The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus (Bible Speaks Today Series)

The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus
By John R W Stott
The Bible Speaks Today
IVP. 232 pages. £9.99
ISBN 0 85111 172 6

Jonathan Fletcher, the minister of Emmanuel Church, Wimbledon, reviews the latest BST volume and gives his overall view of the series.

With the publication of The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus, John Stott makes his eighth and final contribution to The Bible Speaks Today (BST) series, which he has edited with Alec Motyer. We await one final volume (on Matthew) before the New Testament is complete. But this is a fitting moment to begin to record some of our appreciation and thanks to John Stott for an outstanding series to which each of his own contributions have been eagerly awaited and not one has disappointed.
Over the years we have been indebted to John Stott for many brave and imaginative initiatives. They have been very varied so it is difficult to compare their impact, but for many of us The Bible Speaks Today series has been something for which we are especially grateful. As a student, I struggled with each Tyndale commentary as it appeared. They remain wonderfully useful for sermon or Bible study preparation, but they were hard work for quiet times.

Refreshes the parts . . .

When the BST series began to appear in the late 1960s, it was very refreshing and we began to see what whole books meant, rather than just individual verses. We began to discern the wood and not just the trees. Although there has been a very definite development, each contribution has lived up to the series' title. It has been the Bible - 'God's Word written' - speaking today. Part of the genius has been that almost, but not quite, every volume has been written by those actively engaged in local church ministry, so each contribution has been truly 'earthed'. It has been intriguing to see how the series has developed. The early volumes were comparatively short and in many ways companion volumes to the Tyndale commentaries.
As time passed, they got longer and more detailed - this is true not least of John Stott's own contributions. By the time we are near the end of the series, the volume on 2 Peter and Jude is so good, comprehensive and thorough that it has replaced not merely the Tyndale commentary, but many more substantial commentaries as well.

And the winner is . . .

It is invidious and highly subjective to award accolades but, at the risk of causing offence, my prizes would go something like this: Best general overview unlocking the main thrust of the book - Michael Wilcock - I Saw Heaven Opened (Revelation); Best eye-opener to hitherto unseen treasures - Bruce Milne - Here Is Your King! (John) - it has been wisely said that we should not stay for long away from the fourth Gospel. Best theological confrontation with a contemporary specialist issue - John Stott in his outstanding introduction to Good News for the World (Romans), where Professor E.P. Sanders and his friends are devastatingly taken to the cleaners, albeit in John Stott's ever gracious way. Best treatment of a danger confronting evangelical churches - Dick Lucas - Fullness and Freedom (Colossians). I have not come across a volume in the series that has been met with such hostility and also with such gratitude as this one, so I cannot help but feel that it is especially 'prophetic'.

Pastoral symphony

What of The Life of the Local Church - the message of 1 Timothy and Titus? In the first place, we ought to be very grateful for all efforts to rehabilitate the Pastorals. They have been for too long neglected, and as they so clearly represent a bridge between the apostolic age and the ecclesiastical age, when the elderly apostle, so to speak, looks down the tube and envisages the battles and the pressures that lie ahead, they are especially important. So this volume, together with John Stott's much earlier - and very lovely - book on 2 Timothy - and also very valuable recent work by Dick Lucas, is to be very greatly welcomed. But why have the Pastorals been neglected? In the first place, they have been neglected by liberals who have cast doubt on their Pauline authorship. Once again in a magisterial introduction, John Stott tackles this head on and, without using an ungracious word, easily demonstrates that such a view is absurd. Those from the catholic end of the spectrum have bypassed the Pastorals, as nowhere can there be found any trace either of the alleged three-fold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons nor any sign of a sacramental ministry. Paul never calls on Timothy and Titus to appoint those who will lead worship, visit the sick or administer Holy Communion. On such issues, there is a deafening silence.
The minister is first and foremost a teacher and guardian of the apostolic deposit, and the Christian pastor is clearly seen primarily as a minister of the Word. Some from the charismatic wing have neglected the Pastorals as there is a similar eloquent silence on the gifts, save for the reference to Timothy's ordination (11 Timothy 1.7). Trophimus is left sick and Miletus, and Paul is urged to take some wine for his stomach, but otherwise the role of the pastor remains Word-centred.

Male headship

Feminists have avoided 1 Timothy especially because of the famous passage in chapter 2. John Stott deals with this very directly. He is unequivocal in maintaining the united Biblical witness to male headship which cannot be gainsaid. However, he draws a distinction between this unalterable principle and the question of whether women should be allowed to preach which he concludes is a cultural application of the principle, and therefore no longer binding. I would be more convinced if he had suggested in what ways the principle should be applied today. Others have neglected the Pastorals because the qualities that are looked for in church leaders seem so prosaic and middle-class with the repeated call for sober-mindedness. John Stott neatly deals with this by emphasising the clarion call for holiness that pervades all three letters. It is truly amazing that Paul - for whom theology was everything - could say that the 'doctrine of God our Saviour' could be adorned (Titus 2.10) by our holy lives. The liberation theology merchants have eschewed the Pastorals as they can find nothing about revolution and a 'social gospel'. True; but John Stott comments illuminatingly about the Christian's attitude to material things (highly positive - there is no place for asceticism) and money (very wary).
Most of the titles in the BST series have been very striking. I have a little quibble with The Life of the Local Church. It leads one to expect something of a manual for church order. This does not do justice to the fact that Titus contains one of the most exquisite statements of the doctrines of grace, and the Pastorals as a whole are packed with great doctrine. As was said of one of his early contributions to this series, if Paul had read John Stott's book, the apostle would have been amazed at what a neat and orderly letter he had originally written. But that is exactly the purpose of a sermon or a commentary - to enable us to understand clearly and intelligibly the mind of the Biblical author. So, once again, our gratitude to John Stott is unbounded.

The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus (Bible Speaks Today Series)

Refreshes the parts . . .

And the winner is . . .

Pastoral symphony

Male headship

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