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1 Timothy 6:05 |
Perverse disputings of men of corrupt
minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that
gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.
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1 Timothy 6:3-5
3 If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even
the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is
according to godliness;
4 He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes
of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,
5 Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the
truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.
Let us first look at the Barclay commentary on
verses three through five:
FALSE TEACHERS AND FALSE TEACHING
1 Timothy 6:3–5
If any man offers a different kind of teaching, and
does not apply himself to sound words (it
is the words of our Lord Jesus Christ I mean)
and to godly teaching, he has become inflated with
pride. He is a man of no understanding; rather he
has a diseased addiction to subtle speculations and
battles of words, which can be only a source of
envy, strife, the exchange of insults, evil
suspicions, continual altercations of men whose
minds are corrupt and who are destitute of the
truth, men whose belief is that religion is a means
of making gain.
THE circumstances of life in the ancient world
presented the false teachers with an opportunity
which they were not slow to take. On the Christian
side, the Church was full of wandering prophets
whose very way of life gave them a certain prestige.
The Christian service was much more informal than it
is now. Anyone who felt called to deliver a message
was free to give it, and the door was wide open to
those who were out to propagate a false and
misleading message. On the non-Christian side, there
were men called sophists, wise men, who made it
their business to sell philosophy. They had two
lines. They claimed – for a fee – to be able to
teach people to argue cleverly; they were the men
who with their smooth tongues and their adroit [skilful,
quick in thought] minds were skilled in
what John Milton refers to in Paradise Lost as
‘making the worse appear the better reason’. They
had turned philosophy into a way of becoming rich.
Their other line was to give demonstrations of
public speaking. The Greeks had always been
fascinated by the spoken word; they loved an orator;
and these wandering sophists went from town to town,
giving their demonstrations in the art of oratory.
They went in for advertising on an intensive scale
and even went as far as delivering by hand personal
invitations to their displays. The most famous of
them drew people literally by the thousand to their
lectures; they were in their day the equivalent of
the modern pop star. Philostratus, the Greek
philosopher and teacher, tells us that Adrian, one
of the most famous of them, had such a popular power
that, when his messenger appeared with the news that
he was to speak, even the senate and the circus
emptied, and the whole population flocked to the
Athenaeum to hear him. These sophists had three
great faults.
Their speeches were quite unreal. They would offer
to speak on any subject, however remote and obscure
and unlikely, that any member of the audience might
propose. This is the kind of question they would
argue; it is an actual example. A man goes into the
citadel of a town to kill a tyrant who has been
grinding down the people; not finding the tyrant, he
kills the tyrant’s son; the tyrant comes in and sees
his dead son with the sword in his body, and in his
grief kills himself; the man then claims the reward
for killing the tyrant and liberating the people;
should he receive it?
Their thirst was for applause. Competition between
them was a bitter and cut-throat affair. Plutarch
tells of a travelling sophist called Niger, who came
to a town in Galatia where a prominent orator lived.
A competition was immediately arranged. Niger had to
compete or lose his reputation. He was suffering
from a fishbone in his throat and had difficulty in
speaking, but for the sake of his reputation he had
to go on. Inflammation set in soon after, and in the
end he died. Dio Chrysostom paints a picture of a
public place in Corinth with all the different kinds
of competitors in full blast: ‘You might hear many
poor wretches of sophists shouting and abusing each
other, and their disciples, as they call them,
squabbling, and many writers of books reading their
stupid compositions, and many poets singing their
poems, and many jugglers exhibiting their marvels,
and many soothsayers giving the meaning of
prodigies, and 1,000 rhetoricians [ret-uh-rish-uhns]
twisting lawsuits, and no small number of traders
driving their several trades.’ There you have just
that interchange of insults, that envy and strife,
that constant wordy quarrelling of people with
decadent minds that the writer of the Pastorals
deplores. ‘A sophist’, wrote Philostratus, ‘is put
out in an extempore speech by a serious-looking
audience and tardy praise and no clapping.’ ‘They
are all agape’, said Dio Chrysostom, ‘for the murmur
of the crowd . . . Like men walking in the dark they
move always in the direction of the clapping and the
shouting.’ Lucian writes: ‘If your friends see you
breaking down, let them pay the price of the suppers
you give them by stretching out their arms and
giving you a chance of thinking of something to say
in the intervals between the rounds of applause.’
The ancient world was only too familiar with just
the kind of false teacher who was invading the
Church.
