The Inscription and Greeting (1 Timothy 1:1–2)

1 Tim. 1:1. Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour and of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our hope.

This address is similar in spirit to the addresses of all Saint Paul’s other Epistles, and in its expressions recalls the address of the Epistle to Titus. It is briefer than the latter and may be considered an abbreviated form of it. There too it is stated that the preaching of the Gospel was entrusted to the Apostle by the commandment of God our Saviour, though there it is attributed more to the Lord Jesus, while here it is attributed more to God the Father, or to God worshipped in the Trinity. There too a reference to hope is introduced, as here, with the only difference that, whereas there the foundation of hope is set in the promise of a God who cannot lie, here the foundation of the promise itself is presented in the Person of the Lord Jesus, in whom also the fulfillment of what is hoped for and promised is to be seen.

“Paul, an Apostle”, αποστολος. “Since he intends to set forth ordinances for Timothy (and through him for the whole Church), he proclaims himself an Apostle, so as to make his word worthy of unquestioning acceptance. It is not my own words I shall speak, he says, but those of the One who sent me; take care therefore not to disobey” (blessed Theophylact). “And throughout his Epistles Saint Paul adds the name of Apostle to his own, thereby teaching his hearers that they should not suppose what he says is a human word; for a messenger speaks nothing from his own person; consequently, by calling himself a messenger, he at once turns the hearer’s mind to the One who sent him. For this reason he places this name at the forefront of all his Epistles, thereby lending his words the highest degree of credibility” (Saint Chrysostom).

“An Apostle, by the commandment of God.” “He did not say: ‘called,’ but: ‘by the commandment.’ The expression ‘by the commandment’ is stronger than the expression ‘called’” (Saint Chrysostom). “The Apostle lets his disciple know that he did not seize the apostolic calling for himself, but received a commandment from God to offer the saving proclamation to all” (blessed Theodoret). “The calling of an Apostle was great, lofty, and worthy of honor; and so we see that Paul everywhere points to the grounds of this calling of his (wishing to show) that he does not seize honor for himself but receives it (as rightly belonging to him) and that he acts thus out of necessity (‘I have an urgent duty, I am fulfilling the commandment of the Master’ [blessed Theophylact]). Moreover, when he calls himself ‘called’ (Rom. 1:1) and when he says: ‘by the will of God’ (1 Cor. 1:1) and the like—by all of this he removes every thought of ambition and pride. For just as one who lays claim to an honor not given to him by God is subject to the severest condemnation, so one who sets aside and rejects it becomes guilty of sins of another kind—of disobedience and insubordination. Therefore Paul here too, at the beginning of the Epistle to Timothy, speaks of this in these words: ‘Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God’” (Saint Chrysostom).

The Apostle is such by the commandment of God. “But where was such a commandment given? In the Acts, where the Holy Spirit says: ‘Separate for me Barnabas and Saul’ (Acts 13:2), and where the Lord Jesus says to Paul himself: ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles’ (Acts 22:21). But what the Son or the Spirit commanded, Saint Paul signifies as commanded by the Father. For the will of the Most Holy Trinity is one” (Oecumenius). Here Saint Paul presents the commandment for the apostolate as proceeding from God the Saviour and the Lord Jesus, “regarding such authority as belonging equally to Both” (Saint Chrysostom). “Together with God he also named the Lord Christ, showing their equal honor, and called God ‘salvation’ and Christ ‘hope,’ not thereby dividing the names and assigning one to the one and the other to the other, but understanding both of each; for the blessed David also ascribed both to one Person: ‘Hear us, O God our Saviour, the hope of all the ends of the earth’ (Ps. 64:6)” (blessed Theodoret).

To the word “God” is added here: “our Saviour.” When the word “God” stands alone, it most commonly refers to God the Father; while the word “Saviour” always calls to mind the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, who was incarnate for our salvation. They are joined here by reason of the inseparability of the Father and the Son, by which all that belongs to the Father belongs to the Son, and all that belongs to the Son belongs to the Father. One may also understand by the word ‘God’ here God worshipped in the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For as the entire economy of salvation is ordered, so too the salvation of each believer is accomplished according to the foreknowledge and “elect according to the foreknowledge of the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, to obedience” and “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:2). God is indivisibly our Saviour, for all the actions of the Triune God are indivisible.

The Lord Jesus Christ is named our hope, because He is with us “to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20); and if He is with us, then “who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31). But chiefly the Lord Jesus is so named because in Him the fulfillment of what is hoped for is contemplated, which cuts off all wavering of hope. He is the one who descended and ascended: He descended, was incarnate, died on the cross, rose again, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father. All of this was accomplished in our human nature and for our sake. He led our human nature along this path—new and living—so that all might see with their own eyes where the path of following the Lord leads, and all might burn with unwavering hope that where He is, there His servants shall be also (Jn. 12:26).

