ANALysIS OF 1 TIMOTHY.
“Guard the Deposit.”
A. i. 1, 2. Salutation. B. i. 3-20: The Crisis, and the Men—Paul and Timothy.
(a) The Crisis: 3-11.
(1) 3-7. The motive of the letter is to provide Timothy with a memoran- dum of previous oral instructions for the combating of those who mischievously and ignorantly endeavour to oppose the Law to the Gospel.
(2) 8-11. This opposition is really factitious; inasmuch as the Law and the Gospel are, both of them, workings of law, God’s law, the final cause of which is right conduct.
(0) The Men: 12-20.
(1) 12-17. Paul’s own spiritual history illustrates the fundamentally iden- tical moral basis of the Law and the Gospel. Paul had been “" faith- ful,” trustworthy, while under the Law; therefore Christ pardoned his violent opposition to the Gospel, because it was due to ignorance, though a sinful ignorance. Moreover, this whole transaction—the triumph of Christ’s long-suffering over Paul’s sinful antagonism—has an enduring value. It is an object lesson to encourage to repentance sinners to the end of time. Glory be to God!
(2) 18-20. The present charge to Timothy, although its immediate excit- ing cause is the recent action of Hymenzus and Alexander and their followers, ought not to be new in its substance to Timothy. It is practically identical with what the prophets gave utterance to at his ordination.
C. ii., iii. The foundations of Sound Doctrine.
False teaching is most effectually combated indirectly; not by controversy, with its negations, but by quiet, positive foundation work on which true views about God and Man can be based. We begin then with :—
(a) 11. I—1ii. τα. Public Prayer.
(1) ii. 1-7. Its universal scope; and the Divine sanction for catholicity in human sympathy.
(2) 11. 8—iii.t a. The Ministers of Public Prayer: men, not women; with a judgment as to the true function of Woman in the Church and in Society.
(Ὁ) iii. τ b-16. The Ministry of the Divine Society.
(1) 1 5-7. The qualifications of the episcopus.
(2) 8-10, 12, 13. The qualifications of the deacons.
(3) τι. The qualifications of women Church-workers.
(4) 14-16. Caution to Timothy lest he should be tempted to think these details trivial, in comparison with more obviously spiritual things. The importance of rules depends on the importance of that with which they are concerned. The Church, for whose ministers rules
have been just laid down, is the greatest Society in the world: human. yet divinely originated and inspired; the House of God; an extensior of the Incarnation.