Timothy Had an Authoritative Standard

by Terry Wane Benton

Timothy was given the same standard as the apostles delivered to the first church on Pentecost of Acts 2. There, they “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine” (Acts 2:42). Because some were teaching more teaching than the apostles taught, different things than the apostles taught, it was time to warn all true evangelists to warn everyone to confine themselves to what the apostles taught.

"As I urged you when I went into Macedonia — remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine" (I Timothy 1:3 NKJV).

The apostle’s original teaching or doctrine is the authoritative standard for all time. This means that the doctrine already taught needed nothing extra. Anything more or other than the doctrine already given is an “other” doctrine. Think of the things that men have added that the apostles never taught, such as popes, cardinals, infant baptism, sprinkling for baptism, denominational names and organizations, creeds that the apostles never wrote, and a thousand fables and imaginations that men declare to be God’s leading when all it is is human imagination. When an apostle told Timothy to teach “no other doctrine” than what he had been taught from the apostles, he was not giving all the new and divisive teachings a right to exist. Every thought must be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and all doctrines of men are to surrender to God’s revealed teaching. All Scripture is profitable for doctrine (II Timothy 3:16-17). Anything more, less, or different from that authoritative body of teaching is to be rejected. God has not changed His mind on this.