Additional Notes §9
§9 The Purpose of the Letter (1 Tim. 3:14–16)
The letter has now come a considerable distance. It began with a clear statement of its occasion: a charge to Timothy to stay on in Ephesus to oppose some false teachers and their errors, including a digression by way of personal testimony illustrating the truth of the gospel (chap. 1). In chapters 2 and 3, Paul moves through several concerns that reflect some of the disorders in the church, which had surfaced in their gatherings for worship (chap. 2) and in the lives of some of the church leaders (chap. 3).
He now concludes this section of the letter with a further statement of its purpose. The church must give heed to what Paul has written because it alone has been entrusted with the truth (v. 15), truth that is illustrated by an early Christian hymn.
3:14–15 / The grammar of the opening sentence is a little rough, but the meaning is clear. Here we learn that Paul had been intending all along to come to Timothy (and therefore the church) soon. In fact the NIV has almost certainly caught the probably concessive force of the Greek participle “hoping,” that is, even though I hope to come to you soon, in case I am delayed (v. 15, as it probably seemed likely to him), I will take the occasion to write you these instructions (lit., “these things,” that is, chaps. 1–3) now. (On the question of whether Paul had recently been in Ephesus, see note on 1:3).
With verse 15 the real urgencies of the letter come into focus. The church itself is at stake. If I am delayed, it is crucial that people know how to behave as God’s people, because they are the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church has been entrusted with the truth; the conduct of the false teachers has been an abandonment of the truth (cf. 6:5; 2 Tim. 2:18; 3:8; 4:4). Thus it is extremely important that Timothy not only stop the false teachers (1:3–11) but get people back in touch with the truth.
To emphasize this point, Paul mixes some metaphors in a way similar to Ephesians 2:19–22. He begins with conduct (behavior) in God’s household. This metaphor for “family,” already hinted at in 3:4–5, flows naturally from the recognition of God as Father, believers as brothers and sisters, and apostles as “stewards” (household managers). Paul’s point, therefore, is not, as the KJV reads and others imply, to know how “to behave in the house of God” (that is, “in church”), but as the NAB happily renders it, “what kind of conduct befits a member of God’s household.” Such a statement of purpose hardly fits the “church manual” approach to the letter.
The metaphor then shifts slightly, from household to building (cf. Eph 2:19–20). The terms pillar (“bulwark”) and foundation and the language of the living God (cf. 2 Cor. 6:16) indicate that Paul’s common image of the church as God’s temple is in view (cf. 1 Cor. 3:16–17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21). Just as the living God dwelt in the sanctuary of Israel, so now by the Spirit, God indwells his new temple, the church, and as such they are to “uphold the truth and keep it safe” (JB).
With these two images, family and temple, Paul expresses the two urgencies of this letter: his concern over proper behavior among believers vis-à-vis the false teachers, and the church as the people entrusted to uphold and proclaim the truth of the gospel.
3:16 / The mention of the truth (“of the gospel” always being implied by this word) leads Paul to the exclamation: Beyond all question, the mystery (“revealed truth,” as in 3:9) of godliness is great. The word godliness (eusebeia), a favorite in 1 Timothy (see disc. on 2:2), ordinarily refers to “the duty which people owe to God.” But here, as often with “faith” in these letters, it is not referring to the quality of “godliness” as such but “the godliness,” thought of in a more objective way as the content or basis of Christianity.
What follows is an expression of some of the content of the “revealed truth” of the godliness entrusted to God’s people. The passage itself is almost certainly a hymn, or hymn fragment, in six rhythmic lines. Each line has two members, a verb standing in first position, each in the aorist (past) tense, passive voice in Greek, ending with the rhythmic -thē, followed by a prepositional phrase (Gk., en, “in” or “by”). The implied subject of each verb is Christ.
On that much all modern interpreters are agreed; but on the structure itself, the meaning of a couple of the lines, and the meaning of the whole, there has been considerable debate, with nothing like a consensus. It has been viewed as a single stanza of six consecutive lines (see the JB), as two stanzas with three lines each (but in a variety of patterns [cf., e.g., the GNB with the RSV]), as three stanzas with two lines each (cf. NIV), or in other, not easily classified combinations. Moreover, three of the lines (2, 3, and 6) are not perfectly clear as to their meaning, a difficulty raised in part by some apparent parallels and/or antitheses between the lines and in part because the whole seems to have a degree of chronology, moving from the Incarnation to further aspects of Christ’s life and ministry, yet breaking down in line 6. In view of so many difficulties and disagreements, one offers an interpretation with some reservation.
Let us begin with what appears to be somewhat certain. Line 1, he appeared in a body (lit. “he was manifested in the flesh”), has been universally recognized as an affirmation of the Incarnation, comparable to John 1:14 or Romans 1:3. Even more than in 1:15, such language implies pre-existence. In Christ, God himself has appeared “in flesh.”
Line 4, was preached among the nations (or “Gentiles”), is likewise generally recognized to refer to the period of early apostolic history when the gospel was proclaimed throughout the nations of the known world.
Line 5, was believed on in the world, seems to accompany line 4 as a word about the response to the proclamation of the gospel.
The content of these lines, therefore, which begin with Christ’s own entry into the world and in 4 and 5 take up the apostolic witness to Christ, has caused most interpreters to view it as some form of heilgeschichtliche hymn, that is, a hymn that tells the story of salvation (cf. J. Wilbur Chapman’s “One Day,” or Fanny Crosby’s “Tell Me the Story of Jesus”). If these observations are correct, then the problem that remains has to do with the meaning of the other three lines and how they all relate to one another.
