O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge— by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. Grace be with you. Amen. (1 Timothy 6:20–21)

I still remember my father beating out his work on a typewriter, with the little bell when you reached the end of the page. I remember how important it was to get everything exactly right, and delicately use Tippex if you made a mistake. I remember how important it was to see how much space you still had on the page. That was how it was for all societies that used paper and ink, because when you ran out of space, that was it. You needed to say what you wanted to say in the space allotted. Computers and word processors have replaced that problem, but we still get a small taste of it when our Zoom call says it has only 1:30 left, or when we know our airtime is running out, or when our text or Tweet tells us we have only so many characters left.

I don’t know if when Paul finished 1 Timothy he was facing anything like that, perhaps he was, perhaps not, but what we do know is what he chose to say in the last few words of 1 Timothy. Why would Paul end this letter this way? He is running out of parchment space, and he can fit in a few more words. You can sense the emotion and the fact that he wants to make these last words count by the fact that he uses the expression “O Timothy”, which is an emotional form of address, which we still use in English. It’s like, “My dear Timothy” or “Timothy!!” And the words he chooses to fill up the very last lines are “guard what was committed to your trust”.

Is this for all Christians? These closing words are specifically for Timothy; they are particularly for pastors, but they are generally for all Christians. And in three short lines they provide a great summary both of the epistle but also of the Christian life itself.

I. Christians Must Be Conservatives

O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust

In some ways, they summarise so much of what Timothy is supposed to do. They capture much of the whole letter in one command. That one command is: guard. Protect, preserve, conserve, look out for.

I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality. (1 Timothy 5:21)

That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. (2 Timothy 1:14)

For many people, the word conservative is a very negative, unpleasant word. When they hear the word conservative, images come to their mind of frowning, haughty people, who are forever displeased with anyone having fun. To be a conservative, in the minds of some people, is to be stuck in the past, in love with nostalgia, and to look down your nose at the present, at new technology, at the youth. In some countries, people think of a conservative as a racist, as a bigot, as a chauvinist, as a selfish capitalist. So for many people, conservative is really a negative word.

Sometimes words change, and we can no longer use them the way we used to. You can’t really use it the old way. Maybe that is true of conservative. But right now, the word still communicates something important. Some of us think that the right approach to life is to conserve, or preserve, or protect, or guard things that we have received, instead of trying to replace them or re-do them or remake them or even destroy them.

Importantly, that appears to be exactly the way the Bible wants us to think about life. The Bible wants us to understand that the most important thing in life – salvation – is not something that changes and transforms with every generation. It is a timeless, permanent truth. Therefore, if God isn’t asking you to add to it, if God isn’t asking you to delete things from it, or modify it, what is He asking you to do? Conserve it, like a conservationist. Protect it. Preserve it.

That is not the same as saying “hoard it”. To hoard something to get it, hide it, reserve it for yourself and yourself alone. But to conserve it is to keep it undamaged so that you can pass it on to others.

And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:2)

Look at the amount of generations there: 1) Paul 2) Timothy 3) Faithful men 4) Others also

If the faith is not guarded, then it cannot be transmitted, or what you are transmitting is something other than the faith.

II. Christians Must Conserve The Christian Faith

Guard what was committed to your trust

Here is what Timothy must guard. “What was committed to your trust”. Those six English words translate one Greek word which means property entrusted to another who must then care for it. This word only occurs in 1 and 2 Timothy. This implies that Timothy is not an owner of this thing. Timothy is not the inventor of this thing, or the discoverer. He is not responsible to transform it, or re-imagine it. He must guard it, until his watch is over, and someone else takes over his watch.

That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. (2 Timothy 1:14)

For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day. (2 Timothy 1:12)

So what has been committed to Timothy? Timothy is an under-shepherd of the church of God. He has been entrusted with God’s people. But it is not a day care, or a social club. But those people must believe and do and feel certain things as Christians. As a Christian pastor has been entrusted with the truth of Christianity. He is responsible to receive and transmit 100% pure Christianity. Twenty-four carat Christianity, unalloyed, undiluted, the original, full, complete, full-orbed Christianity.

As he received it and saw it from the apostle in those twelve years they were together, so now he must guard it. What does that entail?

First, the truth of Christianity must be guarded. You have seen how often this book speaks of doctrine, and instruction, and commanding, and exhorting and teaching, and truth. Over 25 references to doctrine, teaching, truth. The Word of God, expounded from cover to cover, rightly harmonised, rightly taught in context, and rightly systematised is what Timothy must learn, know, defend, and teach. That begins with the gospel as we saw in 1:11 and 1:15.

