Paul wrote his first "pastoral" letter to Timothy some time after he had left his young colleague in the city of Ephesus to supervise life in the church. Knowing Timothy's character and the difficulty of his assignment, he wrote to encourage his son in the faith and to provide him with authoritative guidelines for his work.
He begins by reminding Timothy why he had been left in Ephesus, namely, to "command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer" (1 Tim. 1:3). As a custodian of the apostolic gospel, Paul was concerned that it be kept pure. He had a passion to preach it, but an equal zeal to ensure that it wasn't corrupted. "The apostle's overriding preoccupation throughout all three Pastoral Letters" writes Stott, "is with the truth, that it may be faithfully guarded and handed on." (p. 10).
In Paul's mind, there was a definite body of truth that had come down from the apostles that was to be kept intact within the churches. The salvation of people and the future of the church depended on it. And it was this body of doctrine, the apostles' doctrine, that he constantly called his helpers (and the churches) back to. They were to teach it, but just as importantly, they were to preserve it against distortion by false teachers.
Do we share Paul's zeal for the gospel, and in particular, his concern for the purity with which it is held and taught? Stott notes that this attitude clashes with the spirit of postmodernism rampant in Western culture today. "Indeed," he writes, "one of the chief tenets of 'postmodernism' is that there is no such thing as objective truth, let alone universal and eternal truth. On the contrary, everybody has his or her own truth. You have yours, and I have mine, and they may diverge widely from each other, even contradict each other. In consequence, the most prized virtue is tolerance. It tolerates everything except the intolerance of those who insist that certain ideas are true and others are false, while certain practices are good and others evil" (p. 42).
What are we to say to this outlook? Listen to Stott again. "No follower of Jesus Christ can possibly embrace this complete subjectivism. For he said he was the truth, and that he had come to bear witness to the truth, that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and that the truth will set us free. So truth matters, the truth which God has revealed through Christ and by his Spirit. Jesus told us to beware of false teachers. So did his apostles" (p. 42).
Certainly, the church's task is not just to preserve or defend the gospel against error. An exclusive focus on "defending the faith" falls short of fulfilling the mandate Jesus gave his followers. The gospel must be preached and taught as well as defended.
But having said that, truth does matter. It is important to hold on to the apostolic faith and to guard it against false or "other" teachings. It may not be "myths and endless genealogies" (1 Tim. 1:4) that threaten it today. But there are plenty of other corrupting and distracting influences. We must be on our guard and take care that the self-centred, pluralistic spirit of the age doesn't weaken our commitment to the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). As unpopular as it may be, we must insist that there is a body of truth that cannot be surrendered or tampered with in any way. The present health of the church depends upon it. So too does the eternal destiny of the generations to come.