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02
May
2022

What 1 Timothy 1 Tells Us About False Teachers

False Teachers

There is no shortage of false teachers. False teachers abound today just as they did in the earliest days of the church. They have sown chaos and led people astray for centuries and will continue to do so. 

The term “false teacher” often gets thrown around casually today. Some people will accuse a person of being a false teacher if he holds to some trivial matter which disagrees with local congregational consensus. The New Testament doesn’t use the term “false teacher” the way many people do today. How does the Bible define a false teacher? Let’s make a few observations from 1 Timothy 1 and notice some traits of real false teachers.

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in 1 Timothy
25
Apr
2022

What 1 Timothy 1 Tells Us About False Teaching

False Teaching

False teaching always has consequences. We can’t be taught wrong and live right. False teaching was taking place in Ephesus resulting in extremely poor conduct in the Ephesian church. Paul wrote his first letter to Timothy to teach the Christians in Ephesus how they should conduct themselves as members of God’s family. 

Paul never details for us exactly what the false teachings in Ephesus were. Nevertheless, we can learn a few things about false teaching in general in the first chapter of 1 Timothy.

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in 1 Timothy
18
Apr
2022

Paul Is Hard To Understand

Hard To Understand
Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

…our dear brother Paul has written to you according to the wisdom given to him. He speaks about these things in all his letters. There are some things hard to understand in them…  (2 Pet. 3:15–16 CSB17)

As we noted in the overview of 1 Timothy, we have to read between the lines when studying this letter. We are, after all, reading someone else’s mail. When we have access to only one side of a conversation, we have to attempt to fill in the gaps. 

Some of these gaps come in the form of following Paul’s flow of thought from one paragraph to the next. There are a couple of times in the first chapter of 1 Timothy where it appears that Paul abruptly changes subjects. At first glance, it is not always obvious how the paragraphs relate to each other. 

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in 1 Timothy, Hermeneutics
11
Apr
2022

What Is An Apostle?

Apostle

The word apostle is one of several words in the Bible that has not been translated from the original biblical language into English. Instead, the word apostle is a transliteration from Greek into English. Transliteration is the process of taking the letters of a word from one language and substituting them with the equivalent letters of a different language. Translation, on the other hand, is the process of choosing a word in the destination language that has the same meaning as the word in the source language. The word apostle came into the English language from the Greek word apostolos (ἀπόστολος). 

ἀπόστολος  →  apostolos  →  apostle 

As you can see, our English word apostle is composed by substituting the Greek letters with the equivalent English letters. The word hasn’t been translated at all, but is really just an approximation of the sound of the Greek word.

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in Word Studies
04
Apr
2022

The Reason For The Letter Of 1 Timothy

Reason For The Letter

A study of the book of 1 Timothy is best begun in the middle. It isn’t until the middle of the book that Paul specifically tells us the reason for the letter:

14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, 15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. (1 Tim. 3:14–15 ESV)

Paul is writing the letter so that the Christians in Ephesus could know how they should conduct themselves as members of God’s family. Even though Paul addressed this letter to Timothy, it would appear it was not meant to be a private letter. The very last words of the letter, “Grace be with you” (1 Tim 6:21), implies a wider audience because “you” is plural. Paul intended for this letter to be read by others in the Ephesian church.

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in 1 Timothy, Church