1 Timothy 3:14-16: The Grand Drama: God's Household, God's Greatness, and God's Glory
1 Timothy: Living in the Household of God • Sermon • Submitted
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14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, 15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. 16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
Pray.
Introduction
If you look inside someone’s house, you can learn quite a lot about them. For example, if you spend five minutes in our house, you're very likely to perceive a number of things about the Callahan family. First, and you’ll find this is a recurring theme in conversations with us — we have cats. After the shock of that revelation passes and you catch your breath, you’ll also perceive that the two adults living in the house are quite different. The spaces one of us governs are neatly organized, with labels, and everything in its place. The spaces the other governs are, well, not. No labels, and only a few things have a place: namely, those things which are regularly used, which are arranged purely according to the frequency of their use.
Now, to keep things interesting, I won’t reveal which of the Callahan adults governs which space, other than to say one of us is a paragon of order and organization, with an eye for coherent and beautiful decoration, whereas the other is a utilitarian brute who has to leave a trail of clues in order to remember where anything is if it hasn’t been used in a couple of days.
You’ll also perceive, if you catch us on the wrong day, that we have a young child who is neither a paragon of organization nor a utilitarian brute, but rather an embodiment of pure chaotic energy, for whom the purest expression of joy is dumping things out on the floor, and we’ve simply resigned ourselves to the fact that we’re going to have dirty floors for the foreseeable future. You may call it giving up, but I’d call it strategic resource management — after all, one glance at our home quite clearly reveals we have more things to do than we do the time and energy to do them.
Likewise, God’s household says quite a lot about who he is, especially when his household is living according to his design. We’ve learned from 1 Timothy so far that God is, among other things, gracious, merciful, loving, pure, holy, good, faithful, patient, immortal, invisible, unique, sovereign, gentle, dignified, and self-controlled, as we’ve examined his dealings with his household and how he’d like his household organized.
In today’s passage, we’re going to see that God does not work in the ways we’d expect him to — specifically, the living God, the sovereign creator of the universe whose authority is limitless and unrivaled, whose pure holiness destroys everything that is unfit to be in his presence, has determined that his home would be a specific group of people whom he has chosen, created anew, and put in order according to a particular design. And he has done this in order that this special group of people would be at the very center of his grand plan to display his greatness to all creation as they reflect his beauty, splendor, majesty, power, and wisdom.
God, the grand architect of the created order, is constructing a masterpiece. The pinnacle of creation, where his character and plan for all the rest of creation is most clearly displayed, is none other than his church, the edifice whose cornerstone is Jesus Christ, whose foundation are the prophets and Apostles, and whose bricks are everyday sinners saved by grace like you and me: cut and shaped to spec and mortared together by the unbreakable bond of God’s Holy Spirit. It’s a dusty, painful, messy process, to be sure, but that’s precisely the beauty and wisdom of it all: only God himself could conceive of such a plan and execute it.
The main idea of our study today is this: the members of the living God’s household display and defend the truth and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ by their individual and communal conduct.
Today’s passage divides into two sections, vv. 14-15, “What is the Church?”, and v. 16 “Whose is the Church?”
vv. 14-15: What is the Church?
14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, 15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
First, let’s look briefly at verse 14 and the start of verse 15 and remember something marvelous — God’s word for us today is the result of his sovereign hand in the lives of the apostles, especially the life of Paul. If Paul had been in Ephesus personally, there’d be no need for this letter. If Paul knew he’d be returning soon enough, he could have sent something much shorter. But because of this specific historical situation, we have a treasure trove of pretty clear instruction concerning God’s desires for his church.
And, speaking of that clear instruction, in case you’ve been confused about why Paul was talking about things like the proper use of the law, or how men and women should behave, or who should and shouldn’t be overseers and deacons, Paul puts it as starkly as possible. Here we have Paul’s main thesis statement, the one central idea of this entire letter: “I am writing these things to you so that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God.”
Let’s also remember that this letter would have been read before the Ephesian congregation — in other words, Paul wasn’t just instructing Timothy concerning these things — how he specifically ought to behave but the entire church. After all, Timothy would almost certainly know everything in this letter already, having worked with Paul in person for a considerable amount of time. None of this is new to him.
Now, let’s get to the key question for this section. What is the Church? Here, we have three descriptions of the church:
The Household of God
The Church of the Living God
A Pillar and Buttress of the Truth
First, the household of God.
