Final words to a son

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.1 Tim 6:11–16

O man of God

We come to the end of Paul’s first epistle to Timothy much the same as we started: with prohibitions towards false teachings and commands towards godliness. Paul makes a more direct address to Timothy here but emphasizes his place as a minister of the gospel:

1:2, “To Timothy, my true child in the faith”
1:18, “This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child”
6:11, “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things”
6:20, “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.”

The whole of this letter is addressed to Timothy but these four times Paul makes a point to emphasize his addressee. One of these things is not like the other. The first two bring out Paul’s relationship to Timothy as discipler and disciple. The final address is a warm exhortation for Timothy to continue in the faith. So what place does the third have. Why does Paul address Timothy here as “man of God”?

This is an identification we see of several other men, almost a greatest hits of Old Testament personalities:

Moses in Deut 33:1, “This is the blessing with which Moses the man of God blessed the people of Israel before his death”
Samuel in 1 Sam 9:10, Saul’s conversation with his servant ending with “So they went to the city where the man of God was”
David in 2 Chron 8:14, Solomon is offering sacrifices as he’s supposed to, “According to the ruling of David his father, he appointed the divisions of the priests for their service, and the Levites for their offices of praise and ministry before the priests as the duty of each day required, and the gatekeepers in their divisions at each gate, for so David the man of God had commanded.”
Elijah in 2 Kings 1:9-10, “Then the king sent to him a captain of fifty men with his fifty. He went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, ‘O man of God, the king says, “Come down.“’ But Elijah answered the captain of fifty, ‘If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.’ Then fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.”
Elisha in 2 Kings 13:19, “Then the man of God was angry with him and said, ‘You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it, but now you will strike down Syria only three times.‘”

These are God’s prophets and God’s king. What is also noteworthy is that these are men who carry this title in public. Paul’s opening of his final words to Timothy emphasize his role as the man of God witnessed by the Ephesian church. His faith is lived out in the open. This harmonizes with all that we’ve seen so far. An elder is to be above reproach both in view of the church community and before the unbelieving world. Also recall the compact series of commands in chapter 4 where Paul is exhorting Timothy to execute his role well, being devoted to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching with the final goal that all might see your progress.

Paul’s final exhortations to Timothy are to his child in the faith as a minister of the gospel and the content of his exhortations align exactly with that gospel.

Final commands to virtue

We come to the final virtue list of this epistle and it’s given in response to the vices that we just saw in the previous section. Paul uses contrasting commands for how Timothy is to respond to the false teachers and the characteristics that define them. First, he is to flee their vices:

conceit
ignorance
contentiousness
envy
greed

Second, Timothy is to pursue virtue:

righteousness
godliness
faith
love
steadfastness
gentleness

Notice that this flee/pursue language is precisely the language of the gospel. It’s the language of repentance. Turning from sin and toward righteousness is exactly what God enables and accomplishes in us in salvation.

Faith as conflict

Paul fills out the language of salvation with further commands:

Fight the good fight
Take hold of the eternal life
Keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach

The first is how Paul will eventually describe his own life in his second letter to Timothy,

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith 2 Tim 4:6-7

This is athletic language that often appears in Paul’s writing and as usual it is paired with faith and confession. This can be disconcerting for a number of reasons. At times we can shy away from aggressive language in articulating our faith. And for those coming from a context marked by the theology of sovereign grace describing the Christian life as one where you must “take hold of the eternal life” can seem a little too much.

Yet this is all of one piece with the many ways the faith is articulated. Paul certainly doesn’t hesitate to use the language of conflict. Here Timothy is to fight the good fight. In his letter to the Ephesian church itself he describes the equipping of the saints as an equipping to war with the armor of God. The apostle John receives visions where Jesus shows up as the ultimate and final general who prosecutes the conclusion of a universe-sized wars by himself.

Perhaps this language of conflict makes us uncomfortable but its true to life. If we never feel the strain of having to fight for faith and virtue then it’s likely we’ve not experienced much of either.

There is a flip-side to this though. When Scripture speaks of us becoming the children of God it’s not only about action and agency but about nature and being. Paul emphatically preaches that everyone becomes new in Christ, “the old has passed away, behold the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). He often refers to the body of believers as saints because holy is what they are by nature. This is a common way of speaking for Jesus too. Remember the repeated references to the tree and its fruit in Matthew. The good tree produces good fruit and the bad tree produces bad fruit because that’s what they do. It’s simply an expression of what they are.

This doesn’t mean that virtue comes to believers easily, but that it’s acquisition comes as a matter of nature. This is the root of repentance. Fleeing evil and pursuing righteousness is what marks the faithful. Inevitably.

The good confession

Paul uses the connection between the good fight and the good confession to emphasize the full range of God’s work in the community of faith. The eternal life that Timothy is one he was called. It’s an eternal life he did not have nor did he take it on his own. He was called to it and in response made “the good confession”. Paul connects this confession by Timothy to a confession by Jesus in the very next verse but he does so by way of a final and emphatic charge.

This is not the final “charge” of this letter but it is the final one to Timothy. Paul’s charges and imperatives to charge others have been thematic so far:

1:3, “As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.”
4:11, “Command and teach these things.”
5:7, “Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach.”
6:13, “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,”
6:17, “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.”

The charge is “in the presence of God… and of Christ Jesus” and recalls the charge from the previous chapter where Timothy is commanded to carry out the discipline for the Ephesian church in front of all the heavenly onlookers, God, Christ, and the angels. It’s in the description of Christ before whom Timothy is accountable that we find the connection of the good confession. Jesus is said to have made the good confession before Pilate. This seems super specific especially because of Jesus’ notable silence during his trial. However, Jesus does make a single statement to Pilate recorded in all the Synoptics:

You have said so Matt 27:11, Mark 15:2, Luke 23:3

This single statement is response to Pilate’s question “Are you the king of the Jews?” Why is this confession so important? Important enough that Timothy is called to live in light of it decades later?

If Jesus is the king of the Jews he’s the king of world. Not because of some special place Jewish people occupy but because of the fulfillment of God’s promises. When Jesus testifies to his own identity he’s confirming that all of history is on an arc towards the final fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation for his people and restoration for all of creation. The good confession is the confession that Jesus is who he says he is and will accomplish all that he said he would in the life of the believer, in the community of faith, and in whole world.

This truth leads Paul into doxology. It was unclear to me at first whether this was referring to Jesus or God, especially because we see some titles that are specifically attributed to Jesus. However, a careful reading makes clear that God the father is in view. This also matches the brief doxology of 1:17 where after reflecting on the mercy of God in Christ towards himself, Paul praises “the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God.”

blessed
the only Sovereign
King of kings
Lord of lords
the only possessor of immortality
inhabiting unapproachable light
unseen in actuality or possibility

Remember that these doxologies are not uttered in a void. Acts 19 records an actual riot in Ephesus where the silversmith idol-makers instigate the city against the believers there, and when Alexander, a Jewish man, wanted to talk to the crowd they yelled for two hours “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians”. Add to that the Imperial cult which would eventually occasion a great deal of persecution. The corrective that Paul offers here is both one of disposition and action. We should take the long perspective that realizes God will reveal his Son at the proper time and it is this God who is truly great, who is truly worthy. The proper response to idolatry is true worship.