1 Timothy: Rules for Running a Church

At a Glance

Who wrote it: It says Paul, writing to his young co-worker Timothy, whom he had left in charge at Ephesus. Most critical scholars think a follower of Paul wrote it, together with 2 Timothy and Titus, a generation or more after Paul’s death. Others still defend it as Paul’s own. I never met Paul or Timothy.

When: If Paul wrote it, in the early 60s. If not, most likely around 100, give or take twenty years.

Written for: Timothy and the church at Ephesus, as the letter tells it. They were troubled by teachers of strange doctrines, and the letter answers with rules for leaders, women, widows, slaves and the rich.

What it remembers of me: That I came into the world to save sinners (1:15), and that I testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate (6:13). It is the only letter in your Bible that names Pilate. It also seems to quote a saying of mine as scripture.

How close it stays to me: Close on money. Far on women and slaves.

If you only read three chapters: 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 5 and 1 Timothy 6.

Words to Know

Pastoral Letters — 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus. They got the name in the 1700s because they are about caring for a flock, the way a pastor does.

Overseer — in Greek, episkopos. It is the word that later became bishop.

Elder — in Greek, presbyteros, an older man with authority in the community. Over time the word became priest.

Deacon — in Greek, diakonos, a servant or helper. The World English Bible translates it servant.

Widow indeed — a widow with no family to support her, whom the church would feed and put on its list.

The Book in Brief

Paul writes to Timothy, whom he left at Ephesus to deal with certain teachers there. They are caught up in myths and endless genealogies, and Timothy is to order them to stop. In chapter 1 Paul also looks back on his own life. He was once a persecutor, and he was shown mercy anyway.

Chapter 2 begins with prayer for everyone, including kings and those in high places. It then gives rules for worship. Men should pray without anger. Women should dress modestly. A woman should learn in quietness, and Paul does not permit her to teach or to have authority over a man.

Chapter 3 lists what an overseer must be, and then what the church’s deacons must be. It ends with a few short lines about Christ, who was revealed in the flesh, preached among the nations and taken up in glory.

Chapter 4 warns that some will fall away, forbidding marriage and certain foods. Timothy is told to refuse silly stories, to train himself in godliness and to set an example, young as he is. He is to give himself to reading, encouraging and teaching until Paul comes.

Chapter 5 gives rules for treating older and younger people, for widows and for elders. Families must look after their own widows. The church supports only those who have no one else, enrolls none under sixty, and tells younger widows to marry. Elders who lead well deserve double honor, and an accusation against an elder needs two or three witnesses. Timothy is also told to take a little wine for his stomach.

Chapter 6 tells slaves to honor their masters. It warns against teachers who treat godliness as a way to get rich, and against the love of money. Timothy is charged to keep the commandment until Christ appears, and is reminded that I testified before Pontius Pilate. The rich are told to do good and to share. The letter ends by telling Timothy to guard what has been entrusted to him.

Of all the letters with Paul’s name on them, this one has had the most to say about how churches are run today. Who may lead. Who may teach. What a bishop must be. What to do with widows, slaves and the rich.

It reads like a manual. That is what it was. And the first thing to know is that most scholars do not think Paul wrote it.

Who wrote it

The letter says it is from Paul, and that he left Timothy in Ephesus while he went on to Macedonia (1 Timothy 1:3). Nothing in the book of Acts fits that journey, but Acts does not tell everything, so that alone settles nothing.

Here is why so many scholars doubt it.¹

The words are different. About a third of the vocabulary in the three Pastoral Letters appears nowhere in the letters everyone agrees Paul wrote. Words Paul used constantly are missing, and new ones take their place.

The faith is different. In Paul’s own letters, faith is trust, the way a person leans his whole weight on God. Here it has also become a body of teaching to be guarded, that which is committed to you (1 Timothy 6:20).

The church is different. In the letters Paul surely wrote, congregations meet in houses, the Spirit gives gifts to everyone, and the end may come any day. Here there are overseers, elders and deacons with written qualifications, an official list of widows, and a church settling in to stay. It looks like the churches of the early 100s.

And the oldest witnesses to Paul’s letters do not have these three. Marcion, who collected Paul’s letters around 140, did not include them. The oldest surviving collection of Paul’s letters, a papyrus book copied around 200, does not have them either, though its last pages are lost.²

Those who defend Paul as the author answer that he could have used a secretary with a different style, that an older man writes differently, and that a letter about church order would naturally use new words. Both sides are serious. Most critical scholars come down on the side of a later writer, who used Paul’s name the way students in that world often used a teacher’s.

