The Watchman's Charge: Guarding the Good Deposit Text: 1 Timothy 6:20-21
Introduction: A Personal and Final Command
The Apostle Paul does not end his letter to Timothy with a gentle fade-out. He concludes with a sharp, personal, and urgent command. It is as though he puts his hand on his young protege's shoulder, looks him squarely in the eye, and gives him a final, weighty charge. "O Timothy." This is not an abstract treatise; it is a direct, pastoral imperative. And it is a command that echoes down through the centuries to every pastor, every elder, and indeed every Christian who has been entrusted with the glorious truth of the gospel.
We live in an age that despises boundaries, definitions, and objective truth. Our culture is awash in what Paul calls "godless and empty chatter." It is the age of the therapeutic, where feelings are the final arbiter of reality. It is the age of deconstruction, where meaning is not discovered but created, and then discarded just as quickly. Our universities and seminaries are filled with the "opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge," a new Gnosticism that promises a higher, more enlightened understanding but delivers only rebellion and confusion. They offer a Jesus that fits neatly into our progressive politics, a gospel stripped of its offensive, glorious power. They want a faith that is fluid, tolerant, and ultimately, empty.
Into this swirling fog of subjectivism, Paul's command to Timothy is a thunderclap. Guard what has been entrusted to you. The faith is not a lump of clay for us to reshape in our own image. It is a treasure, a deposit, placed into our hands for safekeeping. It is not ours to edit, to update, or to apologize for. It is ours to guard, to defend, and to proclaim. This final charge in First Timothy is not merely a concluding pleasantry; it is the central duty of the Christian minister and the Christian church. It is a call to arms in a war of words, a war of worldviews, a war for the truth itself.
The Text
O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, turning aside from godless and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, which some, while professing, have gone astray from the faith.
Grace be with you.
(1 Timothy 6:20-21 LSB)
The Sacred Trust (v. 20a)
Paul begins with the central command:
"O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you..." (1 Timothy 6:20a)
The phrase "what has been entrusted to you" translates a single Greek word, paratheke, which means a deposit. In the ancient world, this was a formal, legal term. It referred to a valuable item, like money or jewels, that was entrusted to a trusted friend for safekeeping, often while the owner was away on a long journey. The person holding the deposit had a solemn obligation to protect it at all costs and to return it to the owner exactly as it was received. To tamper with the deposit was a profound betrayal of trust.
This is Paul's metaphor for the gospel. The gospel is the good deposit. It is the pattern of sound words, the doctrine of God our Savior. It is not something Timothy invented. It is not something Paul invented. It is a treasure that comes from God Himself, delivered through the apostles, and entrusted to the church. Our responsibility is not innovation but preservation. The pastor is a watchman on the wall, not an architect in a design studio. His job is to protect the city, not to redesign it according to his own whims.
This cuts directly against the grain of our modern sensibilities. We are told that to be relevant, the church must constantly change, adapt, and evolve its message. But the gospel is not a product to be rebranded for a new market. It is a fixed, unchanging reality. The person and work of Jesus Christ, the truth of His substitutionary atonement, His bodily resurrection, and His coming reign, these are not negotiable. To "guard" this deposit means we must know it, cherish it, and defend it from all corruption, whether that corruption comes from outside the church or, as is more often the case, from within.
The Corrupting Influences (v. 20b)
Paul then identifies two primary threats to this sacred deposit that Timothy must actively avoid.
"...turning aside from godless and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, " (1 Timothy 6:20b LSB)
First, he must turn away from "godless and empty chatter." This refers to profane babblings, talk that is hollow, worldly, and devoid of spiritual substance. This is the kind of talk that fills our airwaves and internet feeds. It is speech that is untethered from the fear of God. It is speculative, endlessly circling around controversies and quarrels about words, but never arriving at the truth. It produces "envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions" (1 Tim. 6:4). A faithful pastor must have a sanctified allergy to this kind of talk. He must refuse to get drawn into pointless debates that distract from the central task of proclaiming Christ.
