Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
1 Timothy 1:19

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 19. Holding faith — All the truths of the Christian religion, firmly believing them, and fervently proclaiming them to others.

And a good conscience — So holding the truth as to live according to its dictates, that a good conscience may be ever preserved. As the apostle had just spoken of the Christian's warfare, so he here refers to the Christian armour, especially to the shield and breastplate; the shield of faith, and the breastplate of righteousness. Ephesians 6:13, c., and "1 Thessalonians 5:8".

Which some having put away — απωσαμενοι. Having thrust away as a fool-hardy soldier might his shield and his breastplate, or a mad sailor his pilot, helm, and compass.

Concerning faith — The great truths of the Christian religion.

Have made shipwreck — Being without the faith, that only infallible system of truth; and a good conscience, that skilful pilot, that steady and commanding helm, that faithful and invariable loadstone; have been driven to and fro by every wind of doctrine, and, getting among shoals, quicksands, and rocks, have been shipwrecked and ingulfed.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Reminders from past experiences (1:12-20)

As soon as Paul mentions the gospel, he is reminded of the power and grace of God that he has experienced in his own life. God changed Paul, and turned the greatest of sinners into his special representative to take the gospel to the Gentiles. If God can do that, there must be no limit to his mercy, grace and love (12-15). No person is beyond hope. Christ’s patience in dealing with the persecutor Paul should be an assurance to others that he will be merciful to them too. When repentant sinners are thankful for all that the Almighty God has done for them, they will respond by giving him honour and glory (16-17).
Paul recalls the prophecy, given at the outset of Timothy’s ministry, that indicated the kind of ministry to which he was called. He trusts that as Timothy thinks over the words of that prophecy, he will find renewed courage to stand firm for what he knows to be right. A firm faith must be linked to a clear conscience (18-19a).
Hymenaeus and Alexander were two who had been guilty of serious wrongdoing because they separated their beliefs from their behaviour. They refused to change their ways and in the end were put out of the church. They were, so to speak, put out of the sphere where God’s rule was acknowledged into the sphere where they were open to the attacks of Satan. But Paul hoped that the punishment would lead to correction, so that as they realized their wrongdoing they would turn from it (19b-20).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

holding faith and a good conscience; which some having thrust from them made shipwreck concerning the faith:

Faith and a good conscience … The obedience of faith is meant by this as in this quotation from Wallis:

The whole gospel message embraces both doctrine and obedience. The faith is what we believe about Christ; good conscience is not allowing the conscience to be defiled by sinful practices contrary to the doctrine. Wilbur B. Wallis, op. cit., p. 846.

Made shipwreck … Scholars are very tender with regard to interpretations of this, as in the following:

We are not justified in interpreting "suffered shipwreck" as though it meant they were lost beyond hope of recovery. St. Paul himself had suffered shipwreck at least four times when he wrote this, and had on each occasion lost everything except himself. Newport J. D. White, op. cit., p. 101.

While true enough that Paul did survive four shipwrecks, the fact is that shipwrecks are usually fatal to some and frequently to all who may be aboard; and there is certainly nothing in the passage that denies shipwrecks as equivalent to "spiritual death" in a passage like this. To be sure, this does not deny hope to any who might DESIRE to recover themselves out of the snare of the evil one. See under 2 Timothy 2:24 f.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Holding faith - Fidelity to the cause in which you are enlisted - as a good soldier should do. This does not mean, as it seems to me, that Timothy should hold to the system of doctrines revealed in the gospel, but that he should have that fidelity which a good soldier should have. He should not betray his trust. He should adhere to the cause of his master with unwavering steadfastness. This would include, of course, a belief of the truth, but this is not the leading idea in the phrase.

And a good conscience - see the notes, Acts 23:1. A good conscience, as well as fidelity, is necessary in the service of the Redeemer. A good conscience is that which is well informed in regard to what is right, and where its dictates are honestly followed.

Which some having put away - That is, which good conscience some have put from them, or in other words, have not followed its dictates. The truth thus taught is, that people make shipwreck of their faith by not keeping a good conscience. They love sin. They follow the leadings of passion. They choose to indulge in carnal propensities. As a matter of course, they must, if they will do this, reject and renounce the gospel. People become infidels because they wish to indulge in sin. No man can be a sensualist, and yet love that gospel which enjoins purity of life. If people would keep a good conscience, the way to a steady belief in the gospel would be easy. If people will not, they must expect sooner or later to be landed in infidelity.

Concerning faith - In respect to the whole subject of faith. They are unfaithful to God, and they reject the whole system of the gospel. “Faith” is sometimes used to denote the gospel - as faith is the principal thing in the gospel.

Have made shipwreck - There is an entire destruction of faith - as a ship is wholly ruined that strikes on a rock and sinks.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

19Having faith and a good conscience I understand the word faith to be a general term, denoting sound doctrine. In the same sense he afterwards speaks of “the mystery of faith.” (1 Timothy 3:9.) And, indeed, the chief things demanded from a teacher are these two: — that he shall hold by the pure truth of the gospel; and next, that he shall administer it with a good conscience and holiest zeal. Where these are found, all the others will follow of their own accord.

From which some having turned aside concerning faith He shows how necessary it is that faith be accompanied by a good conscience; because, on the other hand, the punishment of a bad conscience is turning aside from the path of duty. They who do not serve God with a sincere and a perfect heart, but give a loose rein to wicked dispositions, even though at first they had a sound understanding, come to lose it altogether.

This passage ought to be carefully observed. We know that the treasure of sound doctrine is invaluable, and therefore there is nothing that we ought to dread more than to have it taken from us. But Paul here informs us, that there is only one way of keeping it safe; and that is, to secure it by the locks and bars of a good conscience. This is what we experience every day; for how comes it that there are so many who, laying aside the gospel, rush into wicked sects, or become involved in monstrous errors? It is because, by this kind of blindness, God punishes hypocrisy; as, on the other hand, a genuine fear of God gives strength for perseverance.

Hence we may learn two lessons. First, Teachers and ministers of the gospel, and, through them all the churches are taught with what horror they ought to regard a hypocritical and deceitful profession of true doctrine, when they learn that it is so severely punished. Secondly, this passage removes the offense by which so many persons are greatly distressed, when they perceive that some, who formerly professed their attachment to Christ and to the gospel, not only fall back into their former superstitions but (which is far worse) are bewildered and captivated by monstrous errors. For by such examples, God openly supports the majesty of the gospel, and openly shows that he cannot at all endure the profanation of it. And this is what experience has taught us in every age. All the errors that have existed in the Christian Church from the beginning, proceeded from this source, that in some persons, ambition, and in others, covetousness, extinguished the true fear of God. A bad conscience is, therefore, the mother of all heresies; and we see that a vast number of persons, who had not sincerely and honestly embraced the faith, are hurried along, like brute beasts, into the reveries of the Epicureans, so that their hypocrisy is exposed. And not only so, but contempt of God is universally prevalent, and the licentious and disgraceful lives of almost all ranks show that there is either none at all, or the smallest possible potion of integrity in the world; so that there is very great reason to fear lest the light which had been kindled may be speedily extinguished, and God may leave the pure understanding of the gospel to be possessed by very few.

Have made shipwreck: The metaphor taken from shipwreck is highly appropriate; for it suggests to us, that, if we wish to arrive safely at the harbor, our course must be guided by a good conscience, otherwise there is danger of “shipwreck;” that is, there is danger lest faith be sunk by a bad conscience, as by a whirlpool in a stormy sea. ⁽³⁰⁾

(30) “What is human life, and what is the whole of its course? A navigation. Not only are we travelers, as the Scripture tells us, (1 Peter 2:11,) but we have no solidity. They who travel by land, either on foot or on horseback, have still their sure and firm road; but in the world, instead of being on foot or on horseback, we must be, as it were, on a sea, and we have no solid footing. We are like people who are in a boat, and who are always within half a foot of their death; and the boat is a sort of grave, because they see the water all around ready to swallow them up. Thus is it with us, while we live here below. For, on the one hand, there is the frailty that is in us, which is more fluid than water; and then all that surrounds us is like water, which flows on all sides, while at every minute winds, and storms. and tempests arise. Let us therefore learn that our life is but a kind of navigation, which we perform by water, and that we are, at the same time, exposed to many winds and storms. And if it be so, what shall become of us when we have not a good boat or a good pilot?” — Fr. Ser.

Smith's Bible Commentary

First Timothy.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour ( 1 Timothy 1:1 ),

And the Greek word is "the royal commandment" of God; it's a word that is used when a king had made a decree. It is interesting that Paul so often introduces himself as an apostle by the will of God. But here he declares he is an apostle by the commandment of God.

The word apostle is one who has been sent out; idea of an emissary or an ambassador. And that's exactly what Paul saw himself, as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, one whom the Lord had sent out to represent him in an alien country. We're in a world that's alien to God, but we are God's representatives here. We are here to represent God on this alien planet. And so "Paul," one who has been sent out by the royal decree, "by the commandment of God our Saviour."

Now there is quite a bit of Old Testament root in the idea of God our salvation. David mentions it in the psalms. Moses mentions it in Deuteronomy. Mary in the magnificat, "My soul that magnify the Lord, my spirit doth rejoice in God our Saviour" ( Luke 1:46-47 ). And so here is the first time that Paul uses the phrase or the term, "God our Saviour."

and Lord Jesus Christ, our hope ( 1 Timothy 1:1 );

God our Saviour, Jesus Christ, our hope.

Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord ( 1 Timothy 1:2 ).

Timothy lived in Lystra, a city that Paul visited in his first missionary journey. It is thought that Paul perhaps stayed in the house of Timothy on his first missionary journey. He knew his mother and grandmother. He knew how they had instructed Timothy in the word. He mentions Eunice and Lois. Timothy was just a very young boy in Paul's first journey to Lystra, but evidently at that time made a commitment of his life to Jesus Christ and always held Paul as sort of a hero. Fascinated by this man, he looked up to him.

On Paul's second missionary journey, though Timothy was still very young, probably in his mid-teens, he at this time became a companion of Paul and journeyed with him in his missionary endeavors. And so he is listed in many of Paul's writings. He was sent by Paul to Thessalonica to discover the welfare of the church. He had visited many of these churches with Paul, was familiar with the people; Paul sent him to Philippi with a letter to the Philippians and he said that he had no one who was like-minded as he was as Timothy. I mean, Timothy was just joined with Paul in heart and in spirit, in calling, in vision.

And so now Paul is writing to him and he addresses him as his son in the faith. "My own son in the faith." And so there was this special relationship that existed between Paul and Timothy, like that of a father and son. And I believe that Paul saw in Timothy a tremendous potential for one to carry on the ministry once Paul was taken, and so he poured his life into Timothy; he discipled Timothy. And this is one of the two letters that he wrote to Timothy of instruction, as a father to his son. So, "Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace."

Now in most of Paul's epistles, he says, "Grace and peace." Two epistles he adds "mercy", this one to Timothy and also his epistle to Titus, there is the addition of "mercy". There is a difference between grace and mercy; mercy is not getting what's coming to us. God is merciful. The Bible says, "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high is God's mercy towards those that fear him" ( Psalms 103:11 ). God is very merciful. And though we deserve the judgment of God, God is merciful.

And though I have no, I have no argument that Hollywood and that area of Los Angeles doesn't deserve the judgment, I believe it does deserve the judgment of God, but God is merciful. I think that God would be totally just in wiping out San Francisco, Hollywood, and a lot of these areas, but God is merciful. We don't get what we deserve. And of course, if I got what I deserved, God would wipe me out, too. So who am I to talk about San Francisco or Hollywood? God is merciful. He does not reward us according to our iniquities.

Grace is a positive characteristic of God. Mercy is sort of a negative characteristic, in that you don't get what's coming to you. Grace is a positive characteristic; that is, getting what you don't deserve. I don't deserve all of the goodness of God. I don't deserve all of the blessings of God. I don't deserve all that God has done for me. But that's grace, God doing for me what I don't deserve; what I couldn't earn. What I don't and haven't merited. God just pouring out upon me the richness of His love and His goodness and His blessings; that's grace, and realizing that grace of God towards me, my spirit rests. And thus, I have the peace. So "Grace, mercy, and peace".

As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that you might charge some that they teach no other doctrine ( 1 Timothy 1:3 ),

So Paul was called of God to come over to Macedonia. Timothy was with him but Paul felt a necessity to send him back to Ephesus to instruct the church there, and though he was a young man, Paul encouraged him, "Don't let anybody despise your youth; be an example unto the believer" ( 1 Timothy 4:12 ). And so I sent you back to Ephesus that you might charge those that they not teach any other doctrine,

Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which only create questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith. Now the end of the commandment ( 1 Timothy 1:4-5 )

Or the effect, the sum total of the commandments of God,

is love out of a pure heart ( 1 Timothy 1:5 ),

A lawyer one day asked Jesus, "What is the greatest commandment?" He said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, strength" ( Matthew 22:37 ). So that's what Paul is saying. Really the summation of the commandments is loving out of a pure heart. That's what it's all about. If I'm really following the commandments, that will be the effect, this loving out of a pure heart. How God does want us to just have this deep love for one another. That's what, that's the, if you want to sum up all of the commandments, it's summed up in that; loving, loving God and loving one another. That's what it's all about. That's what God desires of us. Loving with a pure heart,

a good conscience, and faith unfeigned ( 1 Timothy 1:5 ):

Or a true faith, a good conscience. Love. What great characteristics to possess; loving from a pure heart, just a good conscience. Paul said I have a conscience void of offence towards God. And then faith that is true, unfeigned. Now some have turned away from this, Paul said.

And they've turned aside to vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; but they don't understand what they are saying, nor the things that they affirm ( 1 Timothy 1:6-7 ).

Now Paul is warning against endless genealogies, questions that only create confusion or disputes. There's --there are honest questions and there are dishonest questions. There are some people who ask questions only because they want an argument; they don't want to know the truth. They have a position that they want to espouse, so they want to get you embroiled in an argument. And so they will ask a question, not really seeking an answer but seeking an argument. They want you to state your position so that they can then begin to attack your position; that I call a dishonest question. An honest question is the man who asks, desiring to know the answer. Now I personally do not have any time for dishonest questions. And I'll tell you, I got the gift of discernment when it comes to questions.

Of course, I know that certain groups have certain questions. And when someone comes up and they have the stock questions that they ask, I know exactly where they're coming from. And sometimes I treat them rather abruptly and people standing around said, "Oh, that poor brother wanted to know." I said he didn't want to know anything; he wanted to argue. I don't want to argue scripture. I don't think that anything is gained from arguing scripture, trading verses.

And so Paul is saying avoid these things. Tell the people to avoid these fables, endless genealogies, questions that are designed. That isn't why --that isn't where it's at. Our purpose should be to build up one another, not to cut at one another, tear down one another, challenge one another; but the true purpose is to build up one another. And these people, he said, they desire to be teachers and they speak with great authority, but they don't know what they're talking about. A lot of times when you don't know what you're talking about, it's important that you speak with authority.

I read of a minister who had his sermon all outlined, but then he had little notes of gestures that should be used at particular points in the sermon. And so at this particular point it says, Extend your arm outward, opening up your palm, you know, to the people, and so these vivid-type gestures. And he had all of his notes all the way down, how he was to gesture, where he was to look, when he was to smile and so forth, and the whole thing was all programmed out for him. Well, they do that. But down on the page it said, At this point yell like everything, because it's a weak point. And sometimes, you know, when our point is weak we got to yell it; we got to speak with authority.

But he said they really desire to be teachers but they don't know what they're talking about, they don't know the things that they are affirming to be so. These people were again trying to bring the people back under the law. And so Paul said,

We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully ( 1 Timothy 1:8 );

Don't have any argument with the law. But then Paul comes in and he said,

But we know this, the law was not made for a righteous man ( 1 Timothy 1:9 ),

An interesting point. You see, a righteous man does not need any law. A man who lives by good principles doesn't need laws; you don't have to tell that man what he should do and shouldn't do. He does them because he is a righteous man; he is a principled man. The law is for unprincipled people, and there are a lot of those in the world. And thus we need laws to keep them in check.