Their thirst was for praise, and their success was
measured by numbers. The Greek Stoic philosopher
Epictetus [ep-ik-tee-tuhs]
has some vivid pictures of the sophist talking to
his disciples after his performance. ‘“Well, what
did you think of me today?” “Upon my life, sir, I
thought you were admirable.” “What did you think of
my best passage?” “Which was that?” “Where I
described Pan and the Nymphs.” “Oh, it was
excessively well done.” “A much larger audience
today, I think”, says the sophist. “Yes, much
larger”, responds the disciple. “Five hundred, I
should guess.” “O, nonsense! It could not have been
less than 1,000.” “Why, that is more than Dio ever
had. I wonder why it was? They appreciated what I
said, too.” “Beauty, sir, can move a stone.”’ These
performing sophists were ‘the pets of society’. They
became senators, governors and ambassadors. When
they died, monuments were erected to them, with
inscriptions such as ‘The Queen of Cities to the
King of Eloquence’.
The Greeks were intoxicated with the spoken word.
Among them, if a man could speak, his fortune was
made. It was against a background like that that the
Church was growing up, and it is little wonder that
this type of teacher invaded it. The Church gave
such people a new area in which to show off their
superficial gifts and to gain a cheap and showy fame
and a not unprofitable following.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FALSE TEACHERS
HERE in this passage are set out the characteristics
of the false teachers.
(1) Their first characteristic is conceit. Their
desire is not to display Christ but to display
themselves. There are still preachers and teachers
who are more concerned to gain a following for
themselves than for Jesus Christ, more concerned to
press their own views than to bring to men and women
the word of God. Great teachers do not offer people
their own small spark of illumination; they offer
them the light and the truth of God.
(2) Their concern is with remote and obscure
speculations. There is a kind of Christianity which
is more concerned with argument than with life. To
be a member of a discussion circle or a Bible study
group and to spend enjoyable hours in talk about
doctrines does not necessarily make a Christian. J.
S. Whale in his book Christian Doctrine has certain
scathing things to say about this pleasant
intellectualism: ‘We have, as Valentine said of
Thurio, “an exchequer of words, but no other
treasure”. Instead of putting off our shoes from our
feet because the place whereon we stand is holy
ground, we are taking nice photographs of the
Burning Bush from suitable angles: we are chatting
about theories of the Atonement with our feet on the
mantelpiece, instead of kneeling down before the
wounds of Christ.’ . If you want a man to change a
piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son
differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a
loaf, you are told by way of reply that the Son is
inferior to the Father; and if you inquire whether
the bath is ready, the answer is that the Son is
made out of nothing.’ Subtle argumentation and glib
theological statements do not make a Christian. That
kind of thing may well be nothing other than a mode
of escape from the challenge of Christian living.
(3) The false teachers disturb the peace. They are
instinctively competitive; they are suspicious of
all who disagree with them; when they cannot win in
an argument, they hurl insults at their opponents’
theological positions, and even at their character;
in any argument, the tone of their voices is
bitterness and not love. They have never learned to
speak the truth in love. The source of their
bitterness is the exaltation of self, for their
tendency is to regard any difference from or any
criticism of their views as a personal insult.
(4) The false teachers commercialize religion. They
are out for profit. They look on their teaching and
preaching not as a vocation but as a career. One
thing is certain – there is no place for those who
seek advancement in the ministry of any church. The
Pastorals are quite clear that the labourer deserves
to be paid; but the motive for work must be public
service and not private gain. The passion of the one
who labours for Christ is not to get, but to spend
and be spent in the service of Christ and of others.
~Barclay commentaries
At this point I want to read the Matthew Henry
Concise.
1 Timothy 6:3-5
We are not to consent to any words as wholesome,
except the words of our Lord Jesus Christ; to these
we must give unfeigned consent. Commonly those are
most proud who know least; for they do not know
themselves. Hence come envy, strife, railings,
evil-surmisings, disputes that are all subtlety, and
of no solidity, between men of corrupt and carnal
minds, ignorant of the truth and its sanctifying
power, and seeking their worldly advantage.
~Matthew Henry Concise
This verse can be broken out into four or five
parts. Some commentaries split the first phrase into
two parts.
1] Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds.
Some split this to a) Perverse disputings and b) men
of corrupt minds.
2] And destitute of the truth.
3] Supposing that gain is godliness
4] From such withdraw thyself.
1] Perverse disputings of men of
corrupt minds. Some split this to
a) Perverse disputings
and b) men of corrupt
minds.
Perverse disputings -
The meaning therefore is continued friction. Hence
wearing discussion; protracted wrangling.
~Vincent's Word Studies
Perverse disputings of men of
corrupt minds - Disputations that cannot be
settled, because their partisans will not listen to
the truth; and they will not listen to the truth
because their minds are corrupt. Both under the law
and under the Gospel the true religion was: Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
soul, mind, and strength; and thy neighbor as
thyself. Where, therefore, the love of God and man
does not prevail, there is no religion. Such corrupt
disputers are as destitute of the truth as they are
of love to God and man.
