For instance, Hymenæus and Philetus had become gossips and arguers about the resurrection, and so, perverting the Apostle’s own words, had represented that there was no future resurrection.

But all this did not weaken the foundation which God had laid. And there were two great practical rules for themselves, “God knoweth them that are His,” and, “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” The first would prevent them from judging others; the second would tell them their own privilege and duty. Timothy had no reason to be discouraged if he found in God’s house what he would find in every other great house, vessels of precious and of worthless materials, vessels turned to honorable and to dishonorable uses. Each man had to see that he was purified from that which was base, that he was a vessel sanctified for that which was honorable, that he was useful to the Master, that he was prepared for every good work. Let Timothy avoid the youthful lusts which deprave the man, let him pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. Let him have as little as possible to do with foolish questions, even in the way of arguing with them; for all these things generate strifes. And the servant of God should not be striving (this we may suspect was one of Timothy’s youthful infirmities and temptations); but should be mild to all, ready to teach, bearing evil, in meekness instructing those that set themselves in opposition, in case God may give them repentance unto the acknowledgment of the truth, and that those may escape out of the snare of the devil—who had been led captive by him and are fulfilling his will.

It is no part however of St. Paul’s encouragement to Timothy to tell him that he would not have these adversaries to encounter, or that bright times were immediately at hand. On the contrary, he tells him that bad times are at hand. It is impossible, even if we had not his hints in his other Epistles, to doubt that the last days he speaks of here, are days which Timothy was beginning to experience, and which he would have to experience more and more. The men who were to be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, braggarts, proud, evil speakers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, who were to have the form of godliness, but to deny its power, were men from whom Timothy was to turn himself away. So graphically indeed does he describe them, that every age has been certain, and has had a right to be certain, that they applied to itself. Always there have been those religious teachers who “creep into houses and lead captive silly women, laden with sins, led about with divers lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” This has been the trade of Romish and of Protestant deceivers. Among women of this kind they have found their most profitable converts. But because the lesson is a universal one, and capable of innumerable applications, it is not the less true that it belonged specially to that time, and that every thing which St. Paul said was realized by his own son in his own Ephesian Church, that every event which it prognosticated came to pass in that generation. It was Timothy who had need to be reminded of the old traditions of his country respecting the magicians who withstood Moses, Timothy who had need to be assured that the new enchanter would be discomfited like the old, Timothy who had need to be reminded that his master and father had not, like these men, crept into houses, or courted popularity among silly women, but had believed, loved, suffered, been persecuted wheresoever he went. It was Timothy who had need to be reminded that he should abide in the things which he had learnt, and that he should still look to those holy Scriptures which he had known from a child, to make him wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. It was Timothy who had need to be told that every inspired writing is also useful for instruction, for conviction, for restoration, for education in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, fitted for every good work.⁴

The Apostle is so convinced that a time was at hand when members of churches “would not bear sound teaching, but according to their own lusts would heap to themselves teachers having a perpetual and restless itching to hear, but turning their ears from the truth to fables,” that he uses one of his most solemn adjurations to Timothy to “preach the word, to be instant in season, out of season, to reprove, rebuke, exhort; to be sober in all things, to suffer evil, to do the work of an evangelist, thoroughly to fulfil his ministry.” There is still another reason for this exhortation. The Apostle thinks that he has nearly finished his own fight; his race is almost won. He is looking forward to a crown which now, as always, is not a crown for righteousness, but a crown of righteousness. That which he said to the Philippians he was pursuing after, he hopes fully to attain; to dwell altogether in the righteousness of God, absolutely and for ever to be delivered from his own. This crown which he has longed for, which God has held out to him, he believes the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give him in that day when He is revealed. But he will give it also—for how can he bear to think of such a possession as a selfish one?—to all those who love His appearing. Even with this prospect in sight he has a craving for human sympathy. He longs to see Timothy; he mourns for the loss of Demas, wishes for Mark (probably that very John Mark, on account of whom he had separated from Barnabas), and speaks sorrowfully, though not bitterly, of his loneliness as far as earthly sympathy went, when he made his first defence before the Emperor. There is an allusion, among these notices of friends, to an enemy, Alexander the coppersmith, of whom Timothy had need to beware. The apparent severity of the parenthesis which accompanies the mention of him, entirely disappears if we adopt Lachmann’s reading, “The Lord will reward him according to his works.” Not that there is any real severity in desiring that the law, “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap,” should accomplish itself in every case. If there was any thing right or true in Alexander, the righteous Judge would acknowledge that right and truth. What there was false, what set itself against the truth, what obstructed it in him or in others, the same righteous Judge would destroy. It was fitting that an Apostle who had fought the good fight and was about to be offered up, should desire that in that, and in all things, God’s will should be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Epistle to Titus