In Romans, Paul said the law is not a terror to a good person. It's only a terror to the evil person ( Romans 13:3 ). You shouldn't be terrified when you see a policeman unless you're a bank robber or something. You see, if you're guilty of violating the law, then the law becomes something that you're frightened of, something that you dislike. But if you're an honest, upright principled citizen, you appreciate the law. You appreciate those who are enforcing the law because they're making it possible for you to live in this area. And if it weren't for the law and those who are enforcing the law, we would be living in an intolerable condition because there are those out there who need that kind of a bridle.

So you want to be taught the law, you want the law. Paul says, All this, I'll tell you who the law is for; it's not for righteous people. They don't need to be taught the law. They don't need to be put under the law.

but [the law is] for the lawless, the disobedient, the ungodly, the sinner, for unholy and profane people, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind [or for the homosexuals], for the menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be anything that is contrary to sound doctrine ( 1 Timothy 1:9-10 );

Those are the people who the law is for. So you want us to teach the law. Well, what problem do you have, brother? You see, the law isn't for righteous people. We don't have to be rehearsing the law if we live by righteous principles.

According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust ( 1 Timothy 1:11 ).

Now Paul says rather than teaching and preaching the law, we are teaching and preaching the glorious gospel, the good news of God. The law is bad news for the people to whom it was sent because it is a restricting thing, a condemning thing; the lawless. But rather than preaching the law, we preach the "glorious good news, the gospel of the blessed God," which, Paul said, "was committed to my trust."

And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me, and counted me faithful, putting me in the ministry ( 1 Timothy 1:12 );

Now Paul says of the ministry that he was enabled by the Lord. God isn't really looking for ability, though so often when we are looking for someone to fill a position within the church or whatever, we get out the resumes and we look for the graduated Magna cum Laude and we're looking for the most talented individual. God doesn't. God looks for the most available individual and then He enables him to do the work that He would have done. And quite often, the choices of God are shocking to us. You know, it's sort of an interesting thing; he says God counted him faithful, put him in the ministry. And of course, a steward is required that he be faithful. So God's looking for someone who's available, someone who'd be faithful.

Years ago when we started Calvary Chapel, just eighteen and a-half years ago, from the very beginning it seems that God began to bless this group of people that had gathered together. It was definitely something that was ordained of God and born of the Spirit and born of prayer, and we began to have just an immediate move of God and God began to add people almost immediately. Of course, we started with about twenty-five the first Sunday. And before long we were running fifty. And within a year or so, we were running a hundred. And there were a lot of other small churches in Costa Mesa at that time, and they began to observe what God was doing at Calvary Chapel. And some of the ministers at that time publicly said to their congregations, "If God can do it for Chuck Smith He can do it for us." I liked that. I understood why it is that God chose me to encourage others. For if God can do it for me, He can do it for anybody. And He used that to encourage a lot of the pastors at that time.

So Paul the apostle said that the Lord enabled me. He counted me faithful, He put me in the ministry. I'm thankful for this. He committed to my trust the glorious gospel of the blessed God. He said,

For before I was a blasphemer ( 1 Timothy 1:13 ),

That he was; that is, he was a blasphemer against the church and against Jesus Christ.

I was a persecutor ( 1 Timothy 1:13 ),

He stood by while Stephen was stoned, consenting to Stephen's death, encouraging those that were throwing the stones by holding their coats. And then he went down to Damascus from Jerusalem with letters authorizing him to imprison those who were believing in Jesus Christ. And on his way to Damascus, as he was breathing out murders and threats against the church is when the Lord got hold of his life. But "before I was a blasphemer, I was a persecutor,"

I was injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus ( 1 Timothy 1:13-14 ).

So Paul talks about his own ministry, his call into the ministry. An unlikely a candidate as you could ever hope to find. In fact, I thought that it would be very interesting if Paul the apostle were to have a resume written of him and sent to some of the churches that are seeking new pastors. I'm sure that the pulpit committee in reading his resume would say, "Hey, don't even bother finishing. We don't want that fellow." I've been thrown in prison several times. I've been beaten. I've been stoned. I've created riots. I have poor eyesight. I'm not much of a speaker. And yet God enabled him, called him, used him. Paul speaks of having received mercy. But then also, he received the grace of our Lord, exceeding abundant grace. Oh how glorious!

Now this is a faithful saying ( 1 Timothy 1:15 ),

Now he talked about the glorious gospel that was entrusted to him and this is the gospel. This is the faithful saying,

It's worthy of all acceptation ( 1 Timothy 1:15 ),

It's a true saying. It's worthy that every man should accept it. What is that true and faithful saying that everyone should accept? This:

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners ( 1 Timothy 1:15 );

That's the gospel. That's the good news. "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." First of all, all men are sinners. Therefore, He came to save all men. "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" ( Romans 3:23 ). Because all men are sinners, all then were dead in their trespasses and sins.

Paul, in writing to the church in Ephesus said, "And you who were dead in your trespasses and sins: where in times past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, that even now is working in the children of disobedience: among whom you all of you one time lived" ( Ephesians 2:1-3 ). No exception; we were all sinners. We were all alienated from God as the result of our sin. Our lives were wasted, useless, lost. The glorious Gospel: Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Jesus said I've come "to seek and to save that which was lost" ( Luke 19:10 ). And so this glorious Gospel entrusted to Paul is just so simple, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

Jesus said to Nicodemus, "I did not come into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through me might be saved. And he who believes in me is not condemned: but he who doesn't believe in me is condemned already, because he hasn't believed in the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, but the men will not come to the light because their deeds are evil and the light makes manifest" ( John 3:17-19 ).

Jesus does not stand as your accuser. He stands there as your Savior. Jesus did not make accusations against the sinner. He only gave invitations, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest" ( Matthew 11:28 ). If you're a sinner, you don't need to fear Jesus. He's reaching out His arms to you. He's saying to you, Come unto me, I will give you peace. I will give you rest. I will give you hope. I will give you life. I came to save you.

You see, so many times we see Jesus in the opposite posture. We see Him there condemning us, pointing the finger. Oh, I don't want to be around Him. I feel so guilty, you know. I've done so many awful things, you know, and I see Jesus as a Judge and as One condemning me; but not so. He said, I didn't come to condemn.

The woman taken in the very act of adultery brought to Jesus; and they said, "Our law says we're to stone her. What do You say?" Jesus said, "Well, I say whoever among you hasn't committed a sin, let him throw the first stone." Then as He wrote on the ground, and I am certain, though the Bible doesn't say it, He began to write on the ground with His finger there on the dirt, I believe He began to write and enumerate the sins that these people were guilty of. Probably putting their name. Levi, you know, I'd start writing out his sin. And Levi says, Oh, I think I better go, my wife's you know expecting me home. And so one by one He wrote their names, began to write their sins. And one by one they began to leave from the oldest to the youngest until there was nobody left. And Jesus stood up and He looked up at the woman, He said, "What happened to your accusers?" And she said, "Well, Lord, I guess I don't have any." He said, "I don't condemn you, either. Go your way, sin no more" ( John 8:2-11 ).

Oh what good news. Jesus came into the world to save sinners, not to condemn them. We didn't need that; we were already condemned. What we did need was a Savior. When I am in need, when I am down, when I am out, I don't need someone to come and tell me how horrible a person I am and how awful I am. I need someone that will take me by the hand and lift me out, someone that will help me. And that's exactly what --Jesus doesn't come along to chastise you and to castigate you for all the evil that you've done; he's come along to take you by the hand and lift you. This is the Gospel. This is the good news. "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." And Paul added,

of whom I am chief ( 1 Timothy 1:15 ).

Now I'm certain that he could get an argument on that point. But again, Paul did have a lot of indictments against him, as far as Jesus Christ was concerned. For he was a blasphemer of Jesus Christ, he was a persecutor of the church, he had injured many who had called upon the name of the Lord. But he said,

Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to everlasting life ( 1 Timothy 1:16 ).

In other words, the Lord chose the most unlikely candidate and saved him. I mean, if you were living in those days and you saw this young, zealous Paul. And you saw how he hated the church and hated Christianity, hated all of the Christians. And if you heard him, as he would blaspheme the Christians and just, you know, he was just so filled with venom and all against Christianity and those that were calling on the name of Jesus. You'd say, man, that is the last person in the world that will ever be saved. I mean, there's no hope for that guy, you know. And so Paul says, God chose me to show how longsuffering and merciful He is in order that anybody else after me might be encouraged.

Hey, God is willing to reach to the lowest. Jesus Christ will forgive the worst and it should be an encouragement. God set the pattern by reaching down to the bottom and lifting me out and making me His representative, His apostle, His ambassador. So Paul marveled, constantly marveled that God should call him to minister the truth of Jesus Christ, after how he had attempted to destroy this very truth that he was now proclaiming.

Now unto the King eternal ( 1 Timothy 1:17 ),

Now Paul when he's thinking about this he's just carried off into ecstasy and so he has to throw in this little benediction. Paul does this every once in a while, he just gets so excited he has just to throw in a little bit of praise-kind-of-a-thing, you know. And I love it. I --it happens to me. I get so excited with the goodness of God and the grace of God and the blessing of God, I just every once in a while, I have to throw in a little, "Oh, praise God," you know and little benediction-kind-of-a-thing. So, "now unto the King eternal,"

immortal, invisible, to the only wise God, be glory and honour for ever and ever. Amen ( 1 Timothy 1:17 ).

So beautiful, little benediction here. "The King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen." We are told to give glory unto God. Glory and honour and power ascribe unto our God.

This charge [Paul said] I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that you by them might war a good warfare; holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck: Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme ( 1 Timothy 1:18-20 ).

So now Paul is charging Timothy and charging him "according to the prophecies, which went before on thee." Now, many times it would seem in the early church they were directed in their ministry by prophecies, by the word of prophecy.

In the book of Acts chapter thirteen, "Now the Holy Spirit said, Separate unto me Paul and Barnabas for the ministry wherein I have called them. And so they fasted and prayed, laid hands on them, and the Spirit sent them forth" ( Acts 13:2-3 ). But how did the Spirit speak saying, "Separate unto me Paul and Barnabas?" Here they were gathered together praying, no doubt talking about the need of getting the Gospel into the world that had not heard, and the Spirit said, "Separate to me Paul and Barnabas for the ministry wherein I've called them." How did He say that? I believe that it was spoken through the word of prophecy. Someone in the group was anointed by the Spirit and prophetically declared this. And thus the Holy Spirit through prophecy said, "Separate unto me Paul and Barnabas". And the gift of prophecy was used this way in the early church.

When Paul was in Caesarea on his way back to Jerusalem, staying at the house of Philip; Agabus, a certain prophet in the church of Jerusalem came down and took Paul's girdle and tied himself up with it. And said, "So is the person who owns this girdle to be tied when he gets to Jerusalem" ( Acts 21:11 ). He prophesied of what was going to take place when Paul got to Jerusalem. They were directed.

And so Paul in another place in writing to Timothy said, "Now stir up the gifts that are in you, that were given unto you by the laying on of hands and by prophecy" ( 1 Timothy 4:14 ). So oftentimes when they would lay hands upon people and pray for them, there would be prophecies that would come forth, in which the Lord would often show the person the direction of their ministry.

Now this is not something that is limited to the New Testament. As I said, I have not seen a vision or had a dream that I felt was spiritually significant. I have had prophecies that were directed to me concerning my ministry when hands were laid upon me and we were in prayer together. And this is a practice of the early church, and it is something that is valid today.

Years ago when I came to a very discouraging point in my ministry, having been in the ministry for almost seventeen years, not really seeing any effective results, discouraged really to the point of leaving the ministry because of the ineffectiveness of my ministry; we were in prayer together and a group of friends waiting upon the Lord. We put a chair out in the middle and we began to pray for people. And finally I sat in the chair and they prayed for me, and prophecy, the word of prophecy came. And God began to tell of the ministry that He was going to give to me and of the way that the church would be blessed and the way the church would grow. It seemed at that time like it was so totally unlikely. That time the Lord actually said that He was going to give me a new name, which meant "shepherd", because He was going to make me the shepherd of many flock.

Before I came down here, a group of people were in prayer, as to whether or not I should come down. They had asked me to come down and to take over here at Calvary Chapel and they were in prayer in regards to it. And the Lord spoke to them through prophecy and said that I was going to be coming down, that the Lord was going to bless the church abundantly. That we were going to --the church would be outgrowing that facility. We would be moving to a new facility on the bluff overlooking the bay, and that God would continue to bless until the church would be known around the world. There would be a national radio ministry, and God laid out so many things that have since come to pass through the word of prophecy.

So Paul is talking to Timothy about that experience he had, when hands were laid upon him by the presbytery, and the word of prophecy was given. And gifts were given unto Timothy, and the calling of God upon his life for the ministry that he was to fulfill. So I "charge and commit unto you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies that went before on thee." Remember those prophecies that were given. "That you by them might war a good warfare." Hang in there, Timothy. "Holding the faith, and a good conscience; now some have put away the faith and they've become shipwrecked:" And a couple of them he names, "Hymenaeus and Alexander;" and he said, "I've turned them over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme."

Now just what he means by that, I don't know, except Satan does desire to destroy us. And you remember when the sons of God were presenting themselves to God and Satan also came with them, and God said to Satan, Hey, where have you been? And he said, Oh, I've been going to and fro throughout the earth, up and down in it. And God said, Well, have you considered my servant Job? Good man. And he said, Oh yeah, but you've put a hedge around that guy. I can't get to him. So in turning them over to Satan, it could be that they are no longer protected by the hedge that God puts around his children. And I'll tell you, if you're not protected by God against Satan, you're just an open mark and I, I really --my heart goes out to you.

I thank God for that protection that He places around us, His children. That hedge. And perhaps Paul just said, Lord, take away the hedge. They want to dabble with it, let them get burned so that they'll learn not to dabble.

"

Contending for the Faith

Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:

Holding faith: Vincent says the word "holding" does not mean merely "having" but "holding fast" as in 2 Timothy 1:13. Barnes goes further and adds the following:

This does not mean, that Timothy should hold fast the system of doctrines revealed in the gospel, but that he should have that fidelity a good soldier should have. He should not betray his trust. He should adhere to the cause of his master with unwavering steadfastness. This would include, of course, a belief in the truth, but this is not the leading idea in the phrase" (Barnes 1132).

a good conscience: Conscience is the part of man that demands he should do what he believes to be right. A good conscience results when a person does what he honestly believes to be right.

which some having put away: This phrase says that some have thrust their good consciences from them. Their consciences tell them to do one thing, and they do something else.

concerning faith have made shipwreck: The American Standard Version translates this phrase as "made shipwreck concerning the faith." In this nautical metaphor, the apostle suggests that a "good conscience" is the pilot that can safely steer us on the sea of life to heaven’s safe harbor.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

II. TIMOTHY’S MISSION IN EPHESUS 1:3-20

In chapter 1 Paul charged Timothy to remain faithful to the task with which Paul had entrusted him in Ephesus. He began by reminding Timothy what that task was and how he should carry out his chief duty. Then he exhorted Timothy to be faithful. He reminded his young protégé of God’s power to transform lives and warned him of the danger of acting contrary to his own spiritually sensitive conscience.

"The absence of . . . [a thanksgiving] here supports the observation . . . that 1 Timothy is really for the sake of the church as much as, or more than, for Timothy himself; what is taking place in the church gives no cause for thanksgiving." [Note: Fee, p. 39.]

This feature also marks Galatians and Titus.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

B. Exhortations to be faithful 1:12-20

Paul proceed to balance his instruction by giving Timothy a positive encouragement and a negative warning so he would deal with the false teachers effectively.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

The command to which Paul referred here is the one contained in 1 Timothy 1:3-4. He now returned to the subject that he began there. Sometime in the past someone had given prophecies concerning Timothy’s effectiveness as a servant of Christ (1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6; cf. Acts 13:2). We have no certain record of who gave them, when, or where, unless it was at Timothy’s ordination (1 Timothy 4:14), but Paul referred to them here to motivate Timothy to carry on. [Note: Mounce, pp. 70-72, wrote an excursus on prophecies about Timothy.] Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus (1 Timothy 1:3), but more importantly the Holy Spirit had placed him there.