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. (1 Timothy 2:5–6)

The gospel is the heart, lungs, jugular of Christianity. It is the door into the household of faith, it is the boundary line of being in Christ or out of Christ. If you don’t conserve the truth of the gospel, then you have no Christianity. If anyone or everyone is a Christian, then no one is a Christian. You are responsible to preserve the gospel. And that means you have to preserve all the truths that make a sound gospel. It is not just that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, it is all the truths that make sense of that claim. Who is this God? Is He one or three or many? Who is Jesus? How did He come here? Why did He come? What is our problem? What was He doing on the cross? What happened after He died? What will happen in the future? What happens after death?

But then beyond the gospel, there is a vast body of truth contained in these 66 books that explains God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, mankind, angels, sin, salvation, the church and end times. There is practical truth for all of life. We call all this truth about the gospel and Christian doctrine, orthodoxy.

Second, the practices of Christianity must be guarded. From chapter 2, Paul told Timothy how worship and leadership in the church was to be structured. Who was to pray publicly, and who was not, who was to teach and exercise headship, and who was not. Chapter 3 was all about the qualifications of leaders: who is to be a pastor, who is to be a deacon, how they are chosen, and chapter 5 included more information on their support, and selection and dismissal. Chapter 4 was more personal, but it was all about how the pastor is to carry out his calling, which still has to do with the practices of Christianity. Paul even got into the finances of the church, whom it must support and whom it must not.

Now all this tells us that there is a right way to do church and a wrong way. It is not as if God gives pastors lots of coloured crayons, plenty of white paper and then says, now make something up all of your own. No, God gives pastors, and therefore churches, a blueprint, a manual, and says, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” “See that you make it according to the pattern that was shown you.”

When Paul says, guard what has been committed to you, he doesn’t only mean, guard the doctrinal statement of the church. No, in chapter 3:15, he told Timothy “I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God,”. Conduct, behaviour, practice. There is a right form of Christian worship, of church organisation or polity, and of Christian living. It is the application of the truth into life. It is orthopraxy.

But third, the loves of Christianity must be guarded. Christianity is truth you must know, and it is actions you must take, but halfway between them, what moves you from truth to obedience is love. Desires, longing, affections, this is what makes Christianity more than moralism, more than a religion. Instead, ours is a grace-based, Spirit-empowered work of God that changes the heart, and then keeps drawing the heart by faith. Paul said this right up front in 1:5:

Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, (1 Timothy 1:5)

The Christian life is about right loves, and the right desires and affections that go with it. This is why he commanded that overseers and deacons be “sober-minded” and “reverent”. He told Timothy to “be an example to the believers in …. love, in spirit, in faith,” (1 Timothy 4:12). Even when Paul tells Timothy that he is writing so that he many know how he ought to behave in the household of God; that sense of oughtness is a sense of appropriateness, a right mood, right desires, right loves.

If you take out love from Christianity, you may as well have the hard moral law or the scholarly conundrums of false religion. Take out love and you may as well have the hard, cold obedience of the cultists. Love is the evidence of grace and faith: a changed heart, and changed motive. So Timothy must guard the loves of Christianity: the priority, their hierarchy, even their form and expression. This is orthopathy. Right pathos, right affections or loves.

Now what I’ve just described is a triad: teaching, action, affection. Belief, practice, love. Orthodoxy, that’s Christian truth. Orthopraxy, that’s Christian goodness. Orthopathy, that Christian beauty.

When I say I am a conservative, I know what I am conserving. When someone says, “I am a progressive Christian”, I ask, “Oh, towards what are you progressing? Progressive = progress = movement towards. So what about Christianity needs to move, and towards what?” A conservative conserves what he has been handed. As Jude says

“I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3) Once for all delivered: a completed deposit of Christian doctrine, practice and affection.

How does he guard it?

III. Christians Must Conserve The Faith Once Delivered, Not Substitutes

avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge— by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith.

Paul reminds Timothy of one essential negative way of guarding the faith: avoiding altogether those profane and idle babblings of contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

He used the word for babblings in 1:9 and 4:7. We’ve seen it has meant mere speculative ideas, controversial and unprovable notions, marginal interpretations, conspiracy theories, fringe ideas.

