Reading Timothy and Titus With John StottSample

Fight Well and Hold On

Paul reminds Timothy both of the special father-son relationship that bound them together and of the circumstances of his ordination. Paul does not specify the “battle” Timothy is called to “fight well.” Certainly to defend the revealed truth of God against those who deny or distort it is to engage in a dangerous and difficult fight that demands spiritual weapons. In particular, Timothy must keep “holding on to faith and a good conscience.”

Timothy possesses two valuable things that he must carefully guard, an objective treasure called the “faith,” meaning the apostolic faith, and a subjective one called “a good conscience.” They need to be preserved together, which is what Hymenaeus and Alexander have failed to do. Having pushed away their conscience, they have shipwrecked their faith. Conversely, it is by preserving a good conscience that Timothy will be able to keep the faith. Thus belief and behavior, conviction and conscience, the intellectual and the moral, are closely linked. If we disregard the voice of conscience, allowing sin to remain unconfessed and unforsaken, our faith will not long survive.

So serious was the apostasy of Hymenaeus and Alexander that Paul writes of them: “whom I have handed over to Satan.” This almost certainly means excommunication. Since the church is the dwelling place of God, it follows that to be ejected from it is to be sent back into the world, the habitat of Satan. Radical though this punishment is, it is not permanent or irrevocable. Its purpose is remedial, so the offenders may be “taught not to blaspheme.” The implication is that, once the lesson has been learned, the excommunicated persons may be restored to the fellowship.

In this first chapter, which concerns the place of doctrine in the local church, Paul gives valuable instruction about false teaching. Its essential nature is that it is a deviation from revealed truth. Its damaging results are that it replaces faith with speculation and love with dissension. Its fundamental cause is the rejection of a good conscience before God. In the face of such a situation, Timothy is to stay at his post and to fight well, both demolishing error and contending earnestly for the truth.

Adapted from Reading Timothy and Titus with John Stott. Copyright © 2017 John Stott's Literary Executors. Used by permission. For more information, please visit www.ivpress.com/reading-timothy-and-titus-with-john-stott.