"Here the believer is cast in the role of a soldier who is ordered out into battle. The weapons of this soldier, however, are not clever argumentation or inescapable logic, things that we might think best suited to debates with false teachers. On the contrary, Timothy is to avoid debates (2 Timothy 2:23-25). Nor is the soldier’s objective the destruction of his opponent. Appropriate strategy includes instructing, correcting erroneous views and urging repentance (see 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15). The minister’s weapons for this fight are the gospel and godly concern for the spiritual condition of the opponent. The goal is to protect the faith of those whom the false teachers seek to influence and, if possible, to win back those who have strayed (1 Timothy 1:5). Only the gospel is sufficient for such work, as Paul has just taken great care to illustrate (1 Timothy 1:11-16)." [Note: Towner, 1-2 Timothy . . ., p. 58.]

As Timothy fought the good fight, he should continue to trust God and maintain a good conscience (cf. 2 Timothy 1:3). A conscience, like a computer, programmed with the will of God, can be a great asset to the Christian soldier. However if one violates his or her conscience so programmed, that person ignores a warning signal. The results can be disastrous. The conscience is the umpire of the soul. Someone has described it as the capacity to feel guilt. One’s conscience enables him or her to feel dishonor, shame, and guilt.

"In the conflict which we wage outwardly against the enemy, our chief concern is with the inner state and disposition of the heart." [Note: J. J. Van Oosterzee, "The Two Epistles of Paul to Timothy," in Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, edited by J. P. Lange, 11:25.]

"One man said of his hypocritical pastor, ’He is such a good preacher, he should never get out of the pulpit; but he is such a poor Christian, he should never get into the pulpit!" [Note: Wiersbe, 2:213.]

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

2. A negative warning 1:18-20

Paul next balanced his positive encouragement based on God’s dealings with himself (1 Timothy 1:12-17) with a negative warning based on God’s dealings with two unfaithful ministers. He did this to challenge Timothy further to remain faithful to God as he discharged his duties. His thought returned to what he had written in 1 Timothy 1:3-7. Towner saw this whole section (1 Timothy 1:3-20) as loosely chiastic. [Note: Towner, The Letters . . ., pp. 104-5.]

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 1

THE ROYAL COMMAND ( 1 Timothy 1:1-2 )

1:1-2 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the royal command of God, our Saviour, and of Jesus Christ, our Hope, writes this letter to Timothy, his true child in the faith. Grace, mercy and peace be to you from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Never a man magnified his office as Paul did. He did not magnify it in pride; he magnified it in wonder that God had chosen him for a task like that. Twice in the opening words of this letter he lays down the greatness of his privilege.

(i) First, he calls himself an apostle of Christ Jesus. Apostle is the Greek word apostolos ( G652) , from the verb apostellein ( G649) which means to send out; an apostolos ( G652) was one who was sent out. As far back as Herodotus it means an envoy, an ambassador, one who is sent out to represent his country and his king. Paul always regarded himself as the envoy and ambassador of Christ. And, in truth, that is the office of every Christian. It is the first duty of every ambassador to form a liaison between the country to which he is sent and the country from which he has come. He is the connecting link. And the first duty of every Christian is to be a connecting link between his fellow-men and Jesus Christ.

(ii) Secondly, he says that he is an apostle by the royal command of God. The word he uses is epitage ( G2003) . This is the word Greek uses for the injunctions which some inviolable law lays on a man; for the royal command which comes to a man from the king; and above all for the instructions which come to a man either directly or by some oracle from God. For instance, a man in an inscription dedicates an altar to the goddess Cybele, kat' ( G2596) epitagen ( G2003) , in accordance with the command of the goddess, which, he tells us, had come to him in a dream. Paul thought of himself as a man holding the king's commission.

If any man can arrive at this consciousness of being despatched by God, a new splendour enters into life. However humble his part may be in it, he is on royal service.

"Life can never be dull again

When once we've thrown our windows open wide

And seen the mighty world that lies outside,

And whispered to ourselves this wondrous thing,

'We're wanted for the business of the King!'"

It is always a privilege to do even the most menial things for someone whom we love and respect and admire. All his life the Christian is on the business of the King.

Paul goes on to give to God and to Jesus two great titles.

He speaks of God, our Saviour. This is a new way of speaking. We do not find this title for God in any of Paul's earlier letters. There are two backgrounds from which it comes.

(a) It comes from an Old Testament background. It is Moses' charge against Israel that Jeshurun "forsook God who made him, and scoffed at the Rock of his Salvation" ( Deuteronomy 32:15). The Psalmist sings of how the good man will receive righteousness from the God of his salvation ( Psalms 24:5). It is Mary's song, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour" ( Luke 1:46-47). When Paul called God Saviour, he was going back to an idea which had always been dear to Israel.

(b) There is a pagan background. It so happened that just at this time the title soter ( G4990) , Saviour, was much in use. Men had always used it. In the old days the Romans had called Scipio, their great general, "our hope and our salvation." But at this very time it was the title which the Greeks gave to Aesculapius, the god of healing. And it was one of the titles which Nero, the Roman Emperor, had taken to himself. So in this opening sentence Paul is taking the title which was much on the lips of a seeking and a wistful world and giving it to the only person to whom it belonged by right.

We must never forget that Paul called God Saviour. It is possible to take a quite wrong idea of the Atonement. Sometimes people speak of it in a way which indicates that something Jesus did pacified the anger of God. The idea they give is that God was bent on our destruction and that somehow his wrath was turned to love by Jesus. Nowhere in the New Testament is there any support for that. It was because God so loved the world that he sent Jesus into the world ( John 3:16). God is Saviour. We must never think or preach or teach of a God who had to be pacified and persuaded into loving us, for everything begins from his love.

THE HOPE OF THE WORLD ( 1 Timothy 1:1-2 continued)

Paul uses a title which was to become one of the great titles of Jesus--"Christ Jesus, our hope." Long ago the Psalmist had demanded of himself: "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" And he had answered: "Hope in God" ( Psalms 43:5). Paul himself speaks of "Christ in you, the hope of glory" ( Colossians 1:27). John speaks of the dazzling prospect which confronted the Christian, the prospect of being like Christ; and goes on to say: "Every one who thus hopes purifies himself as he is pure" ( 1 John 3:2-3).

In the early Church this was to become one of the most precious titles of Christ. Ignatius of Antioch, when on his way to execution in Rome, writes to the Church in Ephesus: "Be of good cheer in God the Father and in Jesus Christ our common hope" (Ignatius: To the Ephesians 21:2). Polycarp writes: "Let us therefore persevere in our hope and the earnest of our righteousness, who is Jesus Christ" (Epistle of Polycarp 8).

(i) Men found in Christ the hope of moral victory and of self-conquest. The ancient world knew its sin. Epictetus had spoken wistfully of "our weakness in necessary things." Seneca had said that "we hate our vices and love them at the same time." He said, "We have not stood bravely enough by our good resolutions; despite our will and resistance we have lost our innocence. Nor is it only that we have acted amiss; we shall do so to the end." Persius, the Roman poet, wrote poignantly: "Let the guilty see virtue, and pine that they have lost her for ever." Persius talks of "filthy Natta benumbed by vice." The ancient world knew its moral helplessness only too well; and Christ came, not only telling men what was right, but giving them the power to do it. Christ gave to men who had lost it the hope of moral victory instead of defeat.

(ii) Men found in Christ the hope of victory over circumstances. Christianity came into the world in an age of the most terrible personal insecurity. When Tacitus, the Roman historian, came to write the history of that very age in which the Christian Church came into being, he began by saying, "I am entering upon the history of a period rich in disaster, gloomy with wars, rent with seditions; nay, savage in its very hours of peace. Four emperors perished by the sword; there were three civil wars; there were more with foreigners, and some had the character of both at once ... Rome wasted by fires; its oldest temples burned; the very capitol set in flames by Roman hands; the defilement of sacred rites; adultery in high places; the sea crowded with exiles; island rocks drenched with murder; yet wilder was the frenzy in Rome; nobility, wealth, the refusal of office, its acceptance, everything was a crime, and virtue was the surest way to ruin. Nor were the rewards of the informers less odious than their deeds. One found his spoils in a priesthood or a consulate; another in a provincial governorship, another behind the throne. All was one delirium of hate and terror; slaves were bribed to betray their masters, freedmen their patrons; and he who had no foe was betrayed by his friend." (Tacitus: Histories 1, 2). As Gilbert Murray said, the whole age was suffering from "the failure of nerve." Men were longing for some ring-wall of defence against "the advancing chaos of the world." It was Christ who in such times gave men the strength to live, and the courage, if need be, to die. In the certainty that nothing on earth could separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus, men found victory over the terrors of the age.

(iii) Men found in Christ the hope of victory over death. They found in him, at one and the same time, strength for mortal things and the immortal hope. Christ, our hope, was--and still should be--the battle-cry of the Church.

TIMOTHY, MY SON ( 1 Timothy 1:1-2 continued)

It is to Timothy that this letter is sent, and Paul was never able to speak of him without affection in his voice.

Timothy was a native of Lystra in the province of Galatia. It was a Roman colony; it called itself "the most brilliant colony of Lystra," but in reality it was a little place at the ends of the civilized earth. Its importance was that there was a Roman garrison quartered there to keep control of the wild tribes of the Isaurian mountains which lay beyond. It was on the first missionary journey that Paul and Barnabas arrived there ( Acts 14:8-21). At that time there is no mention of Timothy; but it has been suggested that, when Paul was in Lystra, he found a lodging in Timothy's home, in view of the fact that he knew well the faith and devotion of Timothy's mother Eunice and of his grandmother Lois ( 2 Timothy 1:5).

On that first visit Timothy must have been very young, but the Christian faith laid hold upon him, and Paul became his hero. It was at Paul's visit to Lystra on the second missionary journey that life began for Timothy ( Acts 16:1-3). Young as he was, he had become one of the ornaments of the Christian Church in Lystra. There was such a charm and enthusiasm in the lad that all men spoke well of him. To Paul, he seemed the very man to be his assistant. Maybe even then he had dreams that this lad was the very person to train to take up his work when his day was over.

Timothy was the child of a mixed marriage; his mother was a Jewess, and his father a Greek ( Acts 16:1). Paul circumcised him. It was not that Paul was a slave of the law, or that he saw in circumcision any special virtue; but he knew well that if Timothy was to work amongst the Jews, there would be an initial prejudice against him if he was uncircumcised, and so he took this step as a practical measure to increase Timothy's usefulness as an evangelist.

From that time forward Timothy was Paul's constant companion. He was left behind at Beroea with Silas when Paul escaped to Athens, and later joined him there ( Acts 17:14-15, Acts 18:5). He was sent as Paul's emissary to Macedonia ( Acts 19:22). He was there when the collection from the Churches was being taken to Jerusalem ( Acts 20:4). He was with Paul in Corinth when Paul wrote his letter to Rome ( Romans 16:21). He was Paul's emissary to Corinth when there was trouble in that unruly Church ( 1 Corinthians 4:17; 1 Corinthians 16:10). He was with Paul when he wrote 2 Corinthians ( 2 Corinthians 1:1; 2 Corinthians 1:19). It was Timothy whom Paul sent to see how things were going in Thessalonica and he was with Paul when he wrote his letter to that Church ( 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 1 Thessalonians 3:2; 1 Thessalonians 3:6). He was with Paul in prison when he wrote to Philippi, and Paul was planning to send him to Philippi as his representative ( Php_1:1 ; Php_2:19 ). He was with Paul when he wrote to the Church at Colossae and to Philemon ( Colossians 1:1; Philemon 1:1). Constantly Timothy was by Paul's side, and when Paul had a difficult job to do Timothy was the man sent to do it.

Over and over again Paul's voice vibrates with affection when he speaks of Timothy. When he is sending him to that sadly divided Church at Corinth, he writes: "I have sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord" ( 1 Corinthians 4:17). When he is planning to send him to Philippi, he writes: "I have no one like him.... As a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel" ( Php_2:20 ; Php_2:22 ). Here he calls him "his true son." The word that he uses for "true" is gnesios ( G1103) . It has two meanings. It was the normal word for a legitimate child in contradistinction to illegitimate. It was the word for genuine, as opposed to counterfeit.

Timothy was the man whom Paul could trust and could send anywhere, knowing that he would go. Happy indeed is the leader who possesses a lieutenant like that. Timothy is our example of how we should serve in the faith. Christ and his Church need servants like that.

GRACE, MERCY AND PEACE ( 1 Timothy 1:1-2 continued)

Paul always began his letters with a blessing ( Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Php_1:2 ; Colossians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; Philemon 1:3). In all these other letters only Grace and Peace occur. It is only in the letters to Timothy that Mercy is used ( 2 Timothy 1:2; Titus 1:4). Let us look at these three great words.

(i) In Grace there are always three dominant ideas.

(a) In classical Greek the word means outward grace or favour, beauty, winsomeness, sweetness. Usually, although not always, it is applied to persons. The English word charm comes near to expressing its meaning. Grace is characteristically a lovely and a winsome thing.

(b) In the New Testament there is always the idea of sheer generosity. Grace is something unearned and undeserved. It is opposed to that which is a debt. Paul says that if it is a case of earning things, the reward is not a matter of grace, but of debt ( Romans 4:4). It is opposed to works. Paul says that God's election of his chosen people is not the consequence of works, but of grace ( Romans 11:6).

(c) In the New Testament there is always the idea of sheer universality. Again and again Paul uses the word grace in connection with the reception of the Gentiles into the family of God. He thanks God for the grace given to the Corinthians in Jesus Christ ( 1 Corinthians 1:4). He talks of the grace of God bestowed on the Churches of Macedonia ( 2 Corinthians 8:1). He talks of the Galatians being called into the grace of Christ ( Galatians 1:6). The hope which came to the Thessalonians came through grace ( 2 Thessalonians 2:16). It was God's grace which made Paul an apostle to the Gentiles ( 1 Corinthians 15:10). It was by the grace of God that he moved amongst the Corinthians ( 2 Corinthians 1:12). It was by grace that God called him and separated him from his mother's womb ( Galatians 1:15). It is the grace given to him by God which enables him to write boldly to the Church at Rome ( Romans 15:15). To Paul the great demonstration of the grace of God was the reception of the Gentiles into the Church and his apostleship to them.

Grace is a lovely thing; it is a free thing; and it is a universal thing. As F. J. Hort wrote so beautifully: "Grace is a comprehensive word, gathering up all that may be supposed to be expressed in the smile of a heavenly king, looking down upon his people."

(ii) Peace was the normal Jewish word of greeting, and, in Hebrew thought, it expresses, not simply the negative absence of trouble, but "the most comprehensive form of well-being." It is everything which makes for a man's highest good. It is the state a man is in when he is within the love of God. F. J. Hort writes: "Peace is the antithesis to every kind of conflict and war and molestation, to enmity without and distraction within."

"Bowed down beneath a load of sin,

By Satan sorely pressed,

By war without and fears within,

I come to thee for rest."

(iii) Mercy is the new word in the apostolic blessing. In Greek the word is eleos ( G1656) , and in Hebrew chesed ( H2617) . Now chesedh is the word which is often in the Old Testament translated loving-kindness; and when Paul prayed for mercy on Timothy, he is saying, to put it very simply, "Timothy, may God be good to you." But there is more to it than that. Chesed ( H2617) is used in the Psalms no fewer than one hundred and twenty-seven times. And time and time again it has the meaning of help in time of need. It denotes, as Parry puts it, "God's active intervention to help." As Hort puts it, "It is the coming down of the Most High to help the helpless." In Psalms 40:11 the Psalmist rejoices, "Thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness ever preserve me." In Psalms 57:3 he says, "He will send from heaven and save me... God will send forth his steadfast love and his faithfulness." In Psalms 86:14-16 he thinks of the forces of the evil men which are arrayed against him, and comforts himself with the thought that God is "abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." It is by God's abundant mercy that he has given us the living hope of the resurrection ( 1 Peter 1:3). The Gentiles should glorify God for that mercy which has rescued them from sin and hopelessness ( Romans 15:9). God's mercy is God active to save. It may well be that Paul added Mercy to his two usual words, Grace and Peace, because Timothy was up against it and he wanted in one word to tell him that the Most High was the help of the helpless.