Paul here is picking up a thread he’s laid down before, namely in 1 Tim 3:4-5
4 He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, 5 for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?
where Paul said overseers must manage their own households well. So overseers reflect God by managing the people within their household well, that is to say, the family members with whom they live — and this is the connotation with which Paul is primarily using “household”, that of the family, and not so much the building and property where the overseer lives, though they’d certainly be taken into consideration, especially considering what we talked about in the introduction to this sermon.
But it’s not only God’s family in view here — God doesn’t just dwell with his people in the church age, but in his people.
5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
This is all to say that God’s family is also God’s temple. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to do an entire biblical theology of God’s dwelling place, but suffice it to say, this is a staggering reality that, frankly, would be utterly inconceivable if God himself did not reveal it to us — a reality that we’ll discuss further in a few moments.
For now, I want to offer one implication of Paul describing the church as God’s household, his family.
While we are a family on a mission, with a clearly defined task before us, we are not a business. We are not going to fire the bottom 10% performers every year. In fact, your capacity to perform means nothing as far as your value to the family is concerned. We don’t have annual reviews to determine whether or not you’re going to get a raise, or a bonus, or a promotion. Your pastors are not your bosses, trying to maximize your productivity. Simply put, you are welcome at the family table, no matter what you think you bring to it. All sorts of talents and abilities? Great, take a seat. Nothing particularly special? Let me pull your chair out for you and get you a plate. A whole heaping pile of baggage that you can’t even carry on your own, let alone helping someone else bear up their burdens? Welcome home, brother or sister. Get unpacking, take your coat off, and stay a while. The Master of the house is welcoming you home, and we’re so happy you’re here.
7 Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
Let’s look at the second descriptor of God’s household. The Church of the Living God.
The emphasis here is not so much on the “church” as it is on the church’s “Living God”. You may be interested to know that “Living God” does not only refer to the fact that God lives, in contrast with dead idols, as in one of my absolute favorite NT passages, 2 Corinthians 6:16-18
16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, 18 and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”
But “living” as a descriptor of God is also quite often found in passages related to God’s punishment of evildoers, heightening the stakes of non-conformity to the order God desires in his household. One example of this is Hebrews 10:29-31
29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
You would hope those Ephesian false teachers and their victims would shudder at the mention of the LIVING God’s presence.
And we must remember today as we’re considering life in the church that we’re not merely a group of people who mostly agree on a set of beliefs and get along relatively well, a sort of theological society of agreeable people.
When we think about the church, we must remember that we are dealing with a living, active, personal God, who has preferences and distastes, who loves certain things and detests others, who will one day bring an end to all history, with whom we all must deal, against whom we transgress at our own peril unless Christ’s blood covers us.
In which case, we must remember that the entire purpose of our existence is not simply to propagate truths about Jesus, but to represent Jesus and invite people into personal, relational fellowship with him, which is going to go a lot smoother if we know him personally, very well, so that his aroma pervades all that we do. As 2 Corinthians 2:14-16,
14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
Third, the church is a pillar and buttress of the truth.
In developing the “building” side of household a little further, Paul portrays the church as a structure that both elevates and protects the truth.
Just as the pillars of a Greco-Roman temple would have held the roof aloft, God’s church is one of the pillars that serves to hold the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ up high for all to see. As Jesus taught his disciples in Matthew 5:14-16
14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
In addition to upholding the truth of the gospel as a pillar, the church also guards the gospel as a protective wall — a bulwark against any attack that may come against it.
As we follow in Paul and Timothy’s footsteps, guarding the gospel entrusted to them and passed down to the saints, the church serves as a defense against the adulteration of the gospel with “other doctrines” as Paul warned earlier in the letter, as well as one defense against attacks on the God of the gospel — not that he needs defending, of course.
But as God’s people live according to God’s design, their lives serve as the greatest apologetic of all for the truth of the gospel, for its supernatural life-changing power in particular, and as one of the clearest proofs that God is exactly who he says he is.
These three images paint a startling picture of the church. Where the world sees a collection of fools and religious bigots who need to be cured of their backwards thinking or removed from the public square, and where you and I see a group of messed-up sinners getting together every week for things like teaching, singing, and praying together and doing our best to love one another, God sees his family, the place he calls home, and the special objects of his love whom he has entrusted with the task of not only telling all creation about his majesty, but displaying that majesty by the way they live. As Paul puts it in Ephesians 3:10-11
10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,
I want to put one implication of this before you. Though someone may claim to love and follow Jesus, there is no clearer litmus test than their attitude towards his church, because the church is the epicenter of his activity in the world and the place and people among whom he fulfills all his promises, especially his promises concerning his redemption of all creation, of which the church is merely a foretaste.
