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Paul was writing to Timothy so that in the event he was delayed in visiting Ephesus, Timothy would know how people should conduct themselves in the church. This was important because the church is "God's household…the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). Its nature makes appropriate behaviour essential.
The fact that the church has a special role with regard to the truth - it serves as its "pillar" and "foundation"- explains why Paul pays so much attention to doctrine, teaching and the qualifications of teachers in his letters to Timothy. The connection becomes even more obvious as we reflect on the meaning and significance of the two terms noted above.
According to John Stott, the term translated "foundation" in the NIV (hedraioma in the Greek) refers to the mainstay of a building. It may, he says, "refer either to its foundation or to a buttress or bulwark that supports it" (p. 105). Whichever the case, the hedraioma was a structure that gave stability to a building. "Just so," Stott writes, "the church is responsible to hold the truth steady against the storms of heresy and unbelief" (p. 105).
The second term, "pillar" (stylos in the Greek) refers to the pillar or column of a building. Paul's readers would have had no difficulty understanding what he meant by it. They were thoroughly familiar with the sight of pillars. The famous temple of Diana (or Artemis) in their city "boasted 100 Ionic columns, each over 18 meters high, which together lifted its massive, shining, marble roof" (p. 105). They understood that the purpose of pillars was not only to "hold the roof firm, but to thrust it high so that it can be clearly seen even from a distance." In the same way, Paul was saying the church had the responsibility of "holding the truth aloft so that it can be admired by the world" (p. 105).
Together these terms describe the church's twofold responsibility toward the truth (the apostolic gospel). It is to protect it against error, and it is to proclaim it to the world. Both aspects are important.
Sometimes the church loses sight of one or other of these duties. There are occasions when churches are so intent on proclaiming the truth that they fail to protect it. Usually an evangelistically active church will guard truth jealously. It knows that it is the truth that sets people free (John 8:32), and it guards that truth zealously, much as a champion axeman protects the edge of his favourite axe. To mar the truth will be to blunt the effectiveness of evangelism. However, when churches become more concerned with numbers than true conversions, they run the risk of compromising the truth to get results. We always need to be alert to the danger of doing this.
Again, churches can sometimes overemphasize the duty of protecting the truth and fail to proclaim it. In theory, a church that values the gospel will want to make it known to the world. But it doesn't always work out that way. It is possible to become so obsessed with defending the faith that this is all that a church does. Its turns completely inward and becomes absorbed with correctness rather than conversions. There are too many examples of this to deny that it too is a very real danger facing the church in every age.
We need to keep both aspects of the church's duty to the truth close to our hearts. It is an enormous privilege - and responsibility - to be entrusted with the preservation and the proclamation of the words of eternal life.