ERROR AND HERESY ( 1 Timothy 1:3-7 )

1:3-7 I am writing to you now to reinforce the plea that I already made to you, when I urged you to stay in Ephesus while I went to Macedonia, that you might pass on the order to some of the people there, not to teach erroneous novelties, nor to give their attention to idle tales and endless genealogies, which only succeed in producing empty speculations rather than the effective administration of God's people, which should be based on faith. The instruction which I gave you is designed to produce love which issues from a pure heart, a good conscience and an undissembling faith. But some of these people of whom I am talking have never even tried to find the right road, and have turned aside out of it to empty and useless discussions, in their claim to become teachers of the law, although they do not know what they are talking about, nor do they realize the real meaning of the things about which they dogmatize.

It is clear that at the back of the Pastoral Epistles there is some heresy which is endangering the Church. Right at the beginning it will be well to try to see what this heresy is. We will therefore collect the facts about it now.

This very passage brings us face to face with two of its great characteristics. It dealt in idle tales and endless genealogies. These two things were not peculiar to this heresy but were deeply engrained in the thought of the ancient world.

First, the idle tales. One of the characteristics of the ancient world was that the poets and even the historians loved to work out romantic and fictitious tales about the foundation of cities and of families. They would tell how some god came to earth and founded the city or took in marriage some mortal maid and founded a family. The ancient world was full of stories like that.

Second, the endless genealogies. The ancient world had a passion for genealogies. We can see that even in the Old Testament with its chapters of names and in the New Testament with the genealogies of Jesus with which Matthew and Luke begin their gospels. A man like Alexander the Great had a completely artificial pedigree constructed in which he traced his lineage back on the one side to Achilles and Andromache and on the other to Perseus and Hercules.

It would be the easiest thing in the world for Christianity to get lost in endless and fabulous stories about origins and in elaborate and imaginary genealogies. That was a danger which was inherent in the situation in which Christian thought was developing.

It was peculiarly threatening from two directions.

It was threatening from the Jewish direction. To the Jews there was no book in the world like the Old Testament. Their scholars spent a lifetime studying it and expounding it. In the Old Testament many chapters and many sections are long genealogies; and one of the favourite occupations of the Jewish scholars was to construct an imaginary and edifying biography for every name in the list! A man could go on for ever doing that; and it may be that that was what was partly in Paul's mind. He may be saying, "When you ought to be working at the Christian life, you are working out imaginary biographies and genealogies. You are wasting your time on elegant fripperies, when you should be getting down to life and living." This may be a warning to us never to allow Christian thinking to get lost in speculations which do not matter.

THE SPECULATIONS OF THE GREEKS ( 1 Timothy 1:3-7 continued)

But this danger came with an even greater threat from the Greek side. At this time in history there was developing a Greek line of thought which came to be known as Gnosticism. We find it specially in the background of the Pastoral Epistles, the Letter to the Colossians and the Fourth Gospel.

Gnosticism was entirely speculative. It began with the problem of the origin of sin and of suffering. If God is altogether good, he could not have created them. How then did they get into the world? The Gnostic answer was that creation was not creation out of nothing; before time began matter existed. They believed that this matter was essentially imperfect, an evil thing; and out of this essentially evil matter the world was created.

No sooner had they got this length than they ran into another difficulty. If matter is essentially evil and God is essentially good, God could not himself have touched this matter. So they began another set of speculations. They said that God put out an emanation, and that this emanation put out another emanation, and the second emanation put out a third emanation and so on and on until there came into being an emanation so distant from God that he could handle matter; and that it was not God but this emanation who created the world.

They went further. They held that each successive emanation knew less about God so that there came a stage in the series of emanations when the emanations were completely ignorant of him and, more, there was a final stage when the emanations were not only ignorant of God but actively hostile to him. So they arrived at the thought that the god who created the world was quite ignorant of and hostile to the true God. Later on they went even further and identified the God of the Old Testament with this creating god, and the God of the New Testament with the true God.

They further provided each one of the emanations with a complete biography. And so they built up an elaborate mythology of gods and emanations, each with his story and his biography and his genealogy. There is no doubt that the ancient world was riddled with that kind of thinking; and that it even entered the Church itself. It made Jesus merely the greatest of the emanations, the one closest to God. It classed him as the highest link in the endless chain between God and man.

This Gnostic line of thought had certain characteristics which appear all through the Pastoral Epistles as the characteristics of those whose heresies were threatening the Church and the purity of the faith.

(i) Gnosticism was obviously highly speculative, and it was therefore intensely intellectually snobbish. It believed that all this intellectual speculation was quite beyond the mental grasp of ordinary people and was for a chosen few, the elite of the Church. So Timothy is warned against "godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge" ( 1 Timothy 6:20). He is warned against a religion of speculative questions instead of humble faith ( 1 Timothy 1:4). He is warned against the man who is proud of his intellect but really knows nothing and dotes about questions and strifes of words ( 1 Timothy 6:4). He is told to shun "godless chatter," for they can produce only ungodliness ( 2 Timothy 2:16). He is told to avoid "stupid, senseless controversies" which in the end can only engender strife ( 2 Timothy 2:23). Further, the Pastoral Epistles go out of their way to stress the fact that this idea of an intellectual aristocracy is quite wrong, for God's love is universal. God wants all men to be saved and all men to come to a knowledge of the truth ( 1 Timothy 2:4). God is the Saviour of all men, especially those who believe ( 1 Timothy 4:10). The Christian Church would have nothing to do with any kind of faith which was founded on intellectual speculation and set up an arrogant intellectual aristocracy.

(ii) Gnosticism was concerned with this long series of emanations. It gave to each of them a biography and a pedigree and an importance in the chain between God and men. These gnostics were concerned with "endless genealogies" ( 1 Timothy 1:4). They went in for "godless and silly myths" about them ( 1 Timothy 4:7). They turned their ears away from the truth to myths ( 2 Timothy 4:4). They dealt in fables like the Jewish myths ( Titus 1:14). Worst of all, they thought in terms of two gods and of Jesus as one of a whole series of mediators between God and man; whereas "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" ( 1 Timothy 2:5). There is only one King of ages, immortal, invisible, there is only one God ( 1 Timothy 1:17). Christianity had to repudiate a religion which took their unique place from God and from Jesus Christ.

THE ETHICS OF HERESY ( 1 Timothy 1:3-7 continued)

The danger of Gnosticism was not only intellectual. It had serious moral and ethical consequences. We must remember that its basic belief was that matter was essentially evil and spirit alone was good. That issued in two opposite results.

(i) If matter is evil, the body is evil; and the body must be despised and held down. Therefore Gnosticism could and did issue in a rigid asceticism. It forbade men to marry, for the instincts of the body were to be suppressed. It laid down strict food laws, for the needs of the body must as far as possible be eliminated. So the Pastorals speak of those who forbid to marry and who command to abstain from meats ( 1 Timothy 4:3). The answer to these people is that everything which God has created is good and is to be received with thanksgiving ( 1 Timothy 4:4). The Gnostic looked on creation as an evil thing, the work of an evil god; the Christian looks on creation as a noble thing, the gift of a good God. The Christian lives in a world where all things are pure; the Gnostic lived in a world where all things were defiled ( Titus 1:15).

(ii) But Gnosticism could issue in precisely the opposite ethical belief. If the body is evil, it does not matter what a man does with it. Therefore, let him sate his appetites. These things are of no importance, therefore a man can use his body in the most licentious way and it makes no difference. So the Pastorals speak of those who lead away weak women until they are laden with sin and the victims of all kinds of lusts ( 2 Timothy 3:6). Such men profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds ( Titus 1:16). They used their religious beliefs as an excuse for immorality.

(iii) Gnosticism had still another consequence. The Christian believes in the resurrection of the body. That is not to say that he ever believed that we are resurrected with this mortal, human body; but he always believed that after resurrection from the dead a man would have a spiritual body, provided by God. Paul discusses this whole question in 1 Corinthians 15:1-58. The Gnostic held that there was no such thing as the resurrection of the body ( 2 Timothy 2:18). After death a man would be a kind of disembodied spirit. The basic difference is that the Gnostic believed in the body's destruction; the Christian believes in its redemption. The Gnostic believed in what he would call soul salvation; the Christian believes in whole salvation.

So behind the Pastoral Epistles there are these dangerous heretics, who gave their lives to intellectual speculations, who saw this as an evil world and the creating god as evil, who put between the world and God an endless series of emanations and lesser gods and spent their time equipping each of them with endless fables and genealogies, who reduced Jesus to the position of a link in a chain and took away his uniqueness, who lived either in a rigorous asceticism or an unbridled licentiousness, who denied the resurrection of the body. It was their heretical beliefs that the Pastorals were written to combat.

THE MIND OF THE HERETIC ( 1 Timothy 1:3-7 continued)

In this passage there is a clear picture of the mind of the dangerous heretic. There is a kind of heresy in which a man differs from orthodox belief because he has honestly thought things out and cannot agree with it. He does not take any pride in being different; he is different simply because he has to be. Such a heresy does not spoil a man's character; it may in fact enhance his character, because he has really thought out his faith and is not living on a second-hand orthodoxy. But that is not the heretic whose picture is drawn here. Here are distinguished five characteristics of the dangerous heretic.

(i) He is driven by the desire for novelty. He is like someone who must be in the latest fashion and must undergo the latest craze. He despises old things for no better reason than that they are old, and desires new things for no better reason than that they are new. Christianity has always the problem of presenting old truth in a new way. The truth does not change, but every age must find its own way of presenting it. Every teacher and preacher must talk to men in language which they understand. The old truth and the new presentation go ever hand in hand.

(ii) He exalts the mind at the expense of the heart. His conception of religion is speculation and not experience. Christianity has never demanded that a man should stop thinking for himself, but it does demand that his thinking should be dominated by a personal experience of Jesus Christ.

(iii) He deals in argument instead of action. He is more interested in abstruse discussion than in the effective administration of the household of the faith. He forgets that the truth is not only something which a man accepts with his mind, but is also something which he translates into action. Long ago the distinction between the Greek and the Jew was drawn. The Greek loved argument for the sake of argument; there was nothing that he liked better than to sit with a group of friends and indulge in a series of mental acrobatics and enjoy "the stimulus of a mental hike." But he was not specially interested in reaching conclusions, and in evolving a principle of action. The Jew, too, liked argument; but he wished every argument to end in a decision which demanded action. There is always a danger of heresy when we fall in love with words and forget deeds, for deeds are the acid test by which every argument must be tested.

(iv) He is moved by arrogance rather than by humility. He looks down with a certain contempt on simple-minded people who cannot follow his flights of intellectual speculation. He regards those who do not reach his own conclusions as ignorant fools. The Christian has somehow to combine an immovable certainty with a gentle humility.

(v) He is guilty of dogmatism without knowledge. He does not really know what he is talking about nor really understand the significance of the things about which he dogmatizes. The strange thing about religious argument is that everyone thinks that he has a right to express a dogmatic opinion. In all other fields we demand that a person should have a certain knowledge before he lays down the law. But there are those who dogmatize about the Bible and its teaching although they have never even tried to find out what the experts in language and history have said. It may well be that the Christian cause has suffered more from ignorant dogmatism than from anything else.

When we think of the characteristics of those who were troubling the Church at Ephesus we can see that their descendants are still with us.

THE MIND OF THE CHRISTIAN THINKER ( 1 Timothy 1:3-7 continued)

As this passage draws the picture of the thinker who disturbs the Church, it also draws the picture of the really Christian thinker. He, too, has five characteristics.

(i) His thinking is based on faith. Faith means taking God at his word; it means believing that he is as Jesus proclaimed him to be. That is to say, the Christian thinker begins from the principle that Jesus Christ has given the full revelation of God.

(ii) His thinking is motivated by love. Paul's whole purpose is to produce love. To think in love will always save us from certain things. It will save us from arrogant thinking. It will save us from contemptuous thinking. It will save us from condemning either that with which we do not agree, or that which we do not understand. It will save us from expressing our views in such a way that we hurt other people. Love saves us from destructive thinking and destructive speaking. To think in love is always to think in sympathy. The man who argues in love argues not to defeat his opponent, but to win him.

(iii) His thinking comes from a pure heart. Here the word used is very significant. It is katharos ( G2513) , which originally simply meant clean as opposed to soiled or dirty. Later it came to have certain most suggestive uses. It was used of corn that has been winnowed and cleansed of all chaff. It was used of an army which had been purified of all cowardly and undisciplined soldiers until there was nothing left but first-class fighting men. It was used of something which was without any debasing admixture. So, then, a pure heart is a heart whose motives are absolutely pure and absolutely unmixed. In the heart of the Christian thinker there is no desire to show how clever he is, no desire to win a purely debating victory, no desire to show up the ignorance of his opponent. His only desire is to help and to illumine and to lead nearer to God. The Christian thinker is moved only by love of truth and love for men.

(iv) His thinking comes from a good conscience. The Greek word for conscience is suneidesis ( G4893) . It literally means a knowing with. The real meaning of conscience is a knowing with oneself. To have a good conscience is to be able to look in the face the knowledge which one shares with no one but oneself and not be ashamed. Emerson remarked of Seneca that he said the loveliest things, if only he had the right to say them. The Christian thinker is the man whose thoughts and whose deeds give him the right to say what he does--and that is the most acid test of all.

(v) The Christian thinker is the man of undissembling faith. The phrase literally means the faith in which there is no hypocrisy. That simply means that the great characteristic of the Christian thinker is sincerity. He is sincere both in his desire to find the truth--and in his desire to communicate it.

THOSE WHO NEED NO LAW ( 1 Timothy 1:8-11 )

1:8-11 We know that the law is good, if a man uses it legitimately, in the awareness that the law was not instituted to deal with good men, but with the lawless and the undisciplined, the irreverent and the sinners, the impious and the polluted, those who have sunk so low that they strike their fathers and their mothers, murderers, fornicators, homosexuals, slave-dealers and kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and all those who are guilty of anything which is the reverse of sound teaching, that teaching which is in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God, that gospel which has been entrusted to me.

This passage begins with what was a favourite thought in the ancient world. The place of the law is to deal with evil-doers. The good man does not need any law to control his actions or to threaten him with punishments; and in a world of good men there would be no need for laws at all.

Antiphanes, the Greek, had it: "He who does no wrong needs no law." It was the claim of Aristotle that "philosophy enables a man to do without external control that which others do because of fear of the laws." Ambrose, the great Christian bishop, wrote: "The just man has the law of his own mind, of his own equity and of his own justice as his standard; and therefore he is not recalled from fault by terror of punishment, but by the rule of honour." Pagan and Christian alike regarded true goodness as something which had its source in a man's heart; as something which was not dependent on the rewards and punishments of the law.

But in one thing the pagan and the Christian differed. The pagan looked back to an ancient golden time when all things were good and no law was needed. Ovid, the Roman poet, drew one of the most famous pictures of that ancient golden time (Metamorphoses 1: 90-112). "Golden was that first age, which with no one to compel, without a law, of its own will, kept faith and did the right. There was no fear of punishment, no threatening words were to be read on brazen tablets; no suppliant throng gazed fearfully upon the judge's face; but without judges men lived secure. Not yet had the pine tree, felled on its native mountains, descended thence into the watery plain to visit other lands; men knew no shores except their own. Nor, yet were cities begirt with steep moats; there were no trumpets of straight, no horns of curving brass, no swords or helmets. There was no need at all of armed men, for nations, secure from war's alarms, passed the years in gentle peace." Tacitus, the Roman historian, had the same picture (Annals 3: 26). "In the earliest times, when men had as yet no evil passions, they led blameless, guiltless lives, without either punishment or restraint. Led by their own nature to pursue none but virtuous ends, they required no rewards; and as they desired nothing contrary to the right, there was no need for pains and penalties." The ancient world looked back and longed for the days that were gone. But the Christian faith does not look back to a lost golden age; it looks forward to the day when the only law will be the love of Christ within a man's heart, for it is certain that the day of law cannot end until the day of love dawns.

There should be only one controlling factor in the lives of every one of us. Our goodness should come, not from fear of the law, not even from fear of judgment, but from fear of disappointing the love of Christ and of grieving the fatherly heart of God. The Christian's dynamic comes from the fact that he knows sin is not only breaking God's law but also breaking his heart. It is not the law of God but the love of God which constrains us.