Second, he must avoid the "opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge." The Greek word for knowledge here is gnosis. Paul is almost certainly confronting an early form of Gnosticism, a pernicious heresy that would plague the church for centuries. Gnosticism taught that salvation came not through faith in the historical work of Christ, but through a secret, superior knowledge available only to a spiritual elite. It was intellectual pride masquerading as piety. The Gnostics despised the material world, denied the true humanity of Christ, and twisted the Scriptures to fit their esoteric systems.
And we have our own modern Gnosticisms, do we not? Every ideology that claims to have a "new" insight into Christianity that just so happens to align perfectly with the spirit of the age is a form of falsely called knowledge. Whether it is the pseudo-scholarship that denies the authority of Scripture, the therapeutic gospel that reduces sin to a psychological problem, or the social justice gospel that replaces redemption with political liberation, it is all the same error. It is man-made "knowledge" set up in opposition to the revealed truth of God. Paul's instruction is not to debate it on its own terms, but to "turn aside" from it. We are to expose it, refute it, and refuse to give it a platform in the household of God.
The Tragic Consequence (v. 21a)
Paul is not fighting against shadows. This is not a theoretical danger. There are real casualties in this war for the truth.
"...which some, while professing, have gone astray from the faith." (1 Timothy 6:21a LSB)
Doctrine is not a game. Bad theology has eternal consequences. Paul says that some, by professing this false knowledge, have "gone astray from the faith." The image is of someone who has missed the mark, who has swerved off the path. They started out claiming to be on the road of faith, but their pursuit of this counterfeit knowledge led them into the ditch of apostasy.
Notice the connection: they were "professing" it. They were making a public claim. This is a sober warning. It is not enough to have a vague, sentimental attachment to Jesus. The faith is a body of truth to be believed and confessed. When we trade that truth for the empty chatter of the world or the arrogant speculations of false knowledge, we are not simply modifying our faith; we are abandoning it. The path away from orthodoxy begins with a small compromise, a subtle shift in emphasis, a desire to be more acceptable to the world. But that path, if followed, leads to ruin. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims.
The Abiding Resource (v. 21b)
After this heavy charge, Paul concludes with a simple, profound benediction that is also the key to fulfilling the command.
"Grace be with you." (1 Timothy 6:21b LSB)
The task of guarding the deposit is immense. The threats are real and relentless. The temptation to compromise is constant. If Timothy, or any of us, were left to our own strength, we would fail before the day was out. But we are not left to our own strength. The final word is "grace."
In the Greek, the "you" is plural. Paul is not just speaking to Timothy, but to the entire church at Ephesus. The great task of guarding the faith is a corporate one, and the great resource for that task is the grace of God. It is God's unmerited favor that saves us, and it is His unmerited favor that sustains us. It is by grace that we are given the deposit, and it is by grace that we are enabled to guard it.
This grace is not a vague, ethereal substance. It is the active, powerful presence of God working in us and through us by His Spirit. It is the grace that gives us courage when we are timid, clarity when we are confused, and steadfastness when we are tempted to waver. The command to "guard" is not a call to anxious, fretful striving in our own power. It is a call to depend utterly on the grace of God, which is sufficient for every trial and every task. We stand firm in the truth only because we stand in His grace.
Conclusion: The Watchman's Joy
Paul's final charge to Timothy is therefore our charge today. We have been entrusted with a treasure beyond all price: the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. In a world that is drunk on lies, we are called to be pillars and buttresses of the truth.
This means we must be men and women of the Book. We cannot guard what we do not know. We must steep ourselves in the Scriptures, so that the pattern of sound words becomes the very grammar of our thoughts and speech. It means we must be discerning, testing every new teaching against the plumb line of God's Word. It means we must have courage, refusing to bow to the intellectual fashions of the day, and speaking the truth in love, even when it is unpopular.
This is not a grim duty, but a glorious one. To be a guardian of the truth is to be a guardian of life itself, for it is this truth that sets men free. It is this deposit that contains the only hope for a lost and dying world. Therefore, let us take up the charge with joy. Let us guard the good deposit, turning away from the noise and nonsense of the age, and fixing our eyes on the truth. And as we do, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.