Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Timothy · About this commentary
Teach No Different Doctrine
1 Timothy 1:3-7
3 As I urged you when I was going into Macedonia, stay at Ephesus that you might command certain men not to teach a different doctrine, · WEB
The assignment is stated in one sentence, and the test proposed for the rival teaching is not accuracy but what it produces.
Verse 3 gives Timothy's commission and the whole occasion of the letter. He is to remain at Ephesus and command certain men not to teach differently. The verb is a military one, and the object is left deliberately vague — certain men, unnamed here, though two are named before the chapter ends 1 Timothy 1:20.
Verse 4 describes the content: myths and endless genealogies. The letter does not dignify them with a refutation, and the adjective endless is the criticism — material that generates more of itself and arrives nowhere.
Then the test, and it is the passage's most useful sentence. These things cause disputes rather than God's stewardship. The teaching is judged by its yield, not by its content, and the yield is argument.
Verse 5 states the alternative yield, and it is a triple: love, from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. The word for the goal is the end a thing aims at. Instruction that produces disputes has missed what instruction is for, whatever it happens to contain.
Verse 6 says some have missed the mark and turned aside to empty talk, and verse 7 gives the diagnosis that makes the whole passage sting: they want to be teachers of the law and understand neither what they are saying nor the things they insist on so confidently. Confidence and comprehension have come apart.
settled What this mark means