THOSE WHOM THE LAW CONDEMNS ( 1 Timothy 1:8-11 continued)

In an ideal state, when the Kingdom comes, there will be no necessity for any law other than the love of God within a man's heart; but as things are, the case is very different. And here Paul sets out a catalogue of sins which the law must control and condemn. The interest of the passage is that it shows us the background against which Christianity grew up. This list of sins is in fact a description of the world in which the early Christians lived and moved and had their being. Nothing shows us so well how the Christian Church was a little island of purity in a vicious world. We talk about it being hard to be a Christian in modern civilization; we have only to read a passage like this to see how infinitely harder it must have been in the circumstances in which the Church first began. Let us take this terrible list and look at the items on it.

There are the lawless (anomoi, G459) . They are those who know the laws of right and wrong and break them open-eyed. No one can blame a man for breaking a law he does not know exists; but the lawless are those who deliberately violate the laws in order to satisfy their own ambitions and desires.

There are the undisciplined (anupotaktoi, G506) . They are the unruly and the insubordinate, those who refuse to obey any authority. They are like soldiers who mutinously disobey the word of command. They are either too proud or too unbridled to accept any control.

There are the irreverent (asebeis, G765) . Asebeis is a terrible word. It describes not indifference nor the lapse into sin. It describes "positive and active irreligion," the spirit which defiantly withholds from God that which is his right. It describes human nature "in battle array against God."

There are the sinners (hamartoloi, G268) . In its commonest usage this word describes character. It can be used, for instance, of a slave who is of lax and useless character. It describes the person who has no moral standards left.

There are the impious (anosioi, G462) . Hosios ( G3741) is a noble word; it describes, as Trench puts it, "the everlasting ordinances of right, which no law or custom of man has constituted, for they are anterior to all law and custom." The things which are hosios ( G3741) are part of the very constitution of the universe, the everlasting sanctities. The Greek, for instance, shudderingly declared that the Egyptian custom where brother could marry sister and the Persian custom where son could marry mother, were anosia, unholy. The man who is anosios ( G462) is worse than a mere lawbreaker. He is the man who violates the ultimate decencies of life.

There are the polluted (bebeloi, G952) . Bebelos is an ugly word with a strange history. It originally meant simply that which can be trodden upon, in contradistinction to that which is sacred to some god and therefore inviolable. It then came to mean profane in opposition to sacred, then the man who profanes the sacred things, who desecrates God's day, disobeys his laws and belittles his worship. The man who is bebelos ( G952) soils everything he touches.

There are those who strike or even kill their parents (patraloai, G3964, and metraloai, G3389) . Under Roman law a son who struck his parents was liable to death. The words describe sons or daughters who are lost to gratitude, lost to respect and lost to shame. And it must ever be remembered that this most cruel of blows can be one, not upon the body, but upon the heart.

There are the murderers (androphonoi, G409) , literally man-slayers. Paul is thinking of the Ten Commandments and of how breach after breach of them characterizes the heathen world. We must not think that this at least has nothing to do with us, for Jesus widened the commandment to include not only the act of murder, but also the feeling of anger against a brother.

There are the fornicators and the homosexuals (pornoi, G4205, and arsenokoitai, G733) . It is difficult for us to realize the state of the ancient world in matters of sexual morality. It was riddled with unnatural vice. One of the extraordinary things was the actual connection of immorality and religion. The Temple of Aphrodite, goddess of love, at Corinth had attached to it a thousand priestesses who were sacred prostitutes and who at evening came down to the city streets and plied their trade. It is said that Solon was the first law-maker in Athens to legalize prostitution and that with the profits of the public brothels he instituted a new temple was built to Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

E. F. Brown was a missionary in India, and in his commentary on the Pastoral Epistles he quotes an extraordinary section from the Penal Code of India. A section of that code forbade obscene representations and then went on to say: "This section does not extend to any representation or sculpture, engraved, painted or otherwise represented on or in any temple, or any car used for the conveyance of idols, or kept or used for any religious purpose." It is an extraordinary thing that in the non-Christian religions time and time again immorality and obscenity flourish under the very protection of religion. It has often been said and said truly that chastity was the one completely new virtue which Christianity brought into this world. It was no easy thing in the early days to endeavour to live according to the Christian ethic in a world like that.

There are the andrapodistai ( G405) . The word may either mean slave-dealers or slave-kidnappers. Possibly both meanings are involved here. It is true that slavery was an integral part of the ancient world. It is true that Aristotle declared that civilization was founded on slavery, that certain men and women existed only to perform the menial tasks of life for the convenience of the cultured classes. But even in the ancient world voices were raised against slavery. Philo spoke of slave-dealers as those "who despoil men of their most precious possession, their freedom."

But this more probably refers to kidnappers of slaves. Slaves were valuable property. An ordinary slave with no special gifts fetched from 16 to 20 British pounds. A specially accomplished slave would fetch three or four times as much. Beautiful youths were in special demand as pages and cupbearers and would fetch as much as 800 or 900 British pounds. Marcus Antonius is said to have paid 2,000 British pounds for two well-matched youths who were wrongly represented to be twins. In the days when Rome was specially eager to learn the arts of Greece and slaves who were skilled in Greek literature and music and art were specially valuable, a certain Lutatius Daphnis was sold for 3,500 British pounds. The result was that frequently valuable slaves were either seduced from their masters or kidnapped. The kidnapping of specially beautiful or specially accomplished slaves was a common feature of ancient life.

Finally, there are liars (pseustai, G5583) and perjurers (epiorkoi, G1965) , men who did not hesitate to twist the truth to gain dishonourable ends.

Here is a vivid picture of the atmosphere in which the ancient Church grew up. It was against an infection like that that the writer of the Pastorals sought to protect the Christians in his charge.

THE CLEANSING WORD ( 1 Timothy 1:8-11 continued)

Into this world came the Christian message, and this passage tells us four things about it.

(i) It is sound teaching. The word used for sound (hugiainein, G5198) literally means health-giving. Christianity is an ethical religion. It demands from a man not only the keeping of certain ritual laws, but the living of a good life. E. F. Brown draws a comparison between it and Islam; a Mohammedan may be regarded as a very holy man if he observes certain ceremonial rituals, even though his moral life is quite unclean. He quotes a writer on Morocco: "The great blot on the creed of Islam is that precept and practice are not expected to go together, except as regards the ritual, so that a man may be notoriously wicked yet esteemed religious, having his blessing sought as that of one who has power with God, without the slightest sense of incongruity. The position of things was very well put to me one day by a Moor in Fez, who remarked: 'Do you want to know what our religion is? We purify ourselves with water while we contemplate adultery; we go to the mosque to pray and as we do so we think how best to cheat our neighbours; we give alms at the door and go back to our shop to rob; we read our Korans and go out to commit unmentionable sins; we fast and go on pilgrimage and yet we lie and kill.'" It must always be remembered that Christianity does not mean observing a ritual, even if that ritual consists of bible-reading and church-going; it means living a good life. Christianity, if it is real, is health-giving; it is the moral antiseptic which alone can cleanse life.

(ii) It is a glorious gospel; that is to say, it is glorious good news. It is good news of forgiveness for past sins and of power to conquer sin in the days to come, good news of God's mercy, God's cleansing and God's grace.

(iii) It is good news which comes from God. The Christian gospel is not a discovery made by man; it is something revealed by God. It does not offer only the help of man; it offers the power of God.

(iv) That good news comes through men. It was entrusted to Paul to bring it to others. God makes his offer and he needs his messengers. The real Christian is the person who has himself closed with the offer of God and has realized that he cannot keep such good news to himself but must share it with others who have not yet found it.

SAVED TO SERVE ( 1 Timothy 1:12-17 )

1:12-17 I give thanks to Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has filled me with his power, that he showed that he believed that he could trust me, by appointing me to his service, although I was formerly an insulter, a persecutor and a man of insolent and brutal violence. But I received mercy from him, because it was in ignorance that I acted thus, in the days when I did not believe. But the grace of our Lord rose higher than my sin, and I found it in the faith and love of those whose lives are lived in Jesus Christ. This is a saying on which we can rely, and which we are completely bound to accept, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am chief. This was why I received mercy--so that in me Jesus Christ might display all that patience of his, so that I might be the first outline sketch of those who would one day come to believe in him, that they might find eternal life. To the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, to the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

This passage begins with a very paean of thanksgiving. There were four tremendous things for which Paul wished to thank Jesus Christ.

(i) He thanked him because he chose him. Paul never had the feeling that he had chosen Christ, but always that Christ had chosen him. It was as if, when he was heading straight for destruction, Jesus Christ had laid his hand upon his shoulder and arrested him in the way. It was as if, when he was busy throwing away his life, Jesus Christ had suddenly brought him to his senses. In the days of the war I knew a Polish airman. He had crowded more thrilling hairbreadth escapes from death and from worse into a few years than the vast majority of men do into a lifetime. Sometimes he would tell the story of escape from occupied Europe, of parachute descents from the air, of rescue from the sea, and at the end of this amazing odyssey, he would always say, with a look of wonder in his eyes: "And now I am God's man." That is how Paul felt; he was Christ's man for Christ had chosen him.

(ii) He thanked him because he trusted him. It was to Paul an amazing thing, that he, the arch-persecutor, had been chosen as the missionary of Christ. It was not only that Jesus Christ had forgiven him; it was that Christ trusted him. Sometimes we forgive a man who has committed some mistake or been guilty of some sin, but we make it very clear that his past makes it impossible for us to trust him again with any responsibility. But Christ had not only forgiven Paul; he entrusted him with work to do. The man who had been Christ's persecutor had been made his ambassador.

(iii) He thanked him because he had appointed him. We must be very careful to note that to which Paul felt himself appointed. He was appointed to service. Paul never thought of himself as appointed to honour, or to leadership within the Church. He was saved to serve. Plutarch tells that when a Spartan won a victory in the games, his reward was that he might stand beside his king in battle. A Spartan wrestler at the Olympic games was offered a very considerable bribe to abandon the struggle; but he refused. Finally, after a terrific effort, he won his victory. Someone said to him: "Well, Spartan, what have you got out of this costly victory you have won?" He answered: "I have won the privilege of standing in front of my king in battle." His reward was to serve and, if need be, to die for his king. It was for service, not honour, that Paul knew himself to be chosen.

(iv) He thanked him because he had empowered him. Paul had long since discovered that Jesus Christ never gives a man a task to do without also giving him the power to do it. Paul would never have said, "See what I have done," but always, "See what Jesus Christ has enabled me to do." No man is good enough, or strong enough, or pure enough, or wise enough to be the servant of Christ. But if he will give himself to Christ, he will go, not in his own strength, but in the strength of his Lord.

THE MEANS OF CONVERSION ( 1 Timothy 1:12-17 continued)

There are two further interesting things in this passage.

Paul's Jewish background comes out. He says that Jesus Christ had mercy on him because he committed his sins against Christ and his Church in the days of his ignorance. We often think that the Jewish viewpoint was that sacrifice atoned for sin; a man sinned, his sin broke his relationship with God, then sacrifice was made and God's anger was appeased and the relationship restored.

It may well have been that that was in fact the popular, debased view of sacrifice. But the highest Jewish thought insisted on two things. First, it insisted that sacrifice could never atone for deliberate sin, but only for the sins a man committed in ignorance or when swept away in a moment of passion. Second, the highest Jewish thought insisted that no sacrifice could atone for any sin unless there was contrition in the heart of the man who brought it. Here Paul is speaking out of his Jewish background. His heart had been broken by the mercy of Christ; his sins had been committed in the days before he knew Christ and his love. And for these reasons he felt that there was mercy for him.

There is a still more interesting matter, which is pointed out by E. F. Brown. 1 Timothy 1:14 is difficult. In the Revised Standard Version it runs: "The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." The first part is not difficult; it simply means that the grace of God rose higher than Paul's sin. But what exactly is the meaning of the phrase "with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus"? E. F. Brown suggests that it is that the work of the grace of Christ in Paul's heart was helped by the faith and the love he found in the members of the Christian Church, things like the sympathy and the understanding and the kindness he received from men like Ananias, who opened his eyes and called him brother ( Acts 9:10-19), and Barnabas, who stood by him when the rest of the Church regarded him with bleak suspicion ( Acts 9:26-28). That is a very lovely idea. And if it be correct, we can see that there are three factors which cooperate in the conversion of any man.

(i) First, there is God. It was the prayer of Jeremiah: "Restore us to thyself, O Lord" ( Lamentations 5:21). As Augustine had it, we would never even have begun to seek for God unless he had already found us. The prime mover is God; at the back of a man's first desire for goodness there is his seeking love.

(ii) There is a man's own self. The King James Version renders Matthew 18:3 entirely passively: "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." The Revised Standard Version gives a much more active rendering: "Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." There must be human response to divine appeal. God gave men free will and they can use it either to accept or to refuse his offer.

(iii) There is the agency of some Christian person. It is Paul's conviction that he is sent "to open the eyes of the Gentiles, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins" ( Acts 26:18). It is James' belief that any man who converts the sinner from the error of his way "will save a soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins" ( James 5:19-20). So then there is a double duty laid upon us. It has been said that a saint is someone who makes it easier to believe in God, and that a saint is someone in whom Christ lives again. We must give thanks for those who showed us Christ, whose words and example brought us to him; and we must strive to be the influence which brings others to him.

In this matter of conversion the initiative of God, the response of man, and the influence of the Christian all combine.

THE UNFORGOTTEN SHAME AND THE UNDYING INSPIRATION ( 1 Timothy 1:12-17 continued)

The thing which stands out in this passage is Paul's insistence upon remembering his own sin. He heaps up a very climax of words to show what he did to Christ and the Church. He was an insulter of the Church; he had flung hot and angry words at the Christians, accusing them of crimes against God. He was a persecutor; he had taken every means open to him under the Jewish law to annihilate the Christian Church. Then comes a terrible word; he had been a man of insolent and brutal violence. The word in Greek is hubristes ( G5197) . It indicates a kind of arrogant sadism; it describes the man who is out to inflict pain for the sheer joy of inflicting it. The corresponding abstract noun is hubris ( G5196) which Aristotle defines: "Hubris ( G5196) means to hurt and to grieve people, in such a way that shame comes to the man who is hurt and grieved, and that not that the person who inflicts the hurt and injury may gain anything else in addition to what he already possesses, but simply that he may find delight in his own cruelty and in the suffering of the other person."

That is what Paul was once like in regard to the Christian Church. Not content with words of insult, he went to the limit of legal persecution. Not content with legal persecution, he went to the limit of sadistic brutality in his attempt to stamp out the Christian faith. He remembered that; and to the end of the day he regarded himself as the chief of sinners. It is not that he was the chief of sinners; he still is. True, he could never forget that he was a forgiven sinner; but neither could he ever forget that he was a sinner. Why should he remember his sin with such vividness?

(i) The memory of his sin was the surest way to keep him from pride. There could be no such thing as spiritual pride for a man who had done the things that he had done. John Newton was one of the great preachers and the supreme hymn-writers of the Church; but he had sunk to the lowest depths to which a man can sink, in the days when he sailed the seas in a slave-trader's ship. So when he became a converted man and a preacher of the gospel, he wrote a text in great letters, and fastened it above the mantlepiece of his study where he could not fail to see it: "Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt and the Lord thy God redeemed thee." He also composed his own epitaph: "John Newton, Clerk, once an Infidel and Libertine, a Servant of Slaves in Africa, was by the Mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Preserved, Restored, Pardoned, and Appointed to Preach the Faith he had so long laboured to destroy." John Newton never forgot that he was a forgiven sinner; neither did Paul. Neither must we. It does a man good to remember his sins; it saves him from spiritual pride.

(ii) The memory of his sin was the surest way to keep his gratitude aflame. To remember what we have been forgiven is the surest way to keep awake our love to Jesus Christ. F. W. Boreham tells of a letter which the old Puritan, Thomas Goodwin, wrote to his son. "When I was threatening to become cold in my ministry, and when I felt Sabbath morning coming and my heart not filled with amazement at the grace of God, or when I was making ready to dispense the Lord's Supper, do you know what I used to do? I used to take a turn up and down among the sins of my past life, and I always came down again with a broken and a contrite heart, ready to preach, as it was preached in the beginning, the forgiveness of sins." "I do not think," he said, "I ever went up the pulpit stair that I did not stop for a moment at the foot of it and take a turn up and down among the sins of my past years. I do not think that I ever planned a sermon that I did not take a turn round my study table and look back at the sins of my youth and of all my life down to the present; and many a Sabbath morning, when my soul had been cold and dry, for the lack of prayer during the week, a turn up and down in my past life before I went into the pulpit always broke my hard heart and made me close with the gospel for my own soul before I began to preach." When we remember how we have hurt God and hurt those who love us and hurt our fellow-men and when we remember how God and men have forgiven us, that memory must awake the flame of gratitude within our hearts.