~Adam Clarke
Perverse disputings of men of
corrupt minds - Who being corrupt in their
principles, and corrupters of the word of God,
dispute in a very froward and perverse way, rubbing
and galling one another, and so provoke, to wrath
and anger, and, every evil work.
~John Gill
Corrupt minds - More
correctly, corrupted in mind.
~Vincent's Word Studies
Perverse disputings -
The word which is here used in the Received Text -
παραδιατρίβη paradiatribē - occurs nowhere else in
the New Testament. It properly means “mis-employment;”
then “idle occupation.” (Robinson’s
Lexicon) The verb from which this is
derived means to “rub in pieces, to wear away;” and
hence the word here used refers to what was a mere
“wearing away” of time. The idea is that of
employments that merely consumed time without any
advantage. The notion of contention or dispute is
not necessarily implied in this passage, but the
allusion is to inquiries or discussions that were of
no practical value, but; were a mere consumption of
time. The reading in the margin is derived from the
common usage of the verb “to rub,” and hence our
translators attached the idea of “rubbing against”
each other, or of “galling” each other, as by
rubbing. This is not, however, the idea in the Greek
word. The phrase “idle employments” would better
suit the meaning of the Greek than either of the
phrases which our translators have employed.
~Barnes Notes
Of men of corrupt minds
- That is, of wicked hearts.
~Barnes Notes
2] And destitute of the truth.
And destitute of the truth
[of Christ] -
who is the truth, knowing nothing of him spiritually
and savingly; and of the Gospel, the word of truth;
and also of the truth of grace, being carnal,
sensual, and having not the Spirit of God.
~John Gill
And destitute of the truth
- Not knowing the truth; or not having just views of
truth. They show that they have no correct
acquaintance with the Christian system.
~Barnes Notes
And destitute of the truth
- Bereft of the truth. The implication is that they
once possessed the truth. They put it away from
themselves (1Timothy 1:19; Titus 1:14). Here
it is represented as taken away from them. Compare
Romans 1:8. ~Vincent's Word
Studies
Quoted verses:
1 Timothy 1:19
[see
lesson]
Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some
having put away concerning faith have made
shipwreck:
Titus 1:14
Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments
of men, that turn from the truth.
Romans 1:8
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you
all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the
whole world.
3] Supposing that gain is
godliness.
Supposing that gain is
godliness - Professing religion only for the
sake of secular profit; defending their own cause
for the emoluments [profit]
it produced; and having no respect to another world.
~Adam Clarke
Supposing that gain is
godliness - such were Simon Magus and his
followers, and other false teachers, who made
merchandise of men, looked everyone for his gain
from his quarter, and acted as if there was nothing
in religion but worldly profit and gain; these
served themselves, their own bellies, and selfish
interests, and not the Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore
the apostle gives the following advice to Timothy,
and through him to all ministers and churches.
~John Gill
Supposing that gain is
godliness - Thinking the best religion is the
getting of money: a far more common case than is
usually supposed. ~John
Wesley Explanatory Notes
Supposing that gain is
godliness - Men who have come into the church
for gain and think that godliness is a source of
gain. ~People's New
Testament
Supposing that gain is
godliness - Wrong. Rend. that godliness is a
way (or source)
of gain. Πορισμὸς, only here and 1Timothy 6:6, is a
gain-making business. They make religion a means of
livelihood. Compare Titus 1:11.
~Vincent's Word Studies
Quoted Scriptures:
1 Timothy 6:6
...our next lesson
But godliness with contentment is great gain.
Titus 1:11
Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole
houses, teaching things which they ought not, for
filthy lucre's sake.
4] From such withdraw thyself.
From such withdraw thyself
- Have no religions fellowship with such
people. ~Adam Clarke
From such withdraw thyself
- do not come near them; have nothing to do
with them; do not lay hands on them, or admit them
into the ministry; do not suffer them to preach, or
encourage them by hearing them: if in the church,
cast them out; have communion with them, neither in
a civil nor in a religious way; avoid all
conversation with them. The Vulgate Latin and
Ethiopic versions omit this clause; it is wanting in
the Alexandrian copy, and in Beza's Claromontane
Exemplar, but is in other copies.
~John Gill
Note: At the current time I
feel that this phrase was in the original text.
Regardless, when one takes in the admonition and
description of verses 3-5, this would have to be the
conclusion a firstfruit would have. Surely
this would be the unction from the Holy Spirit.
Notice some scriptures with some emphasis from me in
red:
Romans 16:17-18
17 Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which
cause divisions and offences contrary to the
doctrine which ye have learned;
and avoid them.
18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus
Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and
fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
2 Thessalonians 3:6
Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that ye
withdraw yourselves from every brother
that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition
which he received of us.
2 Timothy 3:5
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power
thereof: from such turn
away. |
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