1 Timothy 3:14 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Timothy 3:14

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‘That thou mayest know.’ This is the word of God; the apostle Paul is inspired to contribute to it, and his words are authoritative. This is part of the canon of Scripture, which is long closed. It contains full instructions for everything we need to know about salvation, about the Christian life, about God himself and Christ the Saviour, about God's plan and purpose and what the eternal future holds, about the church and its structure and government. We say the word of God is sufficient. We will never have a problem about the church or doctrine, which is not resolved in the Scripture. We must know, from the instructions of the apostle, how we are to behave ourselves, how we are to do things and arrange things. God has determined exactly what office bearers there will be in the church and what their duties will be, how we will conduct our worship and our evangelism, because this is God's house, God's church; he owns it. It is not our church. You must build it in precisely the way God wants. When Moses made the items for the temple – the curtains, the partitions and furniture – for the ancient tabernacle, he had to do it exactly in accordance with the prescription of God. The same with David. He never built a temple; that was for Solomon, his son, but he gathered the materials, and he established a plan. He had to make a blueprint exactly in accordance with the instructions of God. So it is with the New Testament Church. That is why the apostle Paul uses the analogy of a temple. The church of Jesus Christ has a very clear pattern in the New Testament. The worship is to be ordered in a particular way, and it is to be led. Officers are to be appointed. There are certain standards of conduct. Everything about it is determined in the Scripture, and laid down. Timothy has the task in Ephesus of forming, moulding the church of Christ in that place. ‘The pillar and ground of the truth.’ A pillar is a thing of beauty and strength, and it lifts up and holds up the pediment on high. The point is that the great function of the church of the living God is to proclaim and lift up the truth. Not to entertain, but to proclaim. Never have anybody in the pulpit who does not preach the gospel and all the doctrines of the word. It is the truth, by the Holy Spirit, that draws people and converts people. It brings things to view, a high pillar – bringing to view the word of God to everybody around, to an entire community and beyond. This is a noble structure.What is the ground? Really it represents a foundation stone, and some of them have been found and exhibited: marble stones of up to twenty feet long – mighty stones beneath the ground holding the weight of the pillars and the temple. We are not only a pillar but we are a foundation stone. That means the truth we have is certain, unchanging, and will endure forever, so it depicts stability and defence. Has the church stayed on that foundation stone?

Application

There are great departures from this. The Church of England holds synods and people get together and they decide what they will do. A few of them consult the word of God. They make up their mind, even on what is moral and what is not moral, and often will say something which the Scripture says is wrong, is right after all, and they will discuss and debate these things as if they had the right to do so, as if they had the brains to do so, as if they had the spiritual knowledge to determine God’s affairs for him. The word of God is the sole authority for spiritual matters (John 14:26; 16:13; Jude 1:3). So when somebody gets up today and says, God has inspired me to tell you this, he is deluded. He may seem to be earnest, a nice, kind person, but he is deluded, because the Scripture makes it quite plain that all authoritative truth is concluded, given, within the canon of Scripture.

There is great carelessness also in evangelical churches sometimes these days: people innovating, bringing in all kinds of gimmicks, and man’s ideas. We don't have that liberty. ‘That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God.’ That isn't just about sitting still and listening and showing reverence during the service; it’s about the methods we employ, the way we worship, the way we organize things, how everything should be structured and done. It is God's church and the elders and the deacons are custodians of his truth. They are to keep the church absolutely loyal to the written word of God, to guard it, to defend it, and to see that its rules and requirements are carried out in all our lives. This is the foundation of all reformation, all conforming and ordering of churches to the standards of God’s word. But there is something that the pastor must have clearly in his mind before he begins. He needs a certain attitude, a certain realisation, a certain mind-set. That must be sorted out first. This is the church of the living God. It isn’t ours, to do as we please with, to shape as we think fit from our own human judgement and intellects. We have to conform to his pattern, his word. These words are very strong.

Sometimes you go into a church – and it may be reasonably conservative in some ways in its methods – but things are so trivial. There is no greatness, no grandness, no glory; everything is made informal and trivial. That is not the picture of a great temple with its elegant pillars. This is to be worthy, the things we do, and noble, and grand, and distinctive.

We must be careful with our language. Sometimes we say, this is our church. Well, let's say that, by all means – it gives us a strong sense of belonging – but let's be careful we don't mean too much by that expression. Actually it isn't our church to rule or to do as we please in. It is God's church, and Christ has purchased it with his precious blood, and God has built it and designed it, and he inhabits it. If we want the eternal God by his Spirit to come and inhabit us so that we feel his presence and his power, this had better be a house of God which is to his liking. This had better be a congregation which is fashioned and arranged exactly as he has commanded it to be.

‘How thou oughtest to behave thyself.’ He writes about things that are absolutely binding upon us as Christians. You may not adjust them, take away from them, add to them. If you do, it's a sin against the Spirit, a sin against the word. This is not just about external behaviour, this is about how you conduct yourself as Christians: how you witness, how you are organized, how you worship. There are rules and provisions, and it is obvious why there needs to be. There have been good people in the Church of England down the centuries, and even today there are some who believe the gospel and love the Lord. But as a church, it has gone far from the Scripture. Even the Thirty-Nine Articles give liberty to change all sorts of things, to change worship from time to time. As long as what you do is not ‘repugnant to the word of God’ (against it), you can do whatever seems good to you. Firstly, that's not the same as doing what the word of God tells you to do. You've handed yourself an awful lot of liberty. But secondly, those articles are ignored and Anglicans do no end of things that are against the word of God.

Even within Presbyterians there is a very curious basis for how the church is organized in that they say in their formulas that what is important is to go by the word of God in worship. So far, so good. But what about the other things? What about the way you conduct your witness? The way you govern your church? You can use common sense on all those things, they say. But that's not good enough.

Latimer was a bishop and on one occasion at Canterbury, it was announced that the king would be present at the service, and Latimer was to preach. And famously he started his sermon in a somewhat theatrical way. In a very loud stage whisper for all to hear, he said to himself, ‘Latimer, Latimer, be careful what you say; the King of England is here.’ And then after a pause, he said, ‘Latimer, be careful what you say; the King of kings is here’, and he preached, defending his position, no matter what the king thought.’

Questions

The church doesn’t make the truth. The Catholics say it does; they get this verse all wrong. They say, ‘The church is the pillar and ground of the truth, in the sense that the church came first, and from the church came the epistles and the word of God. So the church came first; the church is therefore more important than the word, and what the pope says, and the clergy say, has more weight than what the Bible says.’ That is not the implication of these verses, because the true foundation of the church is the word. But in a sense the church also is a base, because it is the defender of the word on earth.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

1 Timothy 3:14 Commentary and Bible Study