NOTES for Ti1 1:1-11
As he begins his letter to Timothy, Paul mentions certain people who, judging from his words, were trying in the church at Ephesus to act as teachers of the Torah while, in essence, not understanding what the Torah is and why it was given by God to His people (vv. 3-7). It is hard to say exactly which "genealogies" the apostle mentions, but judging by the context, one can suppose that he is speaking about the genealogies of the Pentateuch, which occur there in great number. Considering that some of them are legendary, while the history of others is lost in the depth of the ages, it is no surprise that endless disputes, judging from Paul's words, were stirred up by discussion of this topic. Meanwhile, according to the apostle's testimony, the Torah is needed not for exercises in theology and not for discussions that in the end give no one anything spiritually, only arousing passions and perhaps even quarrels. Paul once again reminds us that the Torah is the instrument of a practitioner, not a theorist, a practitioner who needs a spiritual compass on the road to the Kingdom. It is not by chance that he says the Torah is needed not by the righteous person but by the sinner (vv. 8-11).
Of course, in this case he is speaking only about one aspect of the Torah, connected with the knowledge of one's own sinfulness; the apostle does not consider its other aspects. But, as we can see, without fully recognizing and grasping this function of the Torah, it was impossible to move further; it was impossible to speak about the inner Torah with those for whom the importance of keeping the commandments was not obvious. Meanwhile, in the church at Ephesus there were, apparently, certain "theorists" of the Torah who, perhaps having heard something about the inner Torah and lofty theological matters, decided that perfection in spiritual life could be attained by theoretically studying what, without practice, is not assimilated and brings no benefit. And Paul, as we can see, calls those carried away by this kind of "spiritual" theorizing to leave their theories behind and finally learn to keep the commandments, without which one cannot enter the Kingdom. And life itself in the Kingdom is not theory but practice. Practice which, like all real life, cannot be reduced to any theoretical concepts, however clever.