Last week, Paul encouraged Timothy to put a stop to the false teachers he was dealing with by using love, a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

These sources of Christian love are are expressed in this way to make clear their incredible contrast with the methods of the false teachers. This week’s passage expands on that idea. Look at our passage, 1 Timothy 1:6-7.

Some, namely the false teachers, have wandered away from these expressions of love: a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. Paul often uses the concept of wandering away from the faith in his pastoral letters, sometimes even stronger than he does here. In 1:19, he speaks of those who have “rejected the faith”; in 4:1, he uses the word “abandon.”

So we have some apparent leaders in the community, if not in the church as well, who have walked away from the faith. Instead, they’ve turned to meaningless talk. This idea relates back to the endless speculation he referred to in verse 4.

These men want to be teachers of the law, but they can’t because they don’t know what they are talking about, due to their meaningless speculations and endless talk. Nor do they know much about what they so confidently affirm, the meaning of the Scriptures. They are simply chattering, without any substance to what they say.

Apparently, when I was a child, I talked a lot, probably most of it meaningless chatter. I can remember my dad using the phrase “Your lips are flapping again…” Most of what I had to say wasn’t wrong, I’m sure. It was just unnecessary chatter; it was noise. And it was probably about things of which I knew nothing.

Now, as an adult, as a minister, I must watch myself closely, as we all must, that we aren’t simply “letting our lips flap.” Are we speaking about what we know? Or is it useless speculation and meaningless talk?

I don’t want my words to be useless and meaningless. I want what I say to be based upon God’s life-giving Word. I want the things I write to be helpful to others; not a hindrance. In the next few verses of this chapter, Paul will transition to the Law, and then to the Gospel, both of which are a much better use of our words than the pointless drivel he address here.

My prayer is that I can recognize the difference before it comes out of my mouth.

How do you monitor what comes out of your mouth before you speak it? What works for you? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

There are a lot of counterfeit gospels out there today. Have you noticed? The problem with a counterfeit is that it only needs to be a little bit wrong to still be wrong. It doesn’t take a major error to go off course. Take a ship, for example. A course adjustment of only a degree or two doesn’t make a drastic change right away, but the destination will be miles away from what is intended.

In our passage for this week, Paul started off his letter to Timothy by encouraging him to avoid such counterfeits. Take a look at 1 Timothy 1:3-5.

My wife and I had the opportunity to visit the Treasury Department when we were in Washington DC a few years ago. It was pretty fascinating learning about our nation’s currency.

One thing that really stood out to me was how counterfeit money is identified. Treasury agents don’t study counterfeit money in order to identify counterfeit money. If they studies the fakes, they wouldn’t be able to identify new fakes because they wouldn’t know their distinct characteristics. Instead, they study the real thing; they know legitimate money intimately.

By knowing the real thing so well, they can spot a fake almost immediately.

Paul is telling Timothy the same thing here. Timothy is to instruct certain men not to teach counterfeit messages. They are worthless, only creating controversy and problems.

What were these men teaching?