(iii) The memory of his sin was the constant urge to greater effort. It is quite true that a man can never earn the approval of God, or deserve his love; but it is also true that he can never stop trying to do something to show how much he appreciates the love and the mercy which have made him what he is. Whenever we love anyone we cannot help trying always to demonstrate our love. When we remember how much God loves us and how little we deserve it, when we remember that it was for us that Jesus Christ hung and suffered on Calvary, it must compel us to effort that will tell God we realize what he has done for us and will show Jesus Christ that his sacrifice was not in vain..

(iv) The memory of his sin was bound to be a constant encouragement to others. Paul uses a vivid picture. He says that what happened to him was a kind of outline-sketch of what was going to happen to those who would accept Christ in the days to come. The word he uses is hupotuposis ( G5296) which means an outline, a sketch-plan, a first draft, a preliminary model. It is as if Paul were saying, "Look what Christ has done for me! If someone like me can be saved, there is hope for everyone." Suppose a man was seriously ill and had to go through a dangerous operation, it would be the greatest encouragement to him if he met and talked with someone who had undergone the same operation and had emerged completely cured. Paul did not shrinkingly conceal his record; he blazoned it abroad, that others might take courage and be filled with hope that the grace which had changed him could change them too.

Greatheart said to Christian's boys: "You must know that Forgetful Green is the most dangerous place in all these parts." Paul's sin was something which he refused to forget, for every time he remembered the greatness of his sin, he remembered the still greater greatness of Jesus Christ. It was not that he brooded unhealthily over his sin; it was that he remembered it to rejoice in the wonder of the grace of Jesus Christ.

THE SUMMONS WHICH CANNOT BE DENIED ( 1 Timothy 1:18-20 )

1:18-20 I entrust this charge to you, Timothy lad, because it is the natural consequence of the messages which came to the prophets from God, and which marked you out as the very man for this work, so that, in obedience to these messages, you may wage a fine campaign, maintaining your faith and a good conscience all the time; and there are some who, in matters of the faith, have repelled the guidance of conscience, and have come to shipwreck. Amongst them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may be disciplined out of their insults to God and his Church.

The first section of this passage is highly compressed. What lies behind it is this. There must have been a meeting of the prophets of the Church. They were men known to be within the confidence and the counsels of God. "Surely the Lord does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets" ( Amos 3:7). This meeting thought about the situation which was threatening the Church and came to the conclusion that Timothy was the man to deal with it. We can see the prophets acting in exactly the same way in Acts 13:1-3. The Church was faced with the great decision whether or not to take the gospel out to the Gentiles; and it was to the prophets that there came the message of the Holy Spirit, saying: "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" ( Acts 13:2). That was what had happened to Timothy. He had been marked out by the prophets as the man to deal with the situation in the Church. It may well have been that he shrank from the greatness of the task which faced him, and here Paul encourages him with certain considerations.

(i) Paul says to him: "You are a man who has been chosen and you cannot refuse your task." Something like that happened to John Knox. He had been teaching in St. Andrews. His teaching was supposed to be private but many came to it, for he was obviously a man with a message. So the people urged him "that he would take the preaching place upon him. But he utterly refused, alleging that he would not run where God had not called him.... Whereupon they Privily among themselves advising, having with them in council Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, they concluded that they would give a charge to the said John, and that publicly by the mouth of their preacher."

So Sunday came and Knox was in Church and John Rough was preaching. "The said John Rough, preacher, directed his words to the said John Knox, saying: 'Brother, ye shall not be offended, albeit that I speak unto you that which I have in charge, even from all those that are here present, which is this: In the name of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of these that presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that you refuse not this holy vocation, but...that you take upon you the public office and charge of preaching, even as you look to avoid God's heavy displeasure, and desire that he shall multiply his graces with you.' And in the end he said to those that were present: 'Was not this your charge to me? And do ye not approve this vocation?' They answered: 'It was: and we approve it.' Whereat the said John, abashed, burst forth in most abundant tears, and withdrew himself to his chamber. His countenance and behaviour, from that day till the day that he was compelled to present himself to the public place of preaching, did sufficiently declare the grief and trouble of his heart; for no man saw any sign of mirth in him, neither yet had he pleasure to accompany any man, many days together."

John Knox was chosen; he did not want to answer the call; but he had to, for the choice had been made by God. Years afterwards the Regent Morton uttered his famous epitaph by Knox's graveside: "In respect that he bore God's message, to whom he must make account for the same, he (albeit he was weak and an unworthy creature, and a fearful man) feared not the faces of men." The consciousness of being chosen gave him courage.

So Paul says to Timothy: "You have been chosen; you cannot let down God and man." To every one of us there comes God's choosing; and when we are summoned to some work for him, we dare not refuse it.

(ii) It may be that Paul was saying to Timothy: "Be true to your name." Timothy--its full form is Timotheos ( G5095) --is composed of two Greek words, time ( G5092) which means "honour," and theos ( G2316) which means "God," and so means "honour to God." If we are called by the name Christian, one of Christ's folk, to that name we must be true.

(iii) Finally, Paul says to Timothy: "I entrust this charge to you". The word which he uses for to entrust is paratithesthai ( G3908) , which is the word used of entrusting something valuable to someone's safe keeping. It is used, for instance, of making a deposit in a bank, or of entrusting someone to another's care. It always implies that a trust has been reposed in someone for which he will be called to account. So Paul says: "Timothy, into your hands I am placing a sacred trust. See that you do not fail." God reposes his trust in us; into our hands he puts his honour and his Church. We too must see to it that we do not fail.

DESPATCHED ON GOD'S CAMPAIGN ( 1 Timothy 1:18-20 continued)

What then is entrusted to Timothy? He is despatched to fight a good campaign. The picture of life as a campaign is one which has always fascinated men's thoughts. Maximus of Tyre said: "God is the general; life is the campaign; man is the soldier." Seneca said: "For me to live, my dear Lucilius, is to be a soldier." When a man became a follower of the goddess Isis and was initiated into the Mysteries connected with the goddess' name, the summons to him was: "Enrol yourself in the sacred soldiery of Isis."

There are three things to be noted.

(i) It is not to a battle that we are summoned; it is to a campaign. Life is one long campaign, a service from which there is no release, not a short, sharp struggle after which a man can lay aside his arms and rest in peace. To change the metaphor, life is not a sprint; it is a marathon race. It is there that the danger enters in. It is necessary to be for ever on the watch. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The temptations of life never cease their search for a chink in the armour of the Christian. It is one of the commonest dangers in life to proceed in a series of spasms. We must remember that we are summoned to a campaign which goes on as long as life does.

(ii) It is to a fine campaign that Timothy is summoned. Here again we have the word kalos ( G2570) of which the Pastorals are so fond. It does not mean only something which is good and strong; it means something which is also winsome and lovely. The soldier of Christ is not a conscript who serves grimly and grudgingly; he is a volunteer who serves with a certain knightly chivalry. He is not the slave of duty, but the servant of joy.

(iii) Timothy is commanded to take with him two weapons of equipment. (a) He is to take faith. Even when things are at their darkest, he must have faith in the essential rightness of his cause and in the ultimate triumph of God. It was faith which kept up John Knox when he was in despair. Once when he was a slave on the galleys, the ship came in sight of St. Andrews. He was so weak that he had to be lifted up bodily in order to see. They showed him the church steeple and asked if he knew it. "Yes," he said, "I know it well: and I am fully persuaded, how weak that ever I now appear, that I shall not depart this life till that my tongue shall glorify his godly name in the same place." He describes his feelings in 1554 when he had to flee the country to escape the vengeance of Mary Tudor. "Not only the ungodly, but even my faithful brethren, yea, and my own self, that is, all natural understanding, judged my cause to be irremediable. The frail flesh, oppressed with fear and pain, desireth deliverance, ever abhorring and drawing back from obedience giving. O Christian brethren, I write by experience.... I know the grudging and murmuring complaints of the flesh; I know the anger, wrath, and indignation which it conceiveth against God, calling all his promises in doubt, and being ready every hour utterly to fall from God. Against which remains only faith." The Christian soldier needs in the darkest hour the faith that will not shrink. (b) He is to take the defence of a good conscience. That is to say, the Christian soldier must at least try to live in accordance with his own doctrine. The virtue is gone out of a man's message when his conscience condemns him as he speaks.

A STERN REBUKE ( 1 Timothy 1:18-20 continued)

The passage closes with a stern rebuke to two members of the Church who have injured the Church, grieved Paul, and made shipwreck of their own lives. Hymenaeus is mentioned again in 2 Timothy 2:17; and Alexander may well be the Alexander who is referred to in 2 Timothy 4:14. Paul has three complaints against them.

(i) They had rejected the guidance of conscience. They had allowed their own desires to speak with more persuasiveness than the voice of God.

(ii) They had relapsed into evil practices. Once they had abandoned God, life had become soiled and debased. When God went from life, beauty went along with him.

(iii) They had taken to false teaching. Again it was almost inevitable. When a man takes the wrong way, his first instinct is to find excuses for himself. He takes the Christian teaching and twists it to suit himself. Out of the right he finds perverted arguments to justify the wrong. He finds arguments in the words of Christ to justify the ways of the devil. The moment a man disobeys the voice of conscience, his conduct becomes debased and his thinking twisted.

So Paul goes on to say that he has "handed them over to Satan." What is the meaning of this terrible phrase? There are three possibilities.

(i) He may be thinking of the Jewish practice of excommunication. According to synagogue practice, if a man was an evil-doer he was first publicly rebuked. If that was ineffective, he was banished from the synagogue for a period of thirty days. If he was still stubbornly unrepentant, he was put under the ban, which made him a person accursed, debarred from the society of men and the fellowship of God. In such a case a man might well be said to be handed over to Satan.

(ii) He may be saying that he has barred them from the Church and turned them loose in the world. In a heathen society it was inevitable that men should draw a hard and fast line between the Church and the world. The Church was God's territory; the world was Satan's; and to be debarred from the Church was to be handed over to that territory which was under the sway of Satan. The phrase may mean that these two troublers of the Church were abandoned to the world.

(iii) The third explanation is the most likely of the three. Satan was held to be responsible for human suffering and pain. A man in the Corinthian Church had been guilty of the terrible sin of incest. Paul's advice was that he should be delivered to Satan "for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" ( 1 Corinthians 5:5). The idea is that the Church should pray for some physical chastisement to fall on that man so that, by the pain of his body, he might be brought to the senses of his mind. In Job's case it was Satan who brought the physical suffering upon him ( Job 2:6-7). In the New Testament itself we have the terrible end of Ananias and Sapphira ( Acts 5:5; Acts 5:10), and the blindness which fell upon Elymas because of his opposition to the gospel ( Acts 13:11). It may well be that it was Paul's prayer that these two men should be subjected to some painful visitation which would be a punishment and a warning.

That is all the more likely because it is Paul's hope that they will be, not obliterated and destroyed, but disciplined out of their evil ways. To him, as it ought to be to us, punishment was never mere vindictive vengeance but always remedial discipline, never meant simply to hurt but always to cure.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

1 Timothy 1:19

Conscience is viewed as a kind of gyroscope; keeping it clear (or good) means ensuring that it is not destroyed (see note on 1 Timothy 4:2 about a seared or dead conscience).

faith and a good conscience. ..These two always seem to travel together (cf. 1 Timothy 1:5; 1 Timothy 3:9). Strength in the one is always combined with strength in the other. So also is failure in the one correlated with failure in the other.

some who have rejected -- (apotheo, “a strong, deliberate thrusting away”; used elsewhere in the NT only in Acts 7:27; Romans 11:1-2).

Shipwreck -- Must be not only good soldiers, but good sailors! Paul has suffered many literal shipwrecks, so he knew what he was saying.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Holding faith, and a good conscience..... By "faith" is meant, not the grace of faith, but the doctrine of faith, a sense in which it is often used in this epistle; see 1 Timothy 3:9 and the "holding" of it does not intend a mere profession of it, and a retaining of that without wavering, which is to be done by all believers; but a holding it forth in the ministry of the word, in opposition to a concealing or dropping it, or any part of it; and a holding it fast, without wavering, and in opposition to a departure from it or any cowardice about it and against all posers: to which must be added, a good conscience; the conscience is not naturally good, but is defiled by sin; and that is only good, which is sprinkled by the blood of Christ, and thereby purged from dead works; the effect of which is an holy, upright, and becoming conversation; and which seems to be chiefly intended here, and particularly the upright conduct and behaviour of the ministers of the Gospel, in the faithful discharge of their work and office: see 2 Corinthians 1:12.

Which some having put away; that is, a good conscience; and which does not suppose that they once had one, since that may be put away which was never had: the Jews, who blasphemed and contradicted, and never received the word of God, are said to put it from them, Acts 13:46 where the same word is used as here; and signifies to refuse or reject anything with detestation and contempt: these men always had an abhorrence to a good conscience among men, and to a good life and conversation, the evidence of it; and at length threw off the mask, and dropped the faith they professed, as being contrary to their evil conscience: though admitting it does suppose they once had a good conscience, it must be understood not of a conscience cleansed by the blood of Christ, but of a good conscience in external show only, or in comparison of what they afterwards appeared to have: and, besides, some men, destitute of the grace of God, may have a good conscience in some sense, or with respect to some particular facts, or to their general conduct and behaviour among men, as the Apostle Paul had while unregenerate, Acts 23:1 and which being acted against, or lost, is no instance of falling from the true grace of God, which this passage is sometimes produced in proof of:

concerning faith have made shipwreck; which designs not the grace, but the doctrine of faith, as before observed, which men may profess, and fall off from, and entirely drop and lose. Though supposing faith as a grace is meant, the phrase, "have made shipwreck of it", is not strong enough to prove the total and final falling away of true believers, could such be thought to be here meant; since persons may be shipwrecked, and not lost, the Apostle Paul was thrice shipwrecked, and each time saved; besides, as there is a true and unfeigned, so there is a feigned and counterfeit faith, which may be in persons who have no true grace, and may be shipwrecked, so as to be lost.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      18 This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare;   19 Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:   20 Of whom is Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

      Here is the charge he gives to Timothy to proceed in his work with resolution, 1 Timothy 1:18; 1 Timothy 1:18. Observe here, The gospel is a charge committed to the ministers of it; it is committed to their trust, to see that it be duly applied according to the intent and meaning of it, and the design of its great Author. It seems, there had been prophecies before concerning Timothy, that he should be taken into the ministry, and should prove eminent in the work of the ministry; this encouraged Paul to commit this charge to him. Observe, 1. The ministry is a warfare, it is a good warfare against sin and Satan: and under the banner of the Lord Jesus, who is the Captain of our salvation (Hebrews 2:10), and in his cause, and against his enemies, ministers are in a particular manner engaged. 2. Ministers must war this good warfare, must execute their office diligently and courageously, notwithstanding oppositions and discouragements. 3. The prophecies which went before concerning Timothy are here mentioned as a motive to stir him up to a vigorous and conscientious discharge of his duty; so the good hopes that others have entertained concerning us should excite us to our duty: That thou by them mightest war a good warfare. 4. We must hold both faith and a good conscience: Holding faith and a good conscience,1 Timothy 1:19; 1 Timothy 1:19. Those that put away a good conscience will soon make shipwreck of faith. Let us live up to the directions of a renewed enlightened conscience, and keep conscience void of offence (Acts 24:16), a conscience not debauched by any vice or sin, and this will be a means of preserving us sound in the faith; we must look to the one as well a the other, for the mystery of the faith must be held in a pure conscience, 1 Timothy 3:9; 1 Timothy 3:9. As for those who had made shipwreck of the faith, he specifies two, Hymeneus and Alexander, who had made a profession of the Christian religion, but had quitted that profession; and Paul had delivered them to Satan, had declared them to belong to the kingdom of Satan, and, as some think, had, by an extraordinary power, delivered them to be terrified or tormented by Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme not to contradict or revile the doctrine of Christ and the good ways of the Lord. Observe, The primary design of the highest censure in the primitive church was to prevent further sin and to reclaim the sinner. In this case it was for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus, 1 Corinthians 5:5. Observe, (1.) Those who love the service and work of Satan are justly delivered over to the power of Satan: Whom I have delivered over to Satan. (2.) God can, if he please, work by contraries: Hymeneus and Alexander are delivered to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme, when one would rather think they would learn of Satan to blaspheme the more. (3.) Those who have put away a good conscience, and made shipwreck of faith, will not stick at any thing, blasphemy not excepted. (4.) Therefore let us hold faith and a good conscience, if we would keep clear of blasphemy; for, if we once let go our hold of these, we do not know where we shall stop.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

1 Timothy 1:1-20. We enter now on the confidential communications of the apostle to some of his fellow-labourers, and tonight on the epistles to Timothy. The two have much in common, but they have also not a little that is distinct. The first epistle is characterized by laying down the order which becomes both individuals and the church of God viewed as His house. We shall find, I trust, how remarkably His care for godly moral order, which descends into the family, into the relations of children and parents, of servants and masters, of man and woman, is also bound up with some of the main doctrines of the epistle. At the same time, while this pertains more particularly to the first epistle, there is a striking expression which meets us on the very threshold, and belongs not merely to these two epistles, but also to that addressed to Titus. God is not here regarded as our Father, but as our Saviour God. We have in harmony with this none of the special privileges of the family of God. The relationships before us wear another character. Thus, we have nothing at all about the body of Christ; we hear nowhere again of the bride of the Lamb; but what tallies with God as a Saviour. It is not Christ our Saviour, though, of course, He is so; but there is broader truth pressed even of God our Saviour, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

This prepares for much that we shall find. God, as a Saviour God, is certainly in contrast with His dealings under law, or in government. Nevertheless it takes in also His preserving care, which extends far beyond believers, though very especially toward believers. It embraces also that which is much deeper than presidential care, even the salvation which is in course of accomplishment through Christ. I do not say accomplished; because salvation here, as elsewhere, must not be limited simply to redemption, but goes out into the results of that mighty work on the cross, whereby the soul is kept all the way through the wilderness, and the body of humiliation changed into the likeness of the Lord's glorious body.