For some reason, Christians are often more attracted to the marginal than the main, more interested in the far-flung than in the fundamental. This is empty chatter, devoid of real Christian doctrine that will fortify your soul, fight your sin, make you more like Christ, and make you desire Heaven.

Guarding the faith means avoiding the detours and rabbit trails and side-tracks that these things bring.

This second phrase means pseudo-science, pseudo-knowledge that contradicts the faith. There are plenty of theories and studies and subjects out these that claim truth. They claim truth about cosmology, how the world came to be. The claim truth about history: how to interpret what has happened. They claim truth about your body, about nutrition, about exercise, about the environment, about education, and about economics, about politics. Think of all the “ologies” in the world. When an English word ends in “ology” are using the Greek suffix logos, which means word, and by implication, the study of. Think of how many things now begin with the title: “The science of…” Think of how in our culture, scientists are treated like prophets and priests. When a sentence begins with the words, “scientists say” everyone should regard that with the same reverence as “Thus saith the Lord”.

Now, the world, the universe is a rich place, full of knowledge. The Bible is not meant to be an exhaustive textbook on every domain of knowledge out there. We are glad for all the ologies that discover the world and human nature and better ways of doing things. But whenever God’s Word does say something about ecology or palaeontology or human psychology, what it will say is correct, because God doesn’t breathe out error. Therefore the key word here is contradictions. When some theory actively and indubitably contradicts God’s Word, then it is no longer knowledge. It is only falsely-called knowledge. It is pseudo-knowledge.

Now Paul says that some Christians have gotten swept into one of these fields of pseudo-knowledge and have strayed from the faith. More than one professing Christian thought that he was being intellectually honest by examining everything the contradicts God’s Word. And there is a place for that. But if you find yourself being charmed, persuaded, convinced, then you are changing authorities. You are choosing to trust another man’s intellect over the Word.

Paul says, Timothy, don’t get caught up in that. Avoid it altogether if you want to guard what has been committed to you.

But obviously, conserving orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy is not a matter of merely avoiding things.

So how do you positively conserve the truth? It is all here in 1 Timothy. It follows the model of the scribe, who did three things:

For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. (Ezra 7:10)

First, learn the faith thoroughly.

Meditate on these things; (1 Timothy 4:15)

Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. (1 Timothy 4:16)

Timothy must learn the faith, study it, keep growing, be a lifelong student of orthodoxy, orthopraxy, orthopathy. All Christians should be lifelong students of God’s Word. Of understanding the truth, knowing what it is we believe about all things.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Learn the faith. Christian should be studious, thoughtful readers, listeners, people who love wisdom, love knowledge, love truth, and desire it above earthly riches.

Second, practice the faith until it changes you.

Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. (1 Timothy 4:15)

Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you. (1 Timothy 4:16)

Timothy must not merely learn it, he must do it. He must do it until his progress, his growth, becomes evident and obvious to all. He must take heed to himself.

In 4:12 he is told

Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12)

In 4:7 he is told “exercise yourself toward godliness.” (1 Timothy 4:7)

The Christian faith can never be guarded by those who do not live it out. The Christian faith can never be properly conserved by those who don’t practice it. Christianity is not truth for a filing cabinet. It is not a specimen to be kept in formaldehyde in a museum. It is a way of life, a code, a way, perspective that is passed on from the living to the living, absorbed by example, caught as much as it is taught.

Third, teach the faith to other Christians and new leaders.

Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. (1 Timothy 4:13)

If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed. (1 Timothy 4:6)

Teach and exhort these things. (1 Timothy 6:2)

Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. (2 Timothy 4:2)

Timothy must teach his congregation, and as we saw earlier, he must train leaders. This is why the early hermits in Christianity got it wrong. To seclude yourself, learn the faith for yourself, but to pass it on to no one else is not conservative. It is just hoarding the faith.

But a conservative Christian conserves so as to transmit, preserves so as to propagate. Some Christians would exponentially increase their experience and knowledge of the Christian faith if they started teaching it to others, whether it be a Sunday school class, or a small group, or one on one with another believer, or two friends. It goes in once when you hear it. It goes in twice when you hear and read it. It goes in three times when you hear, read, and then say it to others.

So there is how to conduct yourself in the house of God: the doctrine, the practices, and the affections. Learn it, do it, teach it.

To do all that, we cannot do it on our own, so fittingly the very last words are a blessing, and a promise: Grace be with you. God’s enablement, God’s love, God’s Holy Spirit is the way we guard the faith that has been committed to us.