Let us turn, then, to what is less certain. Line 2, he was vindicated by the Spirit, presents considerable difficulties. Literally, it says “he was justified in spirit [or Spirit].” In the Greek there seems to be a parallel between “in flesh” in line 1 and “in spirit” in line 2. But does it refer to the Holy Spirit or (more likely, given the parallel) to his spiritual nature? If the latter, then the point of this line, with some poetic license, is at least “vindication,” perhaps “exaltation,” referring to Christ’s resurrection. Thus the first two lines hymn Christ’s humiliation and exaltation (incarnation and resurrection) in a manner similar to the splendid prose of Romans 1:3 and 4 (cf. 1 Pet. 3:18).
Line 3, he was seen by angels, is likewise puzzling. This is the only line without the Greek preposition en (“in” or “by”). This verb (was seen by or “appeared to”), with the person(s) to whom he appeared in the Greek dative case (as here), is the regular formula in the NT for resurrection appearances (Luke 24:23; Acts 9:17; 1 Cor. 15:5–8). In this case, however, it more likely refers to the worship given by angels to the ascended, glorified Christ. If so, then the first three lines sing Christ’s incarnation, resurrection, and glorification and form a stanza about Christ himself, as he is seen “from glory to glory.”
In such a scheme, the next two lines (4 and 5) offer a similar parallel to lines 1 and 2, but now sing the ongoing ministry of Christ through his church. But the problem arises at line 6, he was taken up in glory. The word was taken up elsewhere in the NT refers to the Ascension (Luke 9:51; Acts 1:2, 11, 22; cf. Mark 16:19). How, then, does the Ascension follow the apostolic ministry? The answer seems to lie with the phrase in glory, which less likely refers to the place of his exaltation as to its manner, that is, it was “glorious” or “accompanied with glory.” Like line 3, then, this line also emphasizes his triumph and glorification more than the actual event of the Ascension itself, chronologically understood. Indeed, in this view, line 6 is the glorious climax of the whole that begins in line 1 with the humiliation of Incarnation.
On this understanding, then, the hymn has two stanzas of three lines each. The first stanza sings Christ’s earthly ministry, concluding with a word of triumph and glorification. Similarly, the second stanza sings the ongoing ministry of Christ through his church, concluding again with the theme of glorification. In a certain sense both stanzas reflect the theme of humiliation and exaltation.
Thus the great mystery of the godliness we believe in, Paul sings, has to do with Christ’s own humiliation and exaltation and the church’s ongoing witness to him who is now the exalted, glorified one. This double focus, especially the emphasis on the ongoing ministry to the nations, returns to a theme sounded earlier in the creedal words of 1:15 and 2:4–6.
But the question still remains: Why this hymn with these emphases at this point in the letter? The answer to that is not easy, but two possibilities commend themselves (perhaps it is a combination of both): First, the double emphasis on humiliation/exaltation, focusing on the present, triumphant glory of Christ, probably stands in some kind of contrast to the Christology of the false teachers. This is especially so, if, as we have argued in the Introduction (pp. 7–10), there are some affinities between what is going on in Ephesus and what had earlier been afoot in Colossae and Laodicea. Second, Paul is about to return to a censure of the false teachers, with an exhortation to Timothy to stand in sharp contrast to them. This hymn prepares for that censure by boldly expressing what the truth is all about, as a contrast to their demonic errors.
3:14–15 / In Paul’s Greek sentence the subject of the infinitive “to conduct oneself” is not expressed. The KJV supplies “thou … thyself,” a most unlikely option; the GNB has “we … ourselves,” but people … themselves (NIV; cf. NEB) is much to be preferred. The Living Bible’s “you will know what kind of men you should choose as officers for the church” is altogether unwarranted.
3:16 / The original text of line 1 begins with the Greek relative pronoun hos (“he who”). Because this word would have been written OC, somewhere around the fourth century this was mistakenly read as 
, the abbreviation for God. This reading eventually came to predominate in the Greek church (never in the West, since the translation into Latin happened before the variant arose). Hence the KJV translated “God was manifest in flesh.” See the discussion in Metzger, TCGNT, p. 641; and G. D. Fee, “The Majority Text and the Original Text of the New Testament,” esp. 117–18.
The most common alternative to the view of the hymn presented here is to see it as having three sets of two lines, each alternately expressing humiliation and exaltation (or the realm of earth and heaven). The lines then form two sets of chiasmus (a b b a a b—a form of rhetoric in which the words or ideas in the second or subsequent units in otherwise parallel structures are in reverse order); the sets sing respectively his incarnation and resurrection, his ascension and proclamation on earth, his reception on earth and in heaven. As common—and in some ways attractive—as this interpretation is (RSV, Kelly, Bernard, D-C, et al.), some of the alleged parallels seem forced and probably would never have been seen as such if it were not for the flesh-spirit pair in lines 1 and 2. Moreover, the words “in glory” are highly unusual if line 6 was intended to parallel line 5. In that case the expected phrase would be “in heaven,” which is the only antithesis to “earth” used in the NT.
The bibliography for this passage is extensive. The most complete discussion is in German: W. Stenger, Der Christushymnus 1 Tim. 3, 16. Eine strukturanalytische Untersuchung. The most useful recent discussion in English is R. H. Gundry, “The Form, Meaning, and Background of the Hymn Quoted in 1 Timothy 3:16.”