Love, Purpose, & True Christian Doctrine

But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 1 Timothy 1:5 (NASB)

τὸ δὲ τέλος τῆς παραγγελίας ἐστὶν ἀγάπη ἐκ καθαρᾶς καρδίας καὶ συνειδήσεως ἀγαθῆς καὶ πίστεως ἀνυποκρίτου, 

When a contemporary English-speaking Christian reads the New Testament, it is often the case that points of special emphasis and significance (which an ancient Greek-speaking Christian would have readily perceived) get lost in translation. This is not the fault of contemporary readers or translators as much as it is an opportunity to enrich our Bible study as we work to understand and experience the Biblical texts as the original audiences would have understood and experienced them. 1 Timothy 1:5 is a prime example of this.

In his first letter to Timothy, after Paul charges Timothy and the church to preserve true Christian doctrine (1 Timothy 1:3-4), he states in verse 5 that there is a “goal” to the work of preserving Christian doctrine. This goal is love from “a pure heart,” “a good conscience,” and “a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5).

As contemporary English-speaking readers, it is easy to gloss over the word ‘goal’ in 1 Timothy 1:5. In many cases, the “goal” or “the point” of a thing (as English speakers often think of goals) can be subjective. For example, physical exercise can have many different goals, and we often consider each of them to be a matter of preference. One person’s goal in exercising might be better physical health while another’s goal is to be more physically attractive, and the goal of yet another person might be greater athletic ability or strength. With this sense of “goal” in mind, it is natural to see Paul’s use of ‘goal’ in 1 Timothy 1:5 as though maybe the goal he mentions is somewhat prone to change based on time, place, and intent.

All this to say, the English word ‘goal’ does not begin to capture the significance of the Greek word which Paul used, which is ‘telos’ (τέλος). To get into what telos means, we will give a definition that may seem pretty hard to wrap your mind around at first, but then we will give an example to help it make sense.

In the mind of a learned ancient Greek, telos is a rich and complex word which denotes the purpose, or end, of a thing’s very existence. At the same time, the purpose of that thing’s existence (the telos) also serves to define what it means to be that thing in the first place. In other words, many ancient Greek-speaking people (notably Aristotle) considered the telos (purpose, end, or “final cause”) of a thing to be crucial to understanding the real essence of a thing (the what-it-is-to-be a thing).

Here is a simple example: The purpose, or end, of a coffee mug is to hold coffee, keep it warm, and make it possible to drink the coffee. If the mug breaks, or if it has a hole in the bottom, then it can no longer achieve that purpose, and, in a sense, the mug loses its “mug-ness.” It might still have been designed to be a mug when it was first made. We might still recognize it as a mug despite its being broken, and call it mug just because it is convenient to do so. But, in reality, the broken mug no longer has the essence of a mug. It is not actually a coffee mug since it does not and cannot achieve its purpose ­­– its final cause.

When Paul uses the word telos in 1 Timothy 1:5, he is referring to the final cause, the purpose, the end, of his instruction (his charge) to Timothy to maintain the integrity of Christian doctrine.[1] In other words, Paul is not stating his own personal opinion or preference about why it is important to maintain Christian truth. He is stating the ultimate reason for why we must do so which exists and stands apart from all opinion and preference. If we fail to uphold the telos of the teaching of Christian doctrine, then we really fail to uphold Christian doctrine at all.

When Paul claims that the telos of maintaining the integrity of Christian doctrine is love, what does he have in mind? When Paul mentions “love” in 1 Timothy 1:5, Paul uses the word agape (ἀγάπη). This is the most sacrificial, deepest kind of love which one thing can have for another thing. It is the kind of love with which God loves us, and the very purpose of preserving truth is to have that kind of love spring from us – from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith.

When we uphold Christian truth and achieve that purpose, we fulfill an essential role of being the Church. When we neglect the ultimate purpose of our preserving of truth, we are not merely neglecting a secondary, trivial end. We neglect the sole reason for which we strive to uphold true doctrine and recognize it as sacred to begin with, and anything we do as the Church becomes empty. Without love, we essentially cease to be the Church at all, no matter what words we repeat from our pews.

All of this illuminates Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 13 regarding the worthlessness of anything we as Christians do if we fail to have agape. Paul writes:

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. (NASB) 

A Church without love is really a Church as much as a coffee mug with a big hole in the bottom is really a coffee mug. When the purpose is not realized, the real essence of the thing is lost. It is true for coffee mugs, and it is true for the body of Christ.

To avoid a potentially significant misunderstanding here, we should note that individual Christians who fail to love as they should may well retain their salvation. The entire point of salvation is that we are given grace when we fail to be what we ought to be. But that is no guarantee that the Church will not fail to actually be the Church even though its individual members retain their salvation by God’s mercy.

All of our concerns about preserving truth, all of our debates about Scriptural interpretation, and all of our deliberations on what we ought to think as Christians have one singular goal: selfless love which is entirely interested in God as the ultimate object of human affection and in the well-being of one-another, entirely for the sake of one-another. If we as the Church fail to have that love, then we have failed to really be the Church.

We have looked at some pretty high level stuff, but at the end of the day Paul’s charge to Timothy is one of the most practical messages we could wish for in Scripture. When we wake up every morning, we must intentionally commit ourselves, enabled by the renewing that comes from the Holy Spirit working within us, to the maintaining of Christian truth such that it will yield an outpouring of the love with which Christ first loved us, springing from pure hearts, clean consciences, and sincere faith.

[1] Telos can have different meanings in other contexts, but Paul’s intended meaning here is fairly straightforward. See The Expositor’s Greek New Testament by Robertson Nicoll for more on this.