When the apostle Paul writes to Timothy about what he needs to focus on as a young evangelist, Paul is interested in how Timothy promotes or advances the work of God. In doing so, Paul uses one of the strangest phrases for ministry in all of the New Testament: “a stewardship of God in the faith.” What in the world can he mean by that?
Paul had expressly left Timothy in Ephesus to urge certain individuals not to teach anything differently. Early on in the church we already have a distinction between heterodoxy and orthodoxy. Anything taught differently from the apostolic tradition would be suspect and identified as “heterodoxy.” In this immediate context (1 Timothy 1:3-7) they were devoting themselves to myths and endless genealogies.
The myths were legendary, fictional stories-- but unfortunately Paul does not name them so we do not really know their content or anything else about them. Whatever they were, it is evident that they were designed to replace the central story of Jesus.
The next thing that was heterodoxy was the unending genealogies, or the tracing of one’s ancestors or family tree. Rogers makes the following apt comment on this practice: “In postexilic Judaism there was a keen interest in family trees, and this played a part in controversies between Jews and Judaism” (Rogers, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament, p. 487). Interestingly, this may be what is behind the very reason that both Matthew and Luke include a genealogy of Jesus.
Essentially what Paul is telling Timothy is that one does not promote or advance the work of God by making up stories to replace the central story of Jesus, nor trying to make a family connection that would prove one’s faithfulness to an established, traditional religion.
I am really intrigued by this expression “a stewardship of God in the faith” that Paul uses to describe ministry for Timothy. Does each one of us see our gifts and ministry as stewardship before God?
In Christian love, Curtis
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