To state it bluntly: if you care about what Jesus cares about, you will value and cherish his church. The Bible knows nothing of lone wolf Christians. Bricks that aren’t parts of buildings are not fulfilling their purpose. What does it say about the Gospel when Christians live functionally as only children, in spite of the Lord’s teaching that in his Father’s house there’s plenty of space? To take membership in the Lord’s household lightly is to disregard one of the very things nearest and dearest to the heart of Christ — his bride.
This is why we strive to take membership so seriously — sure, you can be a Christian and not be formally a member of a church, but at Grace Baptist Church, we are deeply invested in knowing who belongs to our specific household and who doesn’t, both for our benefit, so that we may know to whom we are most especially responsible, and for the benefit of our members, that they might have a source of confidence in their standing before God.
All right. I haven’t said even a quarter of the things I’d like to say about the church. I know I’ve glossed over the differences between the universal church and local churches, and I have quite strong opinions on parachurch organizations and how we might go about “defending the truth” in the public square, but we simply must move on to our next section. After all, the church has nothing of special value in and of itself as an organization with a particular structure and membership conditions. What makes the church really special is her master. Let’s look at verse 16.
v. 16: Whose is the Church?
v. 16: Whose is the Church?
16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
First, I want to examine everything after the colon; that is to say, the poetic/hymnal/creedal-looking stuff.
Structurally we have three options. It could be in chronological-ish order, it could be three stanzas of two lines each, or two stanzas of three lines each.
Chronological-ish
He
Was manifested in the flesh — incarnation
Vindicated by the Spirit — baptism
Seen by angels — temptation, resurrection, ascension (with emphasis on his being taken to heaven)
Proclaimed among the nations — apostolic period and church age
Believed on in the world — church age
Taken up in glory — ascension (with emphasis on his return)
Three stanzas
He
Was manifested in the flesh — work in the physical realm
Vindicated by the Spirit — work in the spiritual realm
Seen by angels — made known in the spiritual realm
Proclaimed among the nations — made known in the physical realm
Believed on in the world — exalted in the physical realm
Taken up in glory — exalted in the spiritual realm
Two stanzas
He
Was manifested in the flesh — incarnation
Vindicated by the Spirit — resurrection
Seen by angels — ascension
Proclaimed among the nations — apostolic period/church age
Believed on in the world — fruit of proclamation
Taken up in glory — ascension
I think two stanzas of three lines each is marginally better because there’s a missing preposition in the Greek of “seen by angels” and the accented vowel is different. After all, adept assonance advertises awe-inspiring artistic acumen, and assonance is simply one resonance with the consonance of creation Caleb cleverly called our attention to a few weeks ago.
That said, this breakdown isn’t super hard and fast because while the first two lines of each stanza probably aren’t parallel, the last line of each stanza is — at least in this way of looking at the hymn.
So I’m going to go one stanza at a time, with the caveat that at the end of the day, the structure of this text is much less important than the subject of the text, Christ Jesus our hope and Lord.
First:
“Manifested in the flesh”
“Vindicated by the Spirit”
“Seen by angels”
In this stanza, we see three things about Jesus. First, though existing for all eternity, he descended into creation and took on a human body — an act of incomprehensible humiliation, foolishness to Gentiles, and a stumbling block to Jews. After all, Paul will later say later on in 1 Timothy that God dwells in unapproachable light, and no one has ever seen, nor can see him — but Jesus was extraordinarily approachable and seen by quite a number of people, both human and angelic.
Second, though his life and ministry culminated in an even further humiliation — in fact, the greatest humiliation and greatest miscarriage of justice in all history, when he was executed by the state as a criminal by means of crucifixion and cursed by God, for cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, the Holy Spirit of God nonetheless proved Jesus’s righteousness by raising him from the dead, indicating that Jesus’s death was not for any wrong he himself had done and declaring his unrivaled kingship from of old, his eternal and true priesthood, and his limitless power.
Third, these humiliations resulted in the astonishment of the most powerful personal beings in creation other than God himself. These supernatural creatures, both good and evil, marvelled as he carried out his ministry on earth and played their parts, either opposing him or ministering to him, and were present when he was taken up into heaven in spite of their conspicuous absence at his death. Jesus’s execution of God’s eternal plan to display his glory by saving sinners and showing his never-ending mercy and perfect patience is something into which even angels long to look, as in 1 Peter 1:12.
