Verses 1-20
Chapter 1
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 (Greek #652), from the verb apostellein (Greek #649) which means to send out; an apostolos (Greek #652)
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 (Greek #2003).
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' (Greek #2596) epitagen (Greek #2003),
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 (Greek #4990),
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.
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.
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 (Philippians 1:1; Philippians 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"
(Philippians 2:20; Philippians 2:22). Here he calls him "his true son." The word that he uses for "true" is gnesios (Greek #1103).
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.
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; Philippians 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 (Greek #1656), and in Hebrew chesed (Hebrew #2617).
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 (Hebrew #2617)
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 (Greek #2513),
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 (Greek #4893).
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.
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.
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, Greek #459).
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, Greek #506).
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, Greek #765).
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, Greek #268).
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, Greek #462). Hosios (Greek #3741)
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 (Greek #3741)
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 (Greek #462) is worse than a mere lawbreaker. He is the man who violates the ultimate decencies of life.
There are the polluted (bebeloi, Greek #952).
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 (Greek #952) soils everything he touches.
There are those who strike or even kill their parents (patraloai, Greek #3964, and metraloai, Greek #3389).
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, Greek #409),
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, Greek #4205, and arsenokoitai, Greek #733).
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 (Greek #405).
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, Greek #5583) and perjurers (epiorkoi, Greek #1965), 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.
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, Greek #5198)
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.
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.
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 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 (Greek #5197).
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 (Greek #5196) which Aristotle defines: "Hubris (Greek #5196)
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 (Greek #5296)
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.
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 (Greek #5095)--is composed of two Greek words, time (Greek #5092) which means "honour," and theos (Greek #2316)
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 (Greek #3908),
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.
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 (Greek #2570)
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.
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)