Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army

In my opinion, Paul was warning Timothy in this passage (1 Timothy 1:4) not to allow the Christians to whom he was ministering to become caught up in observance of oral law and tradition, and the maintaining of genealogies used to demonstrate "pure" religious pedigrees, that characterized worship among the Jewish communities in the area where Timothy lived. 

This would have been similar (again, in my opinion) to other instances in the book of Acts and in Paul's epistles, where efforts had to be made to combat so-called "Judaizers", who tried to tell both Gentile Christians and Jewish converts to Christianity that, in order to be saved, they not only had to have faith in Christ, but also observe (or, in the case of the converted Jews, continue to observe) the requirements of the Law that God had given to Israel through Moses in the Old Testament books of Exodus through Deuteronomy.

In the case spoken of by Paul to Timothy, however, the requirement to observe the Law included not only the written Law, but also all the man-made oral requirements and religious rituals and traditions that had been developed by the Jewish rabbinical community over the centuries since the written Law had been handed down, which would have had no meaning whatever to Gentiles.

There also would have been no way for these Gentile converts to fall within the Jewish genealogies that the rabbis maintained. In addition, the acceptance by God of Gentiles as part of the Christian church (Acts 10) rendered those genealogies irrelevant even for Jewish converts to Christianity, since the decisive consideration in regard to an individual's standing before God was now based solely on faith in Christ, rather than on being able to prove literal descent from Abraham.

Rather than allowing such considerations to sow doubt within the members of the congregation for which he was responsible about their acceptability to God, Timothy was to seek to continually build them all up with respect to their faith in Christ.

August 27 2018 • 1 response • Vote Up • Share • Report

Nicholas Robinson

Jesus answered this in Mat 37-9
7¶But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
8Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:
9And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.


The physical connections people have, have no bearing on the spiritual connections unless it's a family curse but God ward, physical connections mean nothing. Regarding the fables, this is the made up Talmud which the rabbis thought enhanced the Torah or made it better. Jesus even confronted the Pharisees regarding these man made traditions when they asked Jesus why His deciples never performed the ritual hand washing. This was never in God's laws. 

We are to uphold the Torah to the fullness Jesus showed us. No where is the Torah removed. People like to pick and mix the things they want from the Torah then say it does not stand for the things they don't want. 


There is no salvation without the Torah because there would be no standard to measure sin by to then require salvation. Salvation is through Christ knowledge of sin is through the Torah both are needed. Read 1 John 3:4. Sin is the transgression of the law. 

If we throw out God's laws and invent our own is this not the same practice of the Pharisees? Yes it is. We end up turning Christianity into a religion of men's traditions like jewdaisim became a tradition of rabbinical rules not from God. Stay away from fables.

September 07 2018 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report