Again, Paul wrote this letter to Timothy while the latter was serving in Ephesus, helping to establish the presence of Christian faith as no threat, contrary to false claims of Demetrius the silversmith some years before. The city would soon become the world center of Christian religion for that generation.
During Roman times, one quarter of the population in Ephesus was enslaved. It’s hard to imagine the gospel message would not call to at least some of them. Christian religion was not a social reform movement. It was wholly otherworldly. This life is just a passing phase on our way to Eternity. Hidden in these few verses, Paul’s teaching seeks to set men free from slavery to this world. If this world is all you have, then there is no hope, but if we eventually escape this world, then any condition is tolerable.
The point is to call attention to Eternity by how we are unconcerned about the sorrows of this life. It’s the orientation of showing grace and mercy regardless of what binds our flesh. Thus, we still have all those fleshly obligations, and the boundaries of the Covenant do not demand that we provoke strife over being legally a slave. Whatever might be a cause for Christians to rise up against others, slavery isn’t it. In our modern western lives, being in prison is just about the same thing, and often worse. Don’t be a cause of grief but demonstrate the power of grace. No one can enslave your heart.
This and everything else Paul commanded in this letter is right out of the teaching of Jesus Christ. Faith in Christ does not promote human discord. While there’s plenty of hostility to faith in this world, we don’t go looking for trouble. People who are slaves to their fleshly natures will give themselves away by false teachings. They will delight in provoking human tensions, upholding a false piety of the flesh. Their efforts will be self-serving, seeking some personal advantage.
The only advantage we seek is piety in the heart. The real advantage is in humble and grateful contentment with what God provides. We will take nothing with us when we leave this world, so let it go before it traps your affections. The only material things we really need while we are here are food and clothing. Everything else is a matter of what God provides for the mission. Paul never forgot that the real complaint in the silversmith’s riot was not their devotion to Diana; that was just a cynical cover for greed in selling highly inflated trinkets. Even the city government realized as much.
Instead, Christian teaching set people free to place a high value on piety and eternal moral goodness, not the junk of this world. Christ before Pilate affirmed that His Kingdom was not of this world. Jesus had no interest in overturning Roman authority; human government was not even on His radar. The Father is withholding political changes until the end of all human mortal existence. His focus and ours is on Eternity.
For this reason, Paul is rather stern in dealing with those who bring to Christ a substantial worldly wealth. It belongs to Christ now. Material wealth is just a means to blessing the covenant family of faith. The least the rich can do is drop the fleshly pretense of superiority. But instead of the church confiscating such wealth, it is the burden of these wealthy believers to do the work of using it for divine glory.
The last thing Paul says to his adopted son is to avoid the rising new religion called Gnosticism, using the key term gnosis and calling it absurd and profane chatter. It had become a Siren call to some in the church already.
