1. Purity in teaching and doctrine.

The Christian faith is more that relationships. It is also a relationship with the truth and with true doctrine. Doctrine has been confused with sectarian arguments and man’s opinions and we are programmed to give a wince or a groan when the subject of doctrine comes up.

Doctrine ought to be the essential truths of faith, not those matters that create Christian denominations. Doctrine would be the principles about God that would distinguish a true church from a cult, a true follower of Christ from one who was sincere and sincerely wrong on matters that have to do with eternal life and true godliness. Doctrine would distinguish a Mormon from a Christian by means of the doctrinal differences between the two. For example, the Mormons believe that there are many Gods and that there are a multiplicity of universes. They believe that some of those living as human beings will one day become Gods of their own creation. They also believe that they will be co-equal in being and divinity with Jesus Christ. Christian doctrine says there is one God, who lives eternally in three Persons (one in essence, and three in personhood). Christian doctrine teaches that God is eternally different from human beings. People are created, God is uncreated because he existed forever. We worship Jesus Christ, according to Christian doctrine, we do not become equal to him in our essence. He is a member of the Trinity, the Second Person of the Trinity (which makes up the One God) and we can never assume the being of divinity. We may share the personal attributes of God (kindness, love, patience, forgiveness, and the like) but this is mimicry, not consubstantialis with God (“having the same substance as”) which the Mormon’s teach. 

In our day there are many doctrines in the Christian faith that set us apart from other faiths. We believe that only by faith in Jesus Christ our Savior is there forgiveness and new life. We believe that Christ died for our sins and that all who believe in him will be rescued/saved from the wrath to come. We believe that Christ was both a human being and the Second Person of the Trinity, and he died on the Cross, was in the tomb or three days, and rose bodily from the dead. We believe that Christ is alive today and that he prays for us. These and many more doctrines are critical to the Christian faith. 

Some matters of faith are not doctrine in the sense that they define the Christian faith. One such secondary matter, it seems clear, is the matter of baptism. You may stop attending a church is they taught that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, but you might not break fellowship with a Church of with believers who attend it over the issue of baptism. There are wonderful Christians on all sides of the baptism question. They answer the question as to whom should be baptized very differently. Some baptize children of believers, some only a believer after conversion and a credible testimony. We may disagree about who should be baptized but we would not say that those who practice baptism differently from our church have ceased to be Christians. They have a disagreement on this secondary matter that would not rise to the standard of doctrine (as we are defining the term here). 

1 Timothy 1:3-7, Paul warns Timothy not to teach any other doctrine that what he had been taught. The New Testament is the corpus, the standard of teaching for the Christian Church. Add to that the Old Testament, and there is the corpus for the time before Christ appeared, and the record of God dealing with his Covenant people, Israel, through blessing, provision, Law, prophets, exile, sin, restoration, hope, promise, and fulfillment. 

2. For you. What you believe matters in whether you are forgiven or not. What you believe determines your salvation. What you believe affects your life, your choices, your moral compass, your sense of accountability, how, whether, and where you serve God or not. What you believe determines your view of the church, of other believers in Christ, and your own relationship with God. What you believe affects your friendships, your marriage, your work, how you raising your children (avoiding the word “parenting”), how you live, and, last, how you will die. Pretty important, I’d say. 

Paul warns against speculation in 1:4. Speculation is when you come up with something that is not definitive and you believe it to be true, even though there is no clear and strong basis for it. Many secondary doctrines are not definitive because they are speculative. They have the principle Number 1, plus principle Number 2, and they derive the startling conclusion that there were only two of every kind of animal on the Ark. But they didn’t read carefully that Noah was commanded to bring 7 specimens of the “clean” animals, not just two of them. Not reading the whole story can bring us to make statements that aren’t true, when part of what we say has a connection to the truth, just not all of it. Another kind of speculation is when we come to a question about which the Bible is not clear (evidenced by many faithful interpreters having disparate interpretations of the passage), and we offer our conclusion, which must be our speculation because there is not enough evidence in the text to resolve the matter. 

Do not go beyond what is written (1 Corinthians 4:6). As enticing as it presents itself, we must not speculate where the Bible is silent. That would be going beyond what is written. We must, at points say, “I don’t know.” Richard Pratt noted that we are not able to understand all of Scripture, he suggests, because it teaches us humility when we face the limits of our understanding. Doctrine is one thing, speculation is another. We need to know the difference. When a person teaches with authority something that is merely speculation, we should remind hem of 1 Timothy 1:4. The end should be the teaching of the doctrines of the Christian faith as the stewardship we have received from God, and which he expects us to fulfill.

People can swerve (1 Tim 1:6-7) from the truth. They can teach wrong doctrines about how people should live their lives. The lists of prohibited sins are repeated through Paul’s writings (1 Corinthians 5:11ff.; 6:9ff; Galatians5:19ff; Romans 1:28ff; 13:13; Colossians 3:5; Ephesians 5:5; 2 Timothy 3:2f., and in our section 1 Timothy 1:8-10). 

3. The goal is love, 1 Timothy 1:5. This love is described and with a “pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.”  The goal is not merely to be loving, but to have a love that is tied to other virtues (pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith.” The Christian faith has bee characterized as the religion of love — that God is love, that we love one another, all we need is love. But the way the love of the Christian faith characterizes itself is far from “love” alone. It is a definitive kind of love, a love of substance and character. 

4. The foremost sinner. Paul describes himself in a couple of places in the later section of 1 Timothy 1 as the foremost of sinners. He had been (ὑβριστήν, from which the word hubris comes, overweening pride. That was Paul. Was Paul the worst sinner in the history of humanity? That is the implication of ὑπερεπλεόνασεν, the only use of this word in the New Testament, meaning that grace “overflowed” for him, it abounded exceedingly to Paul, because he was the foremost, the πρῶτός (the “protos” or prototype (1:15), the worst there was). To emphasize the point, he repeats himself in the next verse (1:16).
The point was that if God could save Paul, the worst sinner, he could show mercy, use him as an example, “to those who were to believe in (Christ) for eternal life” (1:16).