1 Timothy 1:1-2

[hotcoffee]

1 Timothy 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,

2 To Timothy my true son in the faith:

Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.​

This set of letters are written by Paul to Timothy. Timothy probably does more to make the Bible come alive for children then anyone else in the Book. When I taught Sunday School and Children's Church I would show them pictures of the people in the Bible. The children knew that Moses was a baby when his mother put him in a little boat and put him in the river. They knew that Jesus was born as a baby in the manger in Bethlehem. Everyone else in the Bible was older, at least 20 [and more like in their 80's] in their little minds. When I showed them that Mary would have only been about 13 according to betrothals and Jewish law, they went home and asked their parents if it was true.

When I told them that Timothy was only a young teen, that's when the boys would get involved. After all, Timothy was a leader of churches and he has his own book in the Bible.

I didn't teach them everything I learned about Timothy because they were so young. I just made him come alive because of his age and then went on to tell them about Timothy's family and how he became a Christian.

Timothy's father was Greek and his mother was Jewish. They lived in Lystra which was located in modern day Turkey. Timothy's grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice, were believers. Timothy's father, being Greek, would have worshiped the Greek gods Hermes and Zeus.

Paul and Barnabas went to Lystra in Acts 14. They were teaching the Gospel. There was a man in the audience who had been crippled all his life. He had never walked. When he heard what Paul and Barnabas were saying, and became a believer, he got up and walked. The Greeks, so enmeshed in their idols, thought that Barnabas was Zeus and Paul was Hermes. Paul and Barnabas tried to get them to understand that they were only humans but no matter what they said, the people just didn't understand. The people of Lystra still made sacrifice to them thinking they were gods walking among them.

Paul went back to Lystra in Acts 16 . That's when he met Timothy, Eunice's son. Timothy is said to have become a believer before Paul's second trip to Lystra. His mother and his grandmother probably told him about what had happened when Paul and Barnabas had been there before. Since they were older, and Jewish, they probably heard of Jesus from people passing through. Meanwhile, Timothy had probably heard the Greeks talking about when Hermes and Zeus had visited before. The Bible leads us to believe that Timothy's father probably remained a pagan unbeliever. I really think that's why Paul decided to take Timothy with him when he left Lystra after the second visit.

On top of that, since Timothy's father was a pagan, Timothy had never been circumcised according to the Jewish law. Before Paul took Timothy with him, because he was the son of a Jewish woman, Paul made sure to have him circumcised. Paul knew that the Jewish believers would have used the fact that Timothy wasn't circumcised against him. I've never had the opportunity to teach that in Sunday School. My students were too young to understand.

So... back to the original verses. The letters in Timothy were from Paul to Timothy. We're going to see right away that Paul depended on Timothy to teach against false teachings. That makes sense since Timothy's own homeland had gone through the horrible debacle sacrificing to Paul and Barnabas, thinking they were the Greek gods Hermes and Zeus.

Paul calls Timothy his "true son in the faith", so it's evident Paul thought highly of him. It's almost as though Paul thinks of him as an adopted son even though it was never made legal in the Bible.