Let’s move to the second stanza.
“Proclaimed among the nations”
“Believed on in the world”
“Taken up in glory”
Likewise in this stanza, we see three more things about Jesus.
First, though he was of Jewish descent and God’s chosen king over the Jewish people, his life, death, and resurrection were not only for ethnic Jews, but for all people from every nation, and he commanded his disciples to proclaim the message of his kingdom to the ends of the earth. Not only did he command that proclamation, though, he sovereignly superintended it — the next time you read through Acts, take note of how many times the Lord closes or opens particular doors. We just recently saw how the uproar in Jerusalem that threatened the lives of the apostles resulted in the spread of the gospel to Samaria and beyond. The strategy of scattering his people for the sake of the gospel going forth is a tried and true strategy to which the Lord Jesus turns quite frequently.
Second, not only was he proclaimed, but people actually listened and put their faith in him! This is astonishing. Pagans who, by default, are dead in their sins and trespasses and who are not merely ignorant of the truth of God but are actively opposed to it, suppressing that truth in unrighteousness, turned from their sin and put their trust in a Jewish man from a backwater Jewish town whom his followers claimed to be God in the flesh, who died and rose from death to life, who now commands all peoples everywhere to bow their knee before him.
Third, Jesus ascended into heaven and now sits enthroned at the right hand of the majesty on high, waiting until his enemies are made a footstool, at which point he will return, judge and destroy his enemies forever, and vindicate his people, ushering in a new heaven and new earth which are filled to overflowing with the brightness of his glory.
Jesus’s journey — dwelling in the highest heaven, descending into poverty and a lowly birth, descending further to death and the grave, ascending from the grave back to life, and from new life on earth to glory in heaven, is the center of all history, the truth of which the church is a pillar and buttress.
Now, let’s go back to the start of verse 16. This poem/hymn/creed is magnificent on its own, but we must understand it in its literary context.
16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
Now, this is where, as a teacher and Bible interpreter, I struggle the hardest. How do you do a text like this justice? What more can I say other than marvel at Jesus! Look how great he is!
Jesus and his humiliation and exaltation — that is the mystery, the secret, the once-hidden thing now gloriously revealed, which is the key to life according to God’s design.
If you struggle with discouragement because you feel like you can’t live up to the standards Paul sets in 1 Timothy for conduct in the church, guess what? Look at Jesus. He has already met that standard, and if you are among those in the world who have believe in him, your place in the church is secure. So instead of striving and trying to muster up godliness in your own strength, which is also known as self-righteousness, look to Jesus!
Do you wonder if all this heartache and pain is worth it? Church life can be exhausting, especially in a small church in the middle of transition! The place that would ideally be most stable in life has, for us, been relatively unstable for quite some time now, basically since Covid hit. Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just pack it in, or give up on church entirely, since every church has its problems anyway? Of course it’s all worth it, because God displays his greatness most clearly in the church — and not just in the abstract, but in real, flesh-and-bone churches filled with people indwelt by his Spirit seeking to conduct their lives in accordance with God’s commands for the glory of his name.
One commentator puts it this way: God underwent three great humiliations in his efforts to rescue the human race. The first was the incarnation, when he took on the confines of a human body. The second was the Cross, when he suffered the ignominy of public execution. The third humiliation is the church. In an awesome act of self-denial, God entrusted his reputation to ordinary people.
Ordinary people, like you and me. We don’t need to be great, to have our lives all together, ready and able to serve others but never needing others ourselves. Our church does not need to be great, with a slick production in our service and big, flashy events, with cool lights and lasers and fog machines, and rapid growth that makes us the focus of a case study for research into church growth. Dare I say it — our preaching doesn’t need to be great, with all the flair, emotion, charisma, unassailable logic, and tweetability characteristic of those most prominent voices to which we might listen when Sunday’s sermon isn’t up to snuff.
No. Greatness of our own only serves to diminish God’s greatness and God’s glory because he is great enough in and of himself to make up for all our inadequacies. The living God, who has called his people from death to life, is far greater than your disobedience, your weakness, your secret sin you haven’t yet brought into the light, and your deepest worldly longings.
As people look into the household of God here called Grace Baptist Church, let us live so that people can only rightly say, “Those people worship a great God.”
Let’s pray.