The Apostle leads us to these thoughts about God the Saviour, worshipped in the Trinity, and about the incarnate Son, our hope, in a unified way—not indulging the bad habit of mentally separating the incarnate Son from the Tri-hypostatic Unity, but on the contrary teaching us to contemplate the incarnate Son as inseparable from this Tri-hypostatic Unity: for He was incarnate while ‘not departing from the bosom of the Father,’ and neither added to, diminished, nor changed anything in the mystery of the Divine Trinity. He teaches us this by the following reasoning: the Tri-hypostatic God is Saviour; yet the hope of salvation is the Lord Jesus—the incarnate Son. But how can God be Saviour if there is no hope of salvation placed in the incarnate Son? Consequently, the incarnate Son is present there, in the Tri-hypostatic God, and the thought that He is Saviour is confirmed of Him.

Why does Saint Paul here especially impress upon the mind these names—God as Saviour, the Lord Jesus as hope—and, in doing so, include himself together with Timothy under the shelter of both? It appears that there was a need to be encouraged. It may be that Saint Paul had been driven from Ephesus by hostility, and had left Saint Timothy there in danger from its malicious machinations. He therefore seasonably turns Timothy’s thoughts to the Saviour and to hope: thereby “he cheers his spirit, speaking as it were: we have a Saviour—God, and a hope—Christ. We suffer greatly, yet we have great hopes; we face dangers, plots are laid against us, but we have a Deliverer—not a man, but God. Consequently, neither will our Deliverer grow faint, because He is God, nor will any dangers that threaten us overcome us; nor will our hope put us to shame, because our hope is Christ. We endure misfortunes, sustained by these two things—either by the assurance that we shall soon be delivered (saved) from our troubles, or by nourishing ourselves with better hopes. Whatever we may endure (here), he says, all that is present amounts to nothing” (Saint Chrysostom).

1 Tim. 1:2. To Timothy, my true child in the faith: grace, mercy and “peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“True,” γνησιω,—genuine, real, authentic. “In the faith”—shows in what respect and by what means he became a child—not by nature, but through faith, by which he spiritually fathered him, just as he said of the Corinthians: “in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15), and just as Saint Peter says of Christians in general: “born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of the living God, which endures forever” (1 Pet. 1:23). Saint Paul says all this to express his warm love for Timothy, as a father for a son—to praise him as one who showed such faith as to resemble Saint Paul himself, as a son resembles his father—and to encourage him to endure the hardships that he was inevitably bound to encounter at that time in Ephesus.

Such thoughts are found in the holy Fathers expressed in various ways. Saint Chrysostom says: “A similar expression the Apostle used also in the Epistle to the Corinthians, when he said: ‘in Christ Jesus I have begotten you’—that is, he fathered him through faith. He added the word ‘true’ wishing thereby to express that he has with him a more perfect and greater resemblance than others have; and not only this did he wish to express, but also his love and great affection for him. Note also what praise this contains (for Timothy), that the Apostle calls him not only his son, but his true child. In faith there was no difference between them. Among men it happens by the laws of nature that a son resembles his father, but not to the same degree as when such resemblance has its basis in God (through faith); for then the resemblance is more perfect. Here, although they are the same in nature, they yet differ from one another in many other respects—in color, appearance, mind, age, disposition, and other qualities of soul and body, outward and inward; but there (in God, through faith) none of these differences has any place.” Blessed Theodoret writes: “The Apostle very fittingly combined the word ‘faith’ with the name expressing goodwill (child); for it was not nature but faith that made Timothy a child (of Saint Paul); by believing in the Divine proclamation, he was counted worthy to call the Divine Apostle his father.” Let us add also what blessed Theophylact says: “A child in the faith”—that is, one born of me through faith. And in praising him, he calls him not only a child but a “true” child—“true” because Timothy above others preserves the likeness to him in faith, and because Saint Paul sincerely loved him. Very wisely did he add “in the faith,” so as to encourage Timothy most of all in it. For if from the beginning he showed such faith as to be worthy to be called Paul’s child, and a true child, how much more should he now clothe himself in faith as in full armor, so as not to be troubled or to lose heart (amid the present pressures). To display courageous boldness is the work of faith.

“Grace, mercy” and “peace.” — “Mercy” is the original source; for having had compassion on us, the Tri-hypostatic God arranged for us a wondrous way of salvation; “grace,” as the power working to salvation in every believer, received through the holy mysteries in the holy Church by faith; “peace,” as the most desired fruit in us of the mercy and grace of the God of loving-kindness.

And all of this “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” He does not say only “from God our Father,” lest someone, contemplating the all-merciful God’s work in ordering our salvation, should exclude from his mind the incarnate Son of God, without whom no one comes to the Father. Nor does he say only “from the Lord Jesus,” lest someone, surveying the work of ordering our salvation, should stop his ascent at the thought of the incarnate Son and not extend himself higher and deeper—to God the Father, into the mystery of the Tri-hypostatic God. But he joins both, to teach us that in the work of ordering our salvation we are to contemplate the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit acting inseparably as one God, and not to hide the Father and the Spirit behind the incarnate Son, and much less to rest upon His human nature alone, or upon the man Jesus alone.

Why is the prayerful good-wish here, as in the Epistle to Titus, augmented by the addition of “mercy?” Because pastors and teachers have need of greater help and of God’s more fervent goodwill (Saint Chrysostom, blessed Theophylact, Oecumenius).