Text – I Tim. 1:2-5, 3:14-15
Subject—Passing on the Faith
Theme – The place of the family in passing on the faith
Proposition – The place of the family in passing on the faith should make us very careful to raise our children with an eye to covenantal faithfulness on our parts
Purpose – Therefore having seen the place of the family in passing on the faith let us praise God that He has given us the privilege of teaching our children Christ.
Introduction
Spheres – Family Sphere
The importance of the Family Sphere in the work of the Church
I.) Paul Sees The Instrumentality Of His Lineage In His Faith (1:3, Acts 24:14-15)
Literally the inspired Apostle writes here “whom I from my forefathers serve.” What he is communicating is “whom I serve with a faith derived from my forefathers.” Or, “with a faith which had its roots in their religion, and is therefore similar to theirs.”
It should be said immediately so that no confusion is engendered … Paul is not teaching here, and neither am I teaching that we are saved by our families or by our family heritage and connection. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but Reformed people, because of their strong covenantal theology, have always believed that by God’s sovereign ordering, grace runs in familial channels so that a connection can legitimately be made between the grace that comes to us as individuals and the reality that God’s grace includes God’s favor in making us descendents of Godly forefathers and, as we shall see – foremothers.
This truth is important to keep repeating in a culture that wars against the Christian faith by constantly seeking to cut each successive generation from the remnants of its Christian past. Each new generation is mired in the attempt by a faith, that is other than Christianity, to be peeled away from their forefathers.
If your refer back to Acts 24:14-15 you see another place where St. Paul makes this familial faith appeal to his Fathers. There in his defense before Felix he can say,
14 But this I confess unto thee, that according to the Way, which they call heresy, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets.
Like here in I Timothy Paul in Acts is providing a significant linkage between His Faith and the Faith of His Fathers. Doubtless, the Fathers he has in mind in both places are the patriarchs. What He believes now is what Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob believed and bequeathed to their seed. He as one of their seed believes the same thing.
Of course we can not miss an important implication here. If Paul is hammering the connection between what he believes and what his forefathers believed there therefore must be significant continuity between what is called the Old and New Testament. In Acts 24 Paul makes the connection between the belief of the Fathers in the resurrection and in his missionary travels the Resurrection becomes, along with the Kingdom of God, a major theme. They looked forward to a coming Messiah, Paul proclaims the same Messiah. They passed the faith along to their children. Lois and Eunice has passed the faith along to their child as well.
Christian Faith expressions that do not think inter-generationally and practice the faith inter-generational will eventually die on the vine.
This way of thinking stands in marked contrast to the last 75 years or more of American Christianity. One of the mottos of evangelical Christianity is that “God has no Grandchildren.” Many of us grew up in Evangelicalism and heard that refrain many, many times. The purpose of that statement was to impress upon young people in particular, but everyone in general, that a person’s religious identity derived from claiming the faith for himself and was not ascribed by birth.
And there is a sense in which that is true BUT there is also a sense in which that is not true. The sense in which it is true is that every individual is called to own the faith for themselves. The sense in which that is not true is that who we are as individuals is connected to the family we were birthed into. It is precisely because we believe that God has Grandchildren that we therefore Baptize our children believing that God will be God to us and to our seed for a thousand generations. To deny that God has Grandchildren in a specific sense is to play havoc with Reformed covenantal theology.
Another thing we want to touch on here is the specific corporeal forefathers that Paul speaks of. When Paul speaks of his forefathers he is not spiritualizing the text. He has in mind the generations before that were blood related to him. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses, Isaiah and the Prophets.
The reason that I bring this up, is because in just a bit Paul invokes the blood relatives of Timothy. Paul could have as easily recalled to Timothy the importance of His Spiritual Forefathers, but instead he invokes for Timothy what he invoked for Himself and that is the faith of his blood relatives.
All of this is to say that who we are, as God has constituted us in our families, is important. No Covenantal Reformed person would ever say otherwise.
II.) Paul Sees The Instrumentality Of Timothy’s Lineage In Timothy’s Faith (1:5, 3:14f)
Paul thanks God for Timothy’s genuine faith. Perhaps Paul lands on the word “genuine” here because he has experienced the spurious faith of other co-workers such as Demas (4:10) and as such the reality of Timothy’s genuine faith gives the Apostle cause to praise God.
Paul then, just as he referenced the importance of his familial legacy references the importance of Timothy’s. He makes mention of his Grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice.