The Church at Ephesus must be always more interesting to us than the Church in Crete, of which we know nothing from the Acts of the Apostles, and very little from any later history. The Epistle to Titus gives a few, not very agreeable, hints respecting the character of the islanders, which here, as elsewhere, was represented in the character of the Church. If we had only the one passage which teaches us how much the Apostle studied the condition of every people to whom he went, and how sure he was that every national and tribe peculiarity would affect the faith and conduct of those who confess Christ and would require to be watched by His ministers, the Epistle would be of exceeding value as correcting a great many of our confused notions, and as an interpreter of the experience of the pastor and of the missionary. A certain notion that the Christian man, if he is indeed born from above, has nothing to do with his own past life or with the life of the people to whom he belongs, that he is translated into a different state, and that there is not an especial temperament and constitution which he inherits from his ancestors, is continually alternating with practical discoveries which confute it, and which grievously embarrass him who has entertained it. It should therefore be carefully remembered that there are few letters which speak so much of the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the holy Spirit, as this very one which quotes the testimony of the Cretan prophet, that his countrymen were “liars, evil beasts, slow bellies,” and makes that a reason why Titus should rebuke sharply, not the unbaptized, but the baptized.

The reasons for which Titus is left in Crete are not exactly those which are assigned for leaving Timothy in Ephesus. In the first place Titus is directed to “set in order the things that are wanting, and establish presbyters in each city.” No such command as this was given to Timothy. The difference would seem to arise from the fact that an island of such a size as Crete required only one central overseer, and a number of distinct rulers of cities, looking up to him. Here, then, is a further step in the organization of the Church, though we have still nothing which gives the presbyter the character which he possessed in later times. The next difference is that the Cretan teachers who required to be kept in order, though of the circumcision, and giving heed to Jewish fables and commands of men, seem to have had much less of the properly Gnostical character than those we have been lately hearing of. Questionings, and genealogies, and legal strifes are indeed noticed. But the context would lead one to suppose that the Judaizers were rather drenching the Church with idle legends, and Rabbinical debates about trifles, which people in all ages have called religious, because they refer to places or persons mentioned in the Bible, than with any of the high-flown speculations which amused and perverted a more educated people. It is to these he refers when he says, “All things are pure to the pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but their mind and their conscience are defiled.” It was possible to find a good meaning and use in these fables, as well as in the rules which the Jewish teachers had laid down. It is not impossible that Titus may have discovered this profit in them himself, and therefore many have doubted whether he ought to discourage them. But the Apostle, whose mind is wholly manly and practical, has been taught to see the mischief which this trifling, even when it was in itself merely harmless and childish, was doing to a people who wanted moral life and restoration, who wanted a power to make them right, true, orderly citizens and men.

I have spoken of the Apostle’s mind being itself practical and moral, and of his object being to produce a moral society in Crete. Any one who reads the Epistle with honest eyes must see that this is the case, that the object of his wholesome doctrine is to make old men sober, grave, reasonable; old women not false accusers, not wine-bibbers; young women lovers of their husbands and lovers of their children; young men sober-minded; servants obedient, masters just; the overseer himself an example to the rest for uncorruptness, dignity, healthiness of speech, for hospitality, love of goodness, justice, holiness, moderation. But all these great moral effects, this righteous polity, this fulfilment of specific duties, had no other origin than in the saving “grace of God which had appeared to all men, teaching us that having denied ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live temperately, and righteously, and piously in this present age, expecting the blessed hope and manifestation of the glory of our great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and cleanse for Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.” Thus the good news that God had manifested His own love and glory in Christ, who had given Himself for men, to deliver them, not from punishment, but from sin, and that He would finally manifest his righteousness and glory as the great reward, was the power, and the only power, by which St. Paul hoped to effect any thing, for Crete or for the world.

And he has the same hope for Cretans as for himself. He has not called them hard names without being willing to apply much harder to Paul. Though bred at the feet of Gamaliel, though striving to practice all the righteousness of the law, he was conscious in himself of an ignorance, disobedience, malice and envy, which put him at least on their level. “But when the goodness and the philanthropy of our Saviour God had been manifested, not springing out of the works in righteousness which we had done, but according to His own mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, which He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to hope of eternal life.” This doctrine the Apostle affirmed to be trustworthy. He would have his son Titus very confident about these things, that those who had believed God might be careful to be forward in good works. These things he opposes as good and useful, to the foolish questions and debates which he wished to put down. An heretical man who would persist in raising such disputations, was to be rejected after one or two rebukes. The act of the overseer, St. Paul says, would only be the ratification of a sentence which his conscience had already pronounced upon himself.