Go deeperWriting in someone else’s name

To us, a letter written in a famous person’s name is a forgery. Ancient readers drew the line in different places, but they did draw it.

A letter in Paul’s name seems to know the risk. It warns the Thessalonians not to be shaken by a letter as if from us (2 Thessalonians 2:2). It ends with a greeting in Paul’s own hand, which is the sign in every letter (2 Thessalonians 3:17).

About the year 200, the North African teacher Tertullian told a story from the province of Asia, where Ephesus lay. A church leader there had written a book of adventures called the Acts of Paul. It included a woman named Thecla who preaches and baptizes herself. When he was found out, he said he had done it out of love for Paul. He was removed from his office. Tertullian told the story because some Christians were pointing to Thecla as proof that a woman could teach and baptize.³

In the late 100s the physician Galen wrote a short book of his own, because writings he had not written were being passed around under his name.⁴

None of this proves how 1 Timothy was written. It shows that some early Christians did write in Paul’s name, and that others did not treat it as harmless. Scholars read the evidence differently. Some say a faithful student could write in his teacher’s name without meaning to deceive anyone. Others say ancient readers usually called it lying, so either these letters are Paul’s own or their author was a forger.⁵

My words, called scripture

There is one line in this letter that I want you to see, because it tells you something about when it was written.

Arguing that church leaders should be paid, the writer says: For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle the ox when it treads out the grain.” And, “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Timothy 5:18).

The first quotation is from Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 25:4). The second is not in the scriptures I grew up on at all. It is something I said when I sent my followers out to the villages, and it is worded exactly as Luke has it: the laborer is worthy of his wages (Luke 10:7).⁶

So here, the writer seems to quote a gospel saying as Scripture, side by side with the Law of Moses. That is a sign of a later time, when the books about me had begun to be read as holy writing. If that is what he meant, it is the only place in all of Paul’s letters, real or disputed, where a saying of mine is called scripture.

What the letter said about women

Here is the passage.

Let a woman learn in quietness with full submission. But I don’t permit a woman to teach, nor to exercise authority over a man, but to be in quietness. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. Adam wasn’t deceived, but the woman, being deceived, has fallen into disobedience; but she will be saved through her childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and sanctification with sobriety (1 Timothy 2:11–15).

Those verses have been used for nineteen centuries to keep women out of pulpits. Churches are still divided over them today. Some read them as a rule for all time. Others read them as an instruction for one troubled congregation. Read them for yourself, and then set them beside three other things.

First, the story they rest on. The writer says Adam was not deceived and the woman was. Open Genesis and read it. When the woman ate, she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too (Genesis 3:6). He was standing right there. Genesis does not say he was wiser than she was. It says he ate.

Second, what I did. Women traveled with me through the towns and villages, and some of them paid for our food out of their own money (Luke 8:1–3). When Mary of Bethany sat at my feet to learn, the place where a student sits before a teacher, and her sister complained, I said, Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her (Luke 10:42). And the first people to bring the news that I was risen were women, sent to tell the men.

Third, what Paul did. In a letter no one doubts, Paul commends Phoebe, a deacon of her church, and greets Prisca, his fellow worker, and Junia, whom he calls notable among the apostles (Romans 16:1–3, 7). He expects women to pray and prophesy aloud in the assembly (1 Corinthians 11:5). The same letter also tells wives to be quiet in the assemblies (1 Corinthians 14:34–35), though some scholars think those verses were added later. He wrote that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28).

Somewhere between those letters and this one, something closed. The women who had led were being told to be quiet. The man who wrote this used Paul’s name to do it.

Go deeperTwo hard words in 1 Timothy 2

Two phrases in this passage are harder to translate than most English Bibles let on.

Exercise authority. The Greek verb is authentein. It appears here and nowhere else in the New Testament, and it is rare in surviving Greek, so scholars have few other uses to compare. The ordinary Greek words for having authority were different ones. The King James Version of 1611 reads usurp authority. Some scholars hold that the verb simply means to have authority over someone, so that the verse bars a woman from teaching or ruling men in the church. Others hold that it means to dominate or to seize control, so that the verse forbids a woman to lord it over a man, not to teach. Both sides have studied the same few ancient examples and still disagree.⁷

Saved through childbearing. The Greek says the childbearing. Interpreters have read the verse at least three ways. Some say it promises women safety in childbirth. Some say it means women are saved by living out their calling as mothers. Some say it points to the birth of the Messiah, the child born of a woman, through whom all are saved. The verse also changes from she to they: if they continue in faith, love, and sanctification with sobriety (1 Timothy 2:15). Commentators do not agree on who they are.⁸

Neither word settles the matter alone. Both are reasons to read the verse slowly.

Bishops, elders and deacons

The letter lays out qualifications for leaders. An overseer must be without reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, modest, hospitable, good at teaching (1 Timothy 3:2). He must manage his own household well, not be a new convert, and not be a lover of money.

Most of that list is good sense. Notice that it is about character, not belief. It asks whether a man is gentle, sober and kind at home, and whether outsiders think well of him.

Notice too where the word overseer went. In this letter, overseers and elders still seem to be a council, more than one in each town. Within a few years of the probable date of this letter, a bishop named Ignatius was writing that each church should have a single bishop, and that nothing should be done without him.⁹ From there you can draw a line to everything that came after. Bishops, archbishops, popes.

I did not set up any of it. I told my friends that the greatest among them should be the servant of the rest. The word I used was the same word this letter uses for deacons.

The deacons’ list has a curious verse in the middle: Their wives in the same way must be reverent (1 Timothy 3:11). The Greek word can mean wives or women. Many scholars think the verse is about women who were deacons themselves, like Phoebe.¹⁰

The widows

Chapter 5 shows you a church doing something I would recognize: feeding widows.

In my world a widow without sons had nothing. The church kept a list of widows it supported, and the letter sets rules for it. A widow’s own children and grandchildren should support her first, and don’t let the assembly be burdened, that it might relieve those who are widows indeed (1 Timothy 5:16).

One verse from this chapter is quoted often: But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8). It is about grown children who let their widowed mothers depend on the church while they had the means to care for them. It is not a reason to stop feeding the people who have no one.

The rest of the chapter is harder. Only women over sixty go on the list. Younger widows should remarry, the writer says, because otherwise they become idle gossips going from house to house. You can hear a church trying to stretch a small fund, and you can hear the voice of a man who did not much like young women with time on their hands.

Go deeperHow a church fed its widows

Feeding widows was the church’s work from the start. The book of Acts tells of a complaint in Jerusalem because the Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked in the daily service (Acts 6:1).

By the 160s, outsiders had noticed. The satirist Lucian wrote a mocking account of a wandering philosopher named Peregrinus, who for a time joined the Christians and was jailed. Lucian describes how the Christians looked after him. From the first light of day, he says, aged widows and orphan children could be seen waiting near the prison. He thought the Christians simple-minded for it, and said they treated their goods as common property.¹¹

About 251, Cornelius, the bishop of Rome, wrote to the bishop of Antioch about his church. He counted his clergy, and then more than fifteen hundred widows and people in distress whom the church supported.¹² That is one congregation in one city. It shows how large the need was, and how seriously the church took the work this letter describes.

Slaves and masters

The letter tells slaves to count their own masters worthy of all honor (1 Timothy 6:1). Slaves with Christian masters should serve them all the better, because their masters are brothers.

It does not tell the masters anything. It does not ask whether one brother should own another.

The love of money

And then, near the end, the letter says something I would sign my name to.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we certainly can’t carry anything out. But having food and clothing, we will be content with that. But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation, a snare, and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:6–10).

Then it turns to the rich members of the church, and it does not tell them they are blessed. Charge those who are rich in this present world that they not be arrogant, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches … that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to share (1 Timothy 6:17–18).

Ready to distribute. Willing to share. That was not the first thing a church manual was about. But the writer did not leave it out.

Before Pilate

One last thing. In the closing charge to Timothy, the writer calls on Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate testified the good confession (1 Timothy 6:13).

Paul, in the letters everyone agrees are his, never names the man who had me killed. This letter does. Even in a manual about bishops and widows, the writer wanted his readers to remember that the one they followed had stood in front of a Roman governor and not backed down.

Check It Yourself

Look up: 1 Timothy 2:11–14, then Genesis 3:6.

You will find: the claim that Adam was not deceived, and the verse where Adam stands beside his wife and eats.

Then read Romans 16:1–7. Count the women Paul greets, and notice what he calls them.

The Short Version

• 1 Timothy says it is from Paul, but most scholars think a follower wrote it around 100, with 2 Timothy and Titus.
• It is a manual for running a church, with rules for overseers, elders and deacons, and a list of widows to feed.
• Its order for women to be silent stands against the women who traveled with me and the women Paul himself called a deacon and an apostle.
• It seems to quote a saying of mine, the laborer is worthy of his wages, as Scripture.
• It warns that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and tells the rich to be ready to share.