This is the only place in the NT where these two Mothers are named. In Acts 16 we see Eunice but we do not know her by name there.
16:1 — but Then Paul came to Derbe and Lystra. And behold, a certain disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a certain woman who was a Jewess who believed, but whose father was a Greek.
Given that the Father was apparently a pagan it is easy to surmise that Lois would have been the Mother of Timothy’s Mother Eunice. Consistent with Paul’s reasoning in I Cor. 7, by virtue of this believing Mother Timothy would have been a covenant child.
14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Else your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.
And so Timothy is a child of the covenant, who by God’s gracious dealings with him, has had the faith handed down to him in the context of two generations of Godly Mothers.
Let us be very clear here … in God’s ordination and by God’s sovereignty Timothy was who he was, in regards to his Christian faith, as his Mother and Grandmother pointed Him to Christ alone.
And on a day that is set aside to recognize Mothers we should note the tremendous impact that Christ centered women can have on their children – even in homes where the Father’s influence is not what it might be.
Look at what Eunice and Lois did in raising Timothy.
II Tim. 3 14 But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing from whom thou hast learned them,15 and that from childhood thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
As Paul did earlier in his letter to Timothy in chapter 1, so he does again now in Chapter 3. He invokes not only the faith but also from whom the faith came. In doing so God casts linkage between the truth of the Scriptures and the family that taught the Scriptures.
Calvin can speak of this text in a rather arresting way,
“Accordingly he sets before him his Grandmother Lois and his Mother Eunice, by whom he had been educated from his infancy in such a manner that he might have sucked godliness along with milk. By this godly education, therefore, Timothy is admonished not to degenerate from himself and from his ancestors.” “Timothy is admonished not to degenerate from himself and from his godly ancestors.”
1.) Christians who have grown up in a Christ exalting home like Timothy realize that if you ever turn your back on the Christian faith, you at that same moment turn your back on your family so that in the words of Calvin you degenerate from yourself and from your godly ancestors.
2.) Taking a hint from Calvin, we can reverse it to say that Christians who have grown up in Christ exalting homes need to realize that if your ever turn your back on your faithful Godly ancestors, you are at that same moment turning your back on your Christian faith.
There is an inexorable relationship between Christian family and Christian faith. You can distinguish family and faith but you can not separate them. This is part and parcel of covenant theology. If my children abandon my wife and I as we continue in the faith, they abandon the faith. If my children abandon the Christian faith they have, in Calvin’s words, “degenerated from their ancestors.”
From the text in Chapter 3 we must make a few points in the way Eunice and Lois raised Timothy.
1.) Eunice and Lois taught Timothy the Scriptures.
39 “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and it is they which testify of Me.
Of course we need to keep in mind that the Scriptures here referred to are the OT Scriptures which teach Christ, thus again reinforcing the continuity between the covenantal epochs.
2.) In teaching Timothy the Scriptures, Eunice and Lois taught Timothy salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
There was a Christocentric focus. Christ for sinners. Christ as the one in whom, through whom, and by whom is our peace with God.
Of course for both Mothers and Fathers we can not teach what we do not know. And so if we are to teach our Children the Scriptures we must be a student of Scriptures ourselves. I have been encouraged as your Pastor to see many of you do that, through your Bible reading programs and through your resolve to read through Calvin’s Institutes or Matthew Henry, or some other weighty reading, by your attendance on Word & Sacrament.
3.) In teaching Timothy the Scriptures Eunice and Lois were doing Evangelism.
Evangelism begins at home.
There are many joke about how Reformed people only do Evangelism by having children and I suppose we should laugh at ourselves but we need to keep in mind that if we can not keep our children what is our evangelism to those who are not our children? I fear that Reformed people are losing their families at the cost of trying and too often failing to win the world.
They evangelized Timothy From Childhood – The Greek there signifies, a child at birth or of tender years. According to Jewish custom the parent was begin instructing the child in the law when the child reached five years of age.
Note that from this passage and others like it I get the idea that you can not draw out of children what you do not first pour into them. Eunice and Lois trained trained trained Timothy.
The Principle Here Then is,
** Those of you that have been privileged to have been raised yourselves w/ a Christian heritage have a charge to keep from your Forefathers or Foremothers unto the generations that follow you. If the faith dies out in the generations it is not because God has been unfaithful.
Conclusion
Re-cap
Emphasize Christ’s sufficiency again
Encourage those who don’t come from Covenant families that God delights in starting new covenant family heritage.