Accordingly, Paul introduces himself as the "apostle of Jesus Christ by commandment of God." Authority has a large place in these epistles; thence the apostle shows it was not his writing to his child Timothy in this respect without the Lord. It was not merely love, it was not simply that the Spirit of God empowered him to meet need, but he styles himself in it the "apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Christ Jesus, our hope; to Timothy, my true child in faith: grace, mercy, and peace," etc.

Another feature of these epistles meets us in the place which is given to mercy. I do not merely now refer to what has been often observed the introduction; but we shall find that mercy is wrought into the tissues and substance of the epistle. Mercy supposes the need, the constant wants, the difficulties, the dangers, of the saints of God. It supposes also that God is acting in love, and in full view of these difficulties. Hence we find that, while there is jealous care, there is also a remarkable tenderness, which appears every now and then, in these epistles; and this is just and beautiful in its season. The apostle was drawing toward the close of his career, and (although all be inspired, and he was a rare jewel even among the apostles) there is, I am persuaded, an evidence of a tone more suitable to the growing trials and necessities of the saints of God; a tenderness towards those that were faithful and tried, that is far more manifest here than in the earlier epistles. I do not say that all was not in its due time and measure, but we can well understand it. As a faithful servant, he had been for many years not only leading on, but sharing too the hardest of the fight, and had gone through perils such as had left many of his companions behind. Shame, afflictions, persecutions, the enticements of Satan too, had drawn away some that had been in the foremost ranks of old. He was now left with comparatively few of the familiar faces of those he had loved and laboured with so long.

We can easily understand, then, how calculated such circumstances were to draw out the expression of a love that was always there, but that would be in a more comely and suitable manner expressed at such a conjuncture of circumstances. This we shall find in these epistles. He writes to Timothy as his genuine child; it is not at all the usual way in the earlier epistles. It was his Bethany, Here and now was the opening of that long pent-up heart. At the same time he was also laying an important commission on one that was raised up of God for the purpose, who was comparatively young, who would soon have to fight his way without the sympathy and the countenance of one that had been so blest to him. Hence he says here," Grace, mercy, and peace." He felt his need, but certainly the mercy was not lacking in God, but rich and ready to flow. "Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when. I went into Macedonia." We see the love that even an apostle adopts towards his child in faith. It was not at all a peremptory word, though full of earnest desire for the work of the Lord. He wishes Timothy to stay, "that thou mightest charge some not to be teachers of other doctrine, nor to give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than God's administration* which is in faith."

*The true reading, represented by (Cod. Sin.) and all other uncials save the Clermont, and almost if not all the cursive manuscripts, is οἰκονομίαν , dispensation, in the sense of administration, or stewardship. Even Matthaei joins the rest of the critics, with the Complutensian Polyglott, against the received οἰκοδομίαν , which he considers a mere blunder of δ for ν by Erasmus's printers. But this does not account for the Latin, Syriac (save later), Gothic, etc.; even supposing δ was the slip of the scribe. It is evident that "edification" is not the point in question, but the right order of the house of God, and this in faith. Internal evidence is thus as strong as external as to the true reading.

Then he explains what the nature of this charge was. Often, I fear, "commandment" gives the English reader a wrong impression. I do not say that "commandment" is not correct, but that so naturally do people in Christendom turn to what we call the Ten Commandments, or ten words of the law, that whenever the word "commandment" occurs, you may expect many, even children of God, who might and ought to know better, at once unconsciously turning back to the law. But so far was this from being the writer's thought here, that we shall find him in a moment deprecating most strongly that whole system of idea as a misuse of the law. What the apostle means by the commandment is the charge that he was laying on his child in the faith and fellow-labourer Timothy. The end of the charge or commandment "is love out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." It was, in point of fact, not merely that charge that he was giving him, but the charge touched the truth of the gospel; it was the care of the faith, jealousy for the revelation of God Himself, our Saviour God in Christ. The end of all this was "love, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned." And so then, as remarked already, far from leaving the smallest reason for any perversely to confound this with the law, the apostle instantly turns to that perverting of the law, which is so natural to the heart of man. "From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; desiring to be law-teachers; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm;" and thereupon he parenthetically, as disposing of this matter, shows what the lawful use of the law is. They were not to suppose that he meant that God could make anything without a real use. As there is no creature of God that has not its value, so certainly the law of God has its right field of application, and its own proper use. Thus he vindicates God in what He has given, as well as afterwards in what He has made, and nowhere so much as in this epistle do we find this.

At the same time it is evident that he consigns the law to what we may call a comparatively negative use. The use of the law is to condemn, to kill, to deal with evil. This never could be the full expression of God. It does keep up a witness to God's hatred of evil no doubt; those that are presumptuous it leaves without excuse. But a Christian, who takes up the law as the rule of his own life, must in the very first instance give up his place as being in Christ, and abandon that righteousness of God which he is made in Him. The law was not enacted for the Christian. It is not, of course, that any Christian deliberately intends such folly; but this is really what the error implies. The very principle of taking the law for himself is the abandonment (without knowing or intending it) of all his blessing in Christ. To apply it thus is ignorance of the mind of God It was never designed for such a purpose. But there remains the lawful use of the law. It was made not for the righteous, but for an unrighteous man. Clearly what Satan here aimed at was to put the saints under the law. But the apostle will not hear of it, treating it as simply condemnatory of the bad, and in no way either the power or the rule of what is good for the believer. "Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for lawless and disobedient, for ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for smiters of fathers and smiters of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine."

A weighty sentence, and eminently characteristic also of these epistles. The time was appropriate for it. The saints (at Ephesus especially) had heard a great deal of heavenly truth. There was also an effort, as we see, to correct what was supposed to be a defect, in those that were living on heavenly fare, by supplementing their truth with the law. But this is all wrong, cries the apostle. It is an unwitting denial not only of Christians, but even of your place as righteous men. Very different from this is the true and divine principle. But "sound doctrine" is brought in here; and we shall see how very beautifully this is applied in the epistle at a later point. For a moment he just touches on the wholesome thought, then turns to a higher one. There is in Christ that which lifts entirely out of nature, and puts one before God according to all that is in his heart his counsels of glory for us in Christ. In fact, immediately after this he calls what he preached the "gospel of the glory" ("the glorious gospel," as it is styled in our version,) "of the blessed God." "According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust." He takes great pains to show that no glory that is revealed in Christ, no blessedness in our total clearance from flesh, no setting of the believer free before God in Christ Jesus, impairs, but, on the contrary, gives importance to "sound doctrine."

By "sound doctrine" we shall find that he brings in the nicest care for the least relations of this life, as flowing from the grace and truth of God. This is the true guard against an abuse of heavenly truth; not putting persons under law, which is inevitable bondage and condemnation, that brings no glory to God, nor power or holiness to the man. But at the same time heavenly truth, so far from being inconsistent, never shines so much as when it is seen in the smallest details of walk in the home, in the family, in the ordinary occupation, in the bearing and tone of a man in his life day by day. It is not merely in the assembly; neither is it in worship only; it is not certainly in ministerial work alone, but in the quiet home. The relationship of a servant to his master gives a blessed opportunity in its place for showing out what the truth of the glory is to faith, and what the strength of the grace which is come to man in Christ the Lord. This is what we shall find in these epistles to Timothy that the apostle combines in his own wonderful way his reference to ordinary duty, and even enters into the smallest matters of this life, according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. He refers to his own case; for he was so much the better a preacher of the gospel, because he so deeply felt himself an object of the grace of God, who revealed it in Christ to him. What can be conceived more remarkably characteristic of the man? The bearing of the passage is therefore intensely personal and practical. "And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, appointing me unto ministry." He does not forget this, but he takes care to assert another and a far nearer and more immediate want "who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and insolent: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus."

This accordingly brings out a statement of the gospel: "Faithful is the word, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy." It is always mercy, as may be observed. It is not so much a question of righteousness; justification is not here prominent, as in other epistles. "I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting." This draws out his ascription of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord; and then he repeats the words of the fifth verse: "This charge I commit unto thee." It is not the law, nor any supposed adaptation of it, to direct the path of those who receive the gospel. "This charge," he maintains, is the commandment of our Saviour God. It is that which He is sending out now, and nothing else. "This charge I commit to thee, child Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou mightest war the good warfare; holding faith, and a good conscience, which some having put away, concerning, faith have made shipwreck."

There again we find the same mingling of the faith and good conscience as we had earlier. Some having put away, not the faith, but a good conscience, made shipwreck of the faith. Thus, no matter what you may hold or appear to delight in, abandoning jealousy over your ways, giving up self-judgment in the great or small matters which each day brings before us, is fatal. It may be a very little sin that is allowed, but this, where it is unjudged in God's sight, becomes the beginning of a very great evil. Having put away a good conscience, their ship no longer answers the helm, and as to faith they make shipwreck: "of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may be instructed not to blaspheme." Satan's power is regarded and really is in the outside world. The apostle had delivered these men to him. The power to torment and harass the soul with fears does not belong to the house of God, where, as we shall find, His presence is known, and this is incompatible with fear, with doubt, with question of acceptance and of blessing in His sight. The apostle had given up to the enemy these men, who had abandoned all that was holy, not only in practice, but also afterwards, as a consequence, in faith. They were consigned to Satan, not necessarily to be lost surely not; but that they might be so troubled, by proving what the power of Satan is by the flesh, and in the world, that they might be thus brought back broken in all their bones, and glad to find a refuge again in the house of God. Better surely not to need such discipline; but, if we do need it, how precious to know that God turns it to account in His grace, that they might be thoroughly dealt with and exercised in the conscience!

In the next chapter (1 Timothy 2:1-15) the apostle carries on his care as to what was becoming. This, you will find, is a main topic of the epistle. It is not merely instruction for saints, or conversion of sinners, but also the comeliness that belongs to the saints of God their right attitude toward those without as well as those within. In it we begin with what is toward those in authority, that are without. "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and givings of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in eminence; that we may pass a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and gravity." May it not be a question whether we are sufficiently careful and exercised in heart, as to that which becomes us in this respect? Do we really enter on our due place of intercession, and exercise that which becomes us before God, as having so blessed a function the mind of God in this world, and care for those that seem to be outside our reach? But in truth to stand in this world in known and near relationship with a Saviour God, with One that we know, at once brings before us also those that are outside. Christianity fosters no spirit of harsh: unruly independence. And what then becomes us in respect of them? Prayer, intercession, even for the highest, let them be kings or in eminence; they need it most. Nothing but the strong sense of the infinite blessing of the place that grace has given us could lead to or keep up such prayer. But sometimes we are apt to settle down in the enjoyment of the grace, without reflecting on that which becomes us as to those outside it. From pre-occupation within, how often we forget those without!

But the reason goes deeper. "For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who desires that all men should be saved:" speaking now of His gracious willingness. Not His counsels but His nature rises before us. We must be blind if we fail to see that a great point in these epistles is the good and loving nature of God, that would have us look at all men without exception. It is another thine, how far the counsels of God work, how far the effectual work of His grace is applied; but nothing alters God's nature. And this is true both in the spirit of grace that becomes the saints, and also in their zealous care for the glory of God. Hence he says: "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men." This is always the ground and character of the First and Second of Timothy. It is not the Father and His family; it is God and man. And it is not merely God as He once dealt with Israel, for then this Mediator was not. There was a promise, but the Mediator of grace was not come. But now, apart from the heavenly relations that are ours, and much that we know and enjoy by the Holy Ghost in our hearts here below, there is this that needs to be looked after and maintained, that is, the public character if we may so speak of the Christian, and that which belongs to him thus broadly before men. It is the testimony of God as a Saviour God, of a God that has to do with men. Accordingly He has revealed Himself in a Mediator. Thus he speaks of Him: "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, the testimony in its own season. Whereunto I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not), a teacher of Gentiles in faith and truth."

His general exhortation is pursued, but still in view of the due and decent outward order, of that which met the eye even of an unconverted person. "I will therefore that the men" that is, not women "that the men pray in every place, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and disputing." There are occasions and places where it would be wholly unsuitable for women to speak, but as to men they pray everywhere. There is no place where it is not in season, but let it be "without wrath and disputing." or "reasoning." Either would be altogether opposed to the spirit of prayer. Prayer is the expression of dependence on God; and wrangling on the one hand, and all angry feeling on the other, even supposing it might have some righteousness about it, still are unsuitable to prayer. Thus, what may have its place may really be uncomely in drawing near to God. A spirit of reasoning would be quite as out of place.

But with regard to woman he says, "In like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in orderly guise, with modesty and sobriety; not with plaits and gold, or pearls, or costly array." It does not matter what may be the particular taste and habits of the day or of the country, the Christian woman, as much as the Christian man, ought to be above the age, and unlike the world. And indeed it is this very want that he here takes occasion to connect with Christianity itself in its outward order before man; so that we may truly desire that our Saviour God should not lose, as it were, His character in and by His people; for this is the great point that the apostle is so full of in these epistles. Such is the way in which a woman can contribute to a right and godly testimony as well as a man.

But he pursues it a little more. He says, "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man." In truth he really goes somewhat beyond this. A woman might say, "I do not usurp authority; I only exercise it." But this precisely is what is wrong. It is forbidden to be exercised. Nothing therefore can be more exclusive. It does not matter, if the man may be weak and the woman strong; it would have been better they had thought of this before they became husband and wife. But even thus no excuse avails; the woman is not to exercise authority over the man; nor (need I add?) in any other relationship. For this he traces things to their roots. "Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being quite deceived was in transgression." That is, he decides things with that marvellous power which God gave him beyond any of the other apostles of tracking the stream to its source, both in man and to God; and this ruling of the case he deduces from the unquestionable facts of the beginning of divine history as to the man and woman. The man was not deceived, in a certain sense: so much the worse; he was a bold sinner. The woman was weak and misled by the serpent; the man deliberately did what he did with his eyes open. Adam sinned against God knowingly. Of course it was dreadful and ruinous; nevertheless this shows the difference in their character from the outset. Men as a class are not so liable to be deceived as woman She is more open to be taken in by appearance. The man may be ruder and worse bolder in his sin, but still the Lord remembers this even to the last. At the same time the apostle mingles this with that which is the lot of women here below: "But she shall be preserved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety." It is not merely if "she," but if "they" continue. How serious is the word for both man and woman! In the government of God He mingles the most solemn things with that which is the most thoroughly personal, showing how He would have the conscience exercised, and jealous care even on such a matter as this. I do not agree with those who refer the childbearing to the Incarnation.

