In the first two verses of 1 Timothy, we find the greeting that we’ve come to expect at the beginning of Paul’s letters. But that expected greeting contains two unexpected features.
As usual, he identifies himself as an apostle of Christ Jesus but goes on to say that he was made an apostle by the command of “God our Savior.” While this phrase can be found a few times outside of Paul’s writings, he only uses it in the pastoral letters.
From other sections in these letters, it seems that the gnostic heresies had begun to make inroads into the Christian movement. For instance, Paul warns about the rising prevalence of a teaching that was both libertine (seared conscience) and ascetic (forbidding marriage and certain foods) in 1 Timothy 4:1-3. This closely matches some of the gnostic teachings. Gnosticism was a fusion of a Platonic worldview with Judaism and other mystery religions. It taught that the physical realm is an illusion crafted by an evil god and from which we needed saving by another good god. It was easy for this doctrine to latch onto Christian teaching and cast the Old Testament God as that evil creator and the Lord Jesus as the good, savior God. I think people still do that to some degree in their heart.
With his very first words Paul drops the peg that the God of the Old Testament is God our Savior. Jesus doesn’t save us from him but instead is the agent of a salvation God created us for. Christ doesn’t save us from the material realm. He instead has become our hope by joining our species. Even now he stands at God’s right hand embodied in glorified flesh and from there beckons run along the path of faith.
I’ll talk about the other unique feature of Paul’s greeting to Timothy tomorrow.
Nathan Wilkerson 