04-11-08 BCCC Friday Bible Study Outline

1 Timothy 6:1-21

1 Timothy 6:1,2 – HOW TO BE A SLAVE AND A CHRISTIAN

Beneath the surface of this passage there are certain supremely important Christian principles for everyday life and work. As the centuries went on Christianity so permeated civilization that in the end the slaves were freed voluntarily and not by force. It is the proof that neither men nor the world nor society can be reformed by force and legislation. The reform must come through the slow penetration of the Spirit of Christ into the human situation. Things have to happen in God’s time, not in ours. The way of violence always defeats itself.

1 Timothy 6:3-5 -FALSE TEACHERS AND FALSE TEACHING

(1) His first characteristic is conceit. His first aim is self-display. His desire is not to

display Christ, but to display himself. The great preacher and teacher is an echo of

God. He offers men the light and the truth of God.

(2) His concern is with abstruse (hard to understand) and recondite (to hide) speculations.

(3) The false teacher is a disturber of the peace. He is instinctively competitive; he is

suspicious of all who differ from him. The false teacher has never learned the duty

and the secret of speaking the truth in love.

1 Timothy 6: 6 – 8 –THE CROWN OF CONTENT

The word which is here used for Contentment is the word autarkeia- which meant an entire and complete self-sufficiency (the great watchwords of the Stoic philosophers).

Content comes when we escape the servitude (slavery) to things, when we find our wealth in the love and the friendship and the fellowship of men, and when we realize that our most precious possession is our friendship with god. Made possible through Jesus Christ.

1 Timothy 6: 9, 10 – THE PERIL OF THE LOVE OF MONEY

(1) The desire for money tends to be a thirst which is insatiable (that can not be satisfied).

(2) The desire for wealth is found on an illusion (false idea or conception.

(3) The desire for money tends to make a man selfish.

(4) The strange thing is that the desire for wealth is based on the desire for security, but it

ends in nothing but worry and anxiety.

(5) The love of money may easily lead a man into wrong ways of getting money, and

therefore may lead him in the end into the pain and regret and remorse (sense of

guilt) .

To seek to be independent, to be able to pay one’s debts, to provide a house and a home and an opportunity for one’s family, prudently (managing carefully) to provide for the future, is a Christian duty; but to evaluate everything in terms of money, to make the love

of money the driving-force of life, cannot ever be anything else than the most perilous (dangerous) of sins.

04-11-08 BCCC Friday Bible Study Outline on: 1 Timothy 6:1-21 - 2 -

1 Timothy 6: 11- 16 - CHALLENGE TO TIMOTHY

The very fact that Timothy was addressed as “Man of God” would make him square his shoulders and through his head back as one who has received his commission from the King. Here is the title of honor. He is rather challenged by the honor which is his, the honor of being God’s man.

The virtues and the noble qualities which are set before Timothy are:

FIRST, there comes righteousness. The righteous man is the man who does his duty to God and to his fellow men.

SECOND, there comes a group of three virtues which look towards God.

Gopdliness (eusebeia), is the reverence of the man who throughout all his life never ceases to be aware that all life is lived in the presence of God.

Faith (phistis), here means fidelity, and is the virtue of the man who, through all the the chances and the changes if life, down even to the gates of death, is loyal to God.

Love, (agape), is the virtue of the man who, even if he tried, cannot forget what God has done for him, and cannot forget the love of the heart of God to man.

THIRD, there comes the virtue which looks to the conduct of life. It is hupomone, which the Authorized Version translates patience, but it is victorious endurance, masculine constancy under trial. Hupomone, is the virtue which in spite of all things overcomes the world.

FOURTHLY, there comes the virtue which looks to men. The Greek word is paupatheia, which the Authorized version translates gentleness. It is one of these untranslatable words. It describes the spirit which knows how to forgive and yet knows how to wage the battle of righteousness. It describes the spirit which walks at once in humility and yet in pride of its high calling from God. It describes the virtue by which at all times a man is enabled rightly to treat his fellow men, and rightly to regard himself

1 Timothy 6:17–19 – ADVICE TO THE RICH

The whole teaching of the Christian ethic is, not that wealth is a sin, but that wealth is a very great responsibility. If a man’s wealth ministers to nothing but his own pride and enriches no one but himself, then his wealth becomes his ruination, because it has impoverished his soul. But if a man uses his wealth to bring help and comfort to others, in becoming poorer, he becomes richer. In time and in eternity “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

1 Timothy 6:20,21 –A FAITH TO HAND ON

The name Timothy comes from two words, timan, to honor, and theos, God. The name Timothy means he who honors God. It may well be that this concluding passages begins by reminding Timothy of his name, and by urging him to be true to it.

This passage talks of the trust that has been entrusted to him. The Greek word for trust is paratheke, which literally means a deposit. Keep the deposit. We are not only the possessors, we are also the trustees of the faith. That which we have received, we must also hand on.

And so there comes the closing blessing – “Grace be with you.” The Letter ends with the beauty of the grace of God.