And now he comes (1 Timothy 3:1-16), not so much to comely order as to the outside, or as to the relation of man and woman, but to the ordinary governments and helps of the saints. He takes up what was of a graver kind, and touching more on spiritual things, namely, bishops (or elders); then deacons; and this leads him naturally to the house of God. "Faithful is the word, If any one aspireth to oversight, he desireth a good work. The overseer then must be blameless, husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no striker; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity." It is plain that this is not at all a question of spiritual gift. One might be endowed with a good gift and yet not have a well-regulated house. Perhaps the wife might not behave properly, or the children be unruly: no matter what his gift, if the wife, or the family were a dishonour, he could not be an overseer (for this is the simple and true meaning of bishop").

In early days persons were brought in to the confession of Christ who had been Pagans, and trained up in its habits. Some of these had more than one wife. A true and gifted Christian one might be; but if such were his unhappy position, he was precluded from exercising formal oversight. The evil of polygamy could not be corrected at that time by strong measures. (Since then in Christendom it is dealt with as criminal.) To dismiss his wives would be wrong. But the Holy Spirit by such an injunction applied a principle which was destined to undermine, as in fact it did undermine, polygamy in every form. There was a manifest censure conveyed in the fact, that a man with two or more wives could not be set in the charge of elder or deacon. A man was not refused as a confessor of Christ, nor was he forbidden to preach the gospel, because such might have been his sad circumstances at home. If the Lord called him by His grace, or gave him as a gift to the church, the church bowed, But an elder or bishop was to be one that not only had a suitable gift for his work, but also in the family or in his circumstances must be free from all appearance of scandal on the name of the Lord. He must have a good report, and be morally irreproachable in himself and his household. There might be trial or sorrow, few families were without both; but what is spoken of here is something that damaged the public repute of the. assembly. For this very reason the grand point for local oversight was moral weight. It was not only the ability to inform, counsel, or rebuke, but in order to do all this efficiently a certain godly influence proved at home and abroad. In the practical difficulties with which an elder or bishop would be called to interfere continually in an assembly, there should never be room for those whose conduct might be in question to point to flaws in his own home, or in his own open life and spirit. Thus wisely and holily did the Spirit demand that he should be a person of good report himself, that neither past ways nor present habits should in the least degree compromise the office; and again, with a stainless reputation as well as a man of some spiritual experience in his family "one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil." These things would not apply to a man's ministry in the word. A Christian may begin to preach almost as soon as he believed the word of truth, the gospel of salvation; but for one to be clothed with a public and responsible place as elder in an assembly is another thing altogether.

As a rule the apostle never appointed persons elders directly after they were converted. A certain time was needful for the Spirit of God to work in the soul, and discipline them in the midst of their brethren. They would then and thus manifest certain capabilities and moral qualities, and acquire weight, which would make them respected and valued, besides gaining experience in godly care for the well-being of the saints of God. All these things, where there were circumstantial requisites, relative and personal suitability, would mark out a person for this office.

Besides, though this is not said here, in order to be an overseer, one must be appointed by a valid authority; and the only one recognised by Scripture is an apostle or an apostolic delegate. Thus the Christians that a superficial. observer of the present day might tax with inattention to godly order in these respects are in truth those alone who are really adhering to it. For manifestly to set up men in such a position of charge without a proper validating authority is really to vitiate all in its very springs. Those who refuse to exceed their powers are clearly in the right, not those who imitate the apostles without warrant from the Lord. I am perfectly satisfied therefore that those now gathered to His name have been mercifully and truly led of God in not presuming to appoint elders or bishops. They do not possess the needful authority more than others; and there they stop, using, and blessing God for, such things as they have. Appointment must always raise the question, who they are that appoint. And it is impossible for an honest man of intelligence to find a scriptural answer, so as to sanction those who pretend to ordain, or those who claim to be duly ordained, in Christendom. There was no difficulty in primitive days. Here indeed (if we except a debatable allusion in another place) the apostle does not touch the subject of appointment as he does to Titus. He merely puts before Timothy the qualities requisite for both the local charges.

After the overseers he turns to the deacons. "Likewise must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre; holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. And let these also first be proved." The modern deacon in the larger and national bodies has no resemblance to this, and is indeed an unmeaning form. It is a mere noviciate for the so-called presbyters who compose the body of the clergy. Of old no inexperienced man ought to have been in such a position. Even though it was a function about outward things, still they were to be first proved. "Then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless. Even so must their wives be grave." It is plain on the face of it that this is more particularly insisted on for the deacons than for the elders. The reason was, that as the deacons had to do more with externals, there was greater danger of their wives making mischief and heart-burning. They might interfere with these matters, which we know are apt to gender strife, as they cast a gloom over the Pentecostal Church at an early day. There was not the same temptation for the wives of the elders or overseers. Hence it is written here, "Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife." In this we find the same thing as was said of the elders: both must rule their children and their own houses well. "For they that have served well purchase to themselves a good degree, and much boldness in faith which is in Christ Jesus."

Then the apostle sums up these regulations, and says, These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly: but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God," (may we, too, profit by his words, beloved brethren!) "which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." The church is the guardian of the truth, its sole responsible witness on the earth. The church owes all in the grace of our Lord Jesus to the truth. It may not be competent to define the truth: inspired men have done so. At the same time it is bound to hold forth God's word as the truth, and to allow nothing inconsistent with it in the doctrine or ways of the assembly. For we are called to be a manifestation of the truth before the world, even of that which goes beyond that of which the church is the embodiment. The acts done should always be an expression of the truth. It is a most important duty, therefore, and one requiring continual watchfulness. God alone can vouchsafe or keep it good.

Truly, there are often difficulties that arise in the church of God, and prudence might suggest many plans to meet the difficulty; but then it is the house of God, not merely the house of the prudent or the good. It is a divine institution. It has nothing in common with well-intentioned men doing their best. Let the matter be ever so simple, whether it be a question of discipline or order, it should express the truth of God applied to the case. This shows the exceeding solemnity of either advising or resisting any course that might be the will of God in any particular matter. Excellent desires, zeal, honesty, are in no way sufficient for the purpose. God can employ the most feeble member of the assembly; but still ordinarily one looks for better guides. One might expect that while God would give no allowance to a man presuming on gift or experience, because the moment you begin to assume to yourself or to others, there is danger, but nevertheless, surely one might expect that God would, by suitable means, bring out that which is wholesome, and true, and godly in short, what would express His own mind on any given subject.

These are among the reasons why the apostle maintains it here. We have it viewed in its outward comely order in this world, but the principle of the maintenance of this, and nothing less than this, always remains true. No renewed state gives any reason for abandoning it. The great thing is never to let details swamp the principle. There is always a way for those who, consciously weak, distrust themselves; and this is to wait, to refuse to act until God shows His way. Faith waits till it gets a distinct word from God. No doubt it is hard to be at one's wits' end, but it is a good thing for the soul. So here: he bids Timothy to take heed to these things, in case he himself tarried.

And what is that truth especially which characterizes the church? This is another instance of the tone of the epistle. "Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness." Mark the expression "mystery of godliness," or piety. It is not simply the mystery of Christ in the church, but the "mystery of godliness." "God* was manifested in flesh, was justified in Spirit, was seen of angels, was preached among Gentiles, was believed on in [the] world, was received up in glory." It is not God reigning over a people here below. This was no mystery, but the wonted expectation of all Israel, indeed, of saints before Israel. They expected the Messiah, the Redeemer to come, the One that would make good the promises of God. But now "God was manifested in flesh, was justified in Spirit." The power of the Holy Ghost had shown itself all through His life, had been proved to the uttermost in His death, and now marked Him out as Son of God in resurrection. He was "seen of angels," not of man alone; He was "preached among Gentiles," instead of being found on a throne amongst the Jews; He was "believed on in the world," instead of manifestly governing it by power. Another state of things altogether is present: it is Christianity; but Christianity viewed in the person of Christ Himself, in the grand bearings of His own person and His work; not as forming a heavenly body, nor even pursuing the special privileges of the habitation of God through the Spirit; but laying the foundation for the house of God, as the scene and support of His truth and moral order before the world. The whole matter is closed by Jesus, not only "believed on in the world," but "received up in glory."

* Cod. Sin. () agrees with the great authorities which give ὅς , "who" (or others, ὅ , "which") instead of Θεός , "God."

Now what is the reason why this is brought in here? It seems to be set in contrast with the speculations of men (1 Timothy 4:1-16) who wanted to interweave with Christianity certain dreams of a fancied spirituality above the gospel. What was this scheme? They fancied that the gospel would be a still better system if the converts would eat no meat; if they would not marry, and so on. This was their notion of bringing in some "higher life," superior to anything that the apostles had taught How does he meet them? He shows here the "mystery of godliness;" but along with this, and immediately after it, he brings in the most necessary fundamental truth. This is the point that has much struck my mind in speaking of 1 Timothy at this time.

That is to say, there is a combination of God's revelation in Christ, in most essential and even lofty features, with the plainest and simplest truth of God as to creation. Now, you will find that the way in which false doctrine enters habitually is in contrast with this. Men thus break down, who despise common duties; they are far too good or too great for occupying themselves with the homely things that become a Christian man or woman. They may perhaps weave the love of Christ (we will suppose) into some high-flown speculations; but they set aside that which connects itself every day with moral propriety. Oh, how often this has been the case! how one could easily recount one name after another, if it would become any so to do! Such then is the way in which error is prone to show itself. The man who most of all brings out what is heavenly and divine is he who should be devoted and obedient in the simplest duties of every day. This very epistle is the witness of it. Whereas the moment one sanctions the principle of making little of the family relations, setting aside duty, neglecting it personally, and making it even a boast to do so, as if jealousy for the Lord's glory were mere legalism, the result will be that, while they set aside the common claims of every day's duty, the conscience is ruined, and shipwreck of the faith is inevitable. They first cast aside a good conscience, and then the faith itself comes to nothing.

Thus the apostle brings the reader into close juxtaposition with the mystery of godliness, or, as it is emphatically called, the mystery of piety. The glorious person of Christ is traced through from His manifestation in flesh, or incarnation, until He is beheld "received up in glory." The work of God proceeds in the church on earth founded on this. In contrast with it 1 Timothy 4:1-16 follows up: "But the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of demons; in hypocrisy of liars, cauterised in their own conscience, forbidding to marry, [bidding] to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving of those that are faithful and know the truth." Some necessary changes are here made, so as to convey what seems to me the meaning. Then he proceeds: "For every creature of God is good," etc. We can hardly descend to anything lowlier than this.

But these airy speculators had completely forgotten God. They despised the simple self-evident truth that every creature of God is good. So, too, we see that they put a disparagement on the basis of family life, and the social system marriage. Not to marry through devotedness to God's work may be right and most blessed; but here it was a pretension to superior sanctity. As a principle and practice, Christian people were urged not to marry at all. Now the moment that this ground is taken, the same apostle who tells us what he believed to be the best thing. (namely, to be free from fresh ties, so as to care only for the Lord), defends resolutely the sanctity of marriage, and resents the blow struck at the creatures of God. It was really a slight of His outward love, and of His providential arrangements. Danger threatens wherever there is a virtual setting aside of God's rights, no matter what the plea. Oriental philosophy, which tinctured some of the Greeks, fostered these high soarings of men. As usual, Paul brings in God, and the dream is dissipated. The moment you use anything so as to set aside the plain duty of every day, you prove yourself to be losing the faith, to have slipped from a good conscience, to have fallen a victim to the enemy's deceits; and what will be the end of it?

The apostle then gives personal counsel to Timothy, of a very salutary character. As he also desires that none should despise his youth, so he urges that he should be a model of the believers, in word, conversation, love, faith, and purity. He was to give himself to reading, to exhortation, to teaching, and not to neglect his gift, given him through prophecy, in the imposition of the hands of the presbytery or elderhood. Nothing simpler, nor more wholesome. It might have been thought that one so specially endowed as Timothy was not called to occupy himself thus, and be wholly in them, that his profiting should appear to all. But no; grace and gift create a corresponding responsibility, instead of absolving from it. Timothy must give heed to himself, as well as to the teaching; and he must continue in them, instead of relaxing after a rigorous beginning. Depend upon it that those who seek to give out had better take care that they take in; that both labourers and those laboured amongst may ever grow in the truth. Doing thus, Timothy would save both himself and those that heard him.

In 1 Timothy 5:1-25 the apostle gives needful directions to Timothy as regards an elder. He was not to be rebuked sharply, but to be entreated as a father. Undoubtedly Timothy stood in a prominent place of trust and service; but this gave no exemption from the comeliness that becomes every one especially a young man. The apostle had maintained his post of honour in the preceding chapter; now he will not let him forget the due consideration of others. How often does over-frankness drop words which rankle in the memory of an elder, easily floated over when love flows freely, but when it ebbs, an occasion of shipwreck! Again, "younger men as brethren; the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity." Nothing more beautiful, more tender, more holy; nothing more calculated to edify and cement the saints to the glory of God, whilst His wisdom enters into all circumstances with an easy elasticity which is characteristic of His grace.

So too we find divinely-furnished regulations as to those who ought to be chargeable to the assembly what was right in the case of the younger widows what was desirable as to younger women in general; and then again the obligations toward elders, not now when faulty, but in their ordinary functions and service. "Let the elders that preside well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine." But what if they were charged with wrong? "Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear." Prejudice and partiality must be eschewed at all cost. Finally, care, must be taken to avoid any compromise of the name of the Lord. Thus the well-known sign of blessing in the outward act of laying on hands was to be done circumspectly. "Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure."

There is condescension even to so small a point seemingly as to tell him not to be a water-drinker. It would seem that Timothy's scrupulous conscience felt the dreadful habits of those times and lands so as to bring him into bondage but the apostle, not in a mere private note, but in the body of the inspired letter itself, sets aside his scruples, and bids him "use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities." I am aware that men have cavilled at this, yielding to their own thoughts of what they deem fit subjects for the pen of inspiration; but if we exclude anything whatever from the range of the Spirit of God, we make it to be merely a question of the will of man. And what must issue from this? There is nothing either too great or too little for the Holy Spirit. Is there anything that may not, that ought not, to be a question of doing God's will? Thus, if a person takes wine, or anything else, except to please God, and is not in danger on the score of morality, certainly he has lost all adequate sense of his own place as a witness of the glory of God. How happy ought we to be that God gives us perfect liberty! only let us see to it that we use it solely for His praise.

In the last chapter (1 Timothy 6:1-21) comes the question of servants and their masters, which also it was important to regulate; for we all know that a servant might turn to a selfish account that his master and himself were brethren in Christ. It is all very well for the master to say so; and certainly he should never act without bearing in mind his own spiritual relationship to his servant; but I do not think it becomes a servant to say "brother" to his master. My business is to know him as my master. No doubt it would be grace on his part to own me as his brother. Everything therefore where grace is at work will be found to have its blessed place. Whoever thought differently (and such have never been wanting) was puffed up, and could only suggest evil.

Then he touches on the value of piety with a contented mind in contrast with the love of money, and its various snares in this age as in all that are past. These things will be found dealt with successively, until at last the apostle calls on the man of God to flee these things himself, and to pursue the path of righteousness, etc., as well as strive in the good combat of faith; otherwise a man of God was in no degree free from danger. He was to lay hold of eternal life, to which he had been called, and had confessed the good confession before many witnesses, and this in view of the great event which will display our fidelity or the lack of it the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in its own time the blessed and only Potentate shall show. At the same time he calls on him to charge them that are rich neither to be high-minded nor rely on aught so uncertain. What would give weight to the charge? That he was above such desires himself, trusting in the living God, who affords us all things richly for enjoyment. Let them be rich in good works, liberal in distributing, ready to communicate, laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of what is really life. "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of false-named knowledge, which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee."