1 Timothy 1

2. In the first Epistle the writer’s mind is almost entirely occupied with the thought of what might be happening at Thessalonica; in the second, the remembrance of his own pressing trials seems to mingle more conspicuously with the exhortations and warnings addressed to those who are absent. He particularly asks for the prayers of the Thessalonians, that he may be delivered from the perverse and wicked men around him, who were destitute of faith. It is evident that he was in a condition of fear and anxiety. This is manifest from the words which were heard by him in a vision vouchsafed at this critical period. H. (See Acts 18: 9, 10.)

5. “The patient waiting for Christ” ought to be “the patience of Christ,” the patience which was in Christ. The words will not bear the other rendering. A.—It is not “the patient waiting for Christ,” as in the authorized version, though that is good; but it is sympathy with the very patience of Christ, who, during this time of opposition to his word—when his cause is obstructed by “unreasonable and wicked men”—has long patience, and sits calmly in heaven expecting till his enemies are made his footstool. This patience his people are to share, that they may also have part in his victory.

10-12. With that broad, practical sense which should never be forgotten in religious instruction, the writers renew their admonition to the Thessalonians regarding honest, self-supporting industry. Probably it was an effect of the agitation among them about the day of the Lord that some of the Christians had renounced daily work, and were living in a feverish anxiety or excitement. Those who did so burdened unduly the funds of the Church, or lived at the expense of others; so the Epistle conveys to them a very terse injunction, “that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.” If one be duly called and appointed to undertake such work in the Church as demands all his time and strength, he is entitled to a livelihood for himself and his family; he may “live of the gospel.” But persons not so called and appointed have no right to place themselves on Church support, and call it “living by faith.” D. F.

God is constantly teaching us that nothing valuable is ever obtained without labor, and that no labor can be honestly expended without our getting its value in return. He is not careful to make everything easy to man. The Bible itself is no light book; human duty no holiday engagement. T. B.—Inasmuch as God has so constituted us that without work we can not eat, that if men ceased for a single day to labor the machinery of life would come to a stand, an arrest be laid on science, civilization, social progress, on everything that is conducive to the welfare of man in the present life, we may safely conclude that religion, which is also good for man, which is indeed the supreme good of man, is not inconsistent with hard work. It must undoubtedly be the design of our gracious God that all this toil for the supply of our physical necessities, this incessant occupation amid the things that perish, shall be no obstruction, but rather a help to our spiritual life. Caird.

16. “The Lord of peace”—He who is its author and the source from which it flows—is here called upon to bestow it: “The Lord of peace himself give you peace.” Quite consistently with those words of our Lord, wherein he communicates peace as his legacy to his disciples: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” E. M. G.

17,18. This concluding benediction is used by Paul at the end of the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians (under a longer form in 2 Cor.), Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Thessalonians. And, in a shorter form, it is used also at the end of all his other Epistles. It seems, from what he says here, to have been always written with his own hand. C.

1. PAUL, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord 2 Jesus Christ, which is our hope; unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou 4 mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: 5 so do. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good 6 conscience, and of faith unfeigned: from which some having swerved have turned aside 7 unto vain jangling; desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they 8 say, nor whereof they affirm. But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;

9 knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers 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; according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

12. And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and 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. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

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; holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck: of whom is Hymeneus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

INQUIRING why Christ came in the world, and taught that it was for this end, to save sinners, we are initiated on the instant into the true doctrine concerning our own nature. The glorious original of man, the Son of God, pure, joyous, immortal, the image of his Maker; man, an apostate from his high estate, his capacities undestroyed, his goodness dimmed, his soul grand and immortal still, but that very grandeur and immortality made a curse by sin; hope, blasted by conscious guilt, revived by the priesthood of Christ; a new life imparted to the disabled spirit through the blessedness of divine mercy; that which the weakness of human flesh never could accomplish of itself made certain by our alliance with Christ; and this degenerate and prostrate nature of ours, in Christ elevated above the angels, and promised a security from which there shall be no other falling; here in Christ and his cross have we the universal solvent, which touches and includes every real fact in man’s eventful life. You can not have a cold, lifeless, or false theory concerning man, so long as you study man in Christ; his advent, his atonement, his resurrection, his redemptive work. There is not a belief, a duty, a command, a promise, a hope belonging to man, which does not range itself in proper place and order around this central fact, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Learning here at what a costly sacrifice man was redeemed, we are struck as nowhere else with the shame and sadness and woe of his fall; taught at the same time to what heights he is raised by the power and grace of the Redeemer, we see the true greatness and glory of our nature, surpassing all that ever was conceived by an infidel pride and ambition. God in Christ, God’s greatness in condescension. Man in Christ, man’s greatness in being recovered. Recovery implies penitence, forgiveness, new obedience, progressive sanctification, the law of the spirit of life, a heaven of holiness and blessedness, and fearless security. W. A.

THE designation of pastoral Epistles has been commonly applied to the two Epistles to Timothy and the Epistle to Titus, because alike addressed to persons engaged in pastoral work, and chiefly discoursing of matters relating to such work. P. F.—Without doubt it was near the end of Paul’s life and ministry that he wrote the pastoral Epistles. After his first imprisonment at Rome, during which he dispatched his letters to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and to Philemon, he resumed his itinerant ministry for a few years, revisited former scenes, and perhaps entered on some new ground also. On this apostolic circuit he left Timothy at Ephesus and Titus at Crete, to represent his authority and establish order in the churches. This Epistle was sent to Timothy while thus acting.

No name is more closely connected with Paul’s career than that of Timothy, a native of Lystra, a town not very remote from the apostle’s birthplace at Tarsus. Though his father was a Greek and a heathen, his mother and grandmother were devout Jewesses, and trained him from childhood in a knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures. He was converted to Christ through the preaching of Paul, on his first visit to Lycaonia, and was, no doubt, baptized at the same time. On his second visit, the apostle took notice of Timothy as “a disciple well reported of by the brethren at Lystra and Iconium,” and adopted him as his missionary assistant. (Read pages 102, 103, 110.) Timothy had noble qualities of piety and faithful affection; and that man must ever be honored in the Church of God who for full sixteen years possessed the love, deserved the confidence, shared the labors, and alleviated the sorrows of the great apostle Paul. D. F

The work and difficulties that were handed over to Timothy are vividly portrayed in this Epistle. He had to rule presbyters, most of whom were older than himself, to assign to each a stipend in proportion to his work, to receive and decide on charges that might be brought against them, to regulate the alms-giving and the sisterhoods of the Church, to ordain presbyters and deacons. There was the risk of being entangled in the disputes, prejudices, covetousness, sensuality of a great city. There was the risk of injuring health and strength by an overstrained asceticism. Leaders of rival sects were there—Hymenæus, Philetus, Alexander—to oppose and thwart him. The name of his beloved teacher was no longer honored as it had been; the strong affection of former days had vanished, and “Paul the aged” had become unpopular, the object of suspicion and dislike. Only in the narrowed circle of the faithful few—Aquila, Priscilla, Mark, and others, who were still with him—was he likely to find sympathy or support. We can not wonder that the apostle, knowing these trials, and with his marvelous power of bearing another’s burdens and making them his own, should be full of anxiety and fear for his disciples’ steadfastness; that admonitions, appeals, warnings, should follow each other in rapid and vehement succession.

3. It is impossible to make out with complete exactness the relations between the missions of and the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. This alone is clear, that they were placed at Ephesus and Crete under similar circumstances, and about the same time; and that the Epistles to them were nearly contemporaneous. S.

5. In the spiritual life there is an end. The end is love—supreme love, with all the powers of the soul, to God—and such love to our brethren as we bear to ourselves—this love to be engendered by a living faith in what God has done for us, a faith which sets free the heart both from a sense of guilt and from a love of sin, and which thus sets the conscience at ease. If this love is in some measure yielded both to God and man, the object of true religion is attained. If this love is not produced and maintained in the soul we fail altogether in true religion, though we may have been very busy about religion, may have put up many prayers, heard many sermons, attended many sacraments, assisted in many philanthropic enterprises. E. M. G.—It is love out of a pure heart, hence incapable of working to ignoble ends; also out of a good conscience, honestly bent on following out its convictions of truth and duty; finally, out of faith unfeigned—a term frequently used to characterize the graces of the Christian character, applied to faith, serving to indicate its living apprehension and firm grasp of the things presented to its view; hence widely different from that lazy assent to the doctrines of the gospel, that merely formal profession of adherence to them which often goes by the name of faith. Considered with respect to practical working, the order adopted by the apostle is quite natural: farthest in, as the deep fountain-head of all the outgoings of Christian love, there is the purified heart; then, to regulate the actings of love, and determine their course and measure, there is the good conscience; and finally, to sustain and animate the soul in the varied works and labors proper to love, there is the faith unfeigned, embracing the glorious promises of God, and ministering strength from the things therein contained to its vital energy. P. F.

There can be no saving faith in an unseen Person except through the medium of thoughts concerning him, which thoughts put into words are a creed. The antithesis which is often eagerly urged upon us—not doctrines but Christ—is a very incomplete and misleading one. “Christ” is a mere name, empty of all significance till it be filled with definite statements of who and what Christ is. But, while we must have doctrines to make Christ a reality and an object of faith to grasp at all, when we have these doctrines, it is not the creed that saves, but the faith. You must turn your creed into a faith before it has power to bless and save. What is the use of your saying that you believe in God the Father Almighty when there is no child’s love and happy confidence in your heart? What the better are you for believing in Jesus Christ, his divine nature, his death and glory, when you have no reliance on him nor any love toward him? Is your belief in the Holy Ghost of the smallest consequence if you do not yield to his hallowing power? What does it matter that you believe in the forgiveness of sins so long as you do not care whether yours are pardoned or not? And is it anything to you or to God that you believe in the life everlasting if all your work and hopes and longings are confined to “this bank and shoal of time”? Are you any more a Christian because of all that intellectual assent to these solemn verities? Your faith, not your creed, determines your religion. Thank God that the soul may be wedded to Christ even while a partial conception of Christ is in the understanding. But the more complete and adequate the creed, indeed, the mightier and more fruitful in blessing will the faith naturally be. A. M.

8-9. Law never can be abrogated. Strict rules are needed exactly in proportion as we want the power or the will to rule ourselves. It is not because the gospel has come that we are free from the law, but because and only so far as we are in a gospel state. “It is for a righteous man” that the law is not made, and thus we see the true nature of Christian liberty. The liberty to which we are called in Christ is not the liberty of doing what we will, but the blessed liberty of being on the side of the law, and therefore unrestrained by it in doing right. F. W. R.—These words explain the meaning of a great many passages in Paul’s Epistles in which he speaks of not being under the law. It is clear that he is not speaking solely or in any considerable degree of the ceremonial law; but much more of the law of moral good, the law which told men how they ought to live and how they ought not. This law, he says, is not made for good men but for evil: a thing so plain that we may well wonder how any could ever have misunderstood it. It is so manifest that strict rules are required just exactly in proportion to our inability or want of will to rule ourselves; it is so very plain that, with regard to those crimes which we are under no temptation to commit, we feel exactly as if there were no law. We are not under the law, because we do not need it; not because there is in reality no law to punish us if we do need it. And just of this kind is that general freedom from the law of which Paul speaks as the high privilege of the true Christians. It supposes that the Spirit of God, presenting to our minds the sight of God’s love in Christ, sets us free from the law of sin and death; that is, that a sense of thankfulness to God, and love of God and of Christ, will be so strong a motive that we shall need no other; that it will so work upon us as to make us feel good, easy, and delightful, and thus to become dead to the law. T. A.

11. Without seeking to pursue the subject in the form of a studied contrast between the law and the gospel (he was not now writing against direct Judaizers), or of a declaration how the transgressors of the law were to attain righteousness, he more than implies it all in the history of his own case. In a word, the law was for the condemnation of sinners, the gospel of Jesus Christ was for the saving of sinners and the ministration of forgiveness; verily, it was a gospel of the glory of the blessed God. E.—The word “blessed” represents that particular word in the original which admits of being rendered by the term “happy.” To call God “blessed,” seeing that he is the object of all “blessing and praise”; to whom are ascribed by all holy and obedient natures “power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing”; this seems natural and appropriate. But to call him “blessed,” in the sense of expressing his personal felicity—describing him, in fact, as the “happy God”—this would appear to jar on the feelings, as if it were out of harmony with the majesty and grandeur of the divine nature. Whatever may be thought of it, however, there it is; the word in question stands before us in the text. He is not only the strong, the wise, the holy, the eternal, but he is also the “blessed,” or happy, God. T. B.

13. He did not merit conversion on account of having been ignorant; but because he is ignorant he is not among those impenitent persons, those hardened ones for whom grace itself has no further resources—all that which it possesses having been tried, exhausted, but without profit. Monod.—His violent procedure, however inexcusable in itself, was still not of such a kind as placed him beyond the pale of mercy; since he had not, like the worse part of the blaspheming and persecuting Pharisees, sinned against his better convictions; he had not deliberately set at nought the counsel of God, and defied heaven to its face. He stood, therefore, substantially on a footing with the Jerusalem sinners who, on and after the day of Pentecost, were charged by Peter with the awful crime of having crucified the Lord of glory, yet with the qualifying circumstance of having done it in ignorance.

14. But the grace of our Lord superabounded—not merely manifested itself in an act of mercy and exhibition of undeserved goodness, as in the case of ordinary sinners, but overflowed, in a manner, its wonted channels, and like a mighty flood poured its gifts of love into his bosom. And, with the wonderful grace received, the apostle couples the frame of mind awakened by it: With faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. P. F.

15. A text unspeakably precious to every soul born of the Spirit, which every student of his Epistles recognizes as a close yet clear condensation of them all—the very breath and life of his sanctified mind and heart; the theme of ten thousand sermons, but so full of gospel, that it continually overflows as with honey from the cleft of the rock; so profound, that a whole system of theology might be drawn from its few words. Bethune.—The simplicity and comprehensiveness of this saying, as a summary of the Christian creed, has been justly applauded. Said the elder Alexander, after teaching theology forty years: “The longer I live, the more I incline to sum up all my theology in the single sentence, ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.’” A thoughtful analysis of the passage develops these propositions as contained in it: 1. That men are sinners is the fundamental fact upon which the whole gospel proceeds, and to which it all refers. 2. They are sinners in a sense that they need, not merely reformation, cultivation, but salvation by a Jesus that saves, and therefore must expiate sin. 3. The Jesus that saves must needs be also Christ the “anointed,” appointed—commissioned of God as Mediator, and therefore be divine. 4. The “Christ” must needs “come into the world,” thereby becoming Son of man, as well as Son of God. This view, logically self-consistent and accordant with first truths, commends itself to the rational understanding as faithful—“reliable”—“believable”—to be confided in as truth. 6. Also, as experimental truth, it commends itself to the heart and conscience of universal humanity, as worthy of joyful acceptance. 7.

The practical result of its acceptance is a humility out of which springs the profoundest conviction that this gospel is able to save to the uttermost. S. R.

Christ came to save. “If my transgressions were not so great, I could venture to believe in Christ for pardon and salvation; but now I fear he will cast me out, if I come unto him.” According to this reasoning, Moses, not Christ, has the preeminence; and, in truth, it all comes to this issue, “God will be favorable to me, or not, in proportion as I have kept or broken the law.” It is certain that no man can ever view sin in too detestable a light; but, if he view it in such a manner as to eclipse his views of Christ, he can not feel any kindly, ingenuous sorrow on account of it. Sin viewed in the law begets terror and hardness; viewed in the gospel, it begets sweet relentings of soul. Hill.

Twenty years after his conversion, Paul speaks of himself as “unworthy to be called an apostle.” Five years later, he is “less than the least of all saints.” And now, three or four years later still, and not long before his “time of departure,” he is “chief of sinners.” So has it ever been with true-hearted Christian souls. The more mature and rich their experience and its fruitage, the deeper their sense of unworthiness. The nearer to Christ and to Christlikeness, the clearer their perception of sin and the greater their sensitiveness to its painful effects. B.

16. This passage sums up his qualifications as a saved sinner to preach salvation to all the lost world. He was the chief of sinners. His great soul and his great light together rendered it possible that he should be this. His obstinacy in unbelief and rage in persecution confirm the fact that he was this. He was saved by the greatest of miracles of grace. Saul, the chief of sinners, was saved, and brought back to God, to appear as Paul the saint, prepared to do his grand work for the Gentile world, and to go up at the last to wear his everlasting crown of righteousness. Amazing fact, that he, the chief of sinners, was saved by Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ showed forth all long-suffering in this man’s salvation! Who does not see the marvelous patience of God with Paul, the persecutor and blasphemer, the Pharisee of the Pharisees, through those long years? The greatest of sinners saved by the greatest of grace was just the man to illustrate and to preach the world-salvation to the universal man, and to push the work with resistless energy out toward the ends of the earth. D. S. G.

17. When He is spoken of as King of the ages, he is presented to our view as supreme Lord and Director of the successive cycles or stages of development through which this world, or creation at large, was destined to pass—the sovereign Epoch-maker, who arranges everything pertaining to them beforehand, hand, according to the counsel of his own will, and controls whatever takes place, so as to subordinate it to his design. The idea is presented in many other parts of Scripture, in the Old Testament as well as in the New; and in Ps. 145: 13 the kingdom of God is in the Septuagint described as a kingdom of all the ages. F. F.—"Now unto the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen." As I read these words, there came into my soul and was diffused through it a sense of the glory of the Divine Being. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be if I might enjoy that God, and be waft up to Him in heaven, and be, as it were, swallowed up in Him for evermore. Edwards.

18. It is important to observe how emphatically Paul dwells on this idea of a charge throughout the Epistles to Timothy and Titus—a charge for them to keep themselves, and to enforce on all the church—bishops and deacons, men and women, rich and poor, faithful disciples and factious opponents. S.

19. If the Christian was not prayerful and vigilant; if his moral tone got relaxed and lowered, either by his falling into “sins of the flesh,” or being “vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,” the light within him would become darkness, his perception of truth less clear, his hold of it less firm; he would be open to influences antagonistic to it, be liable to be seduced by false teachers, or might welcome misconceptions originating in himself. This moral law, conservative of stability in “the apostles’ doctrine,” is strongly expressed in Paul’s admonitions to Timothy: “That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost”; “holding faith and a good conscience, which” (the good conscience) “some having put away concerning the faith have made shipwreck.” T. B.—The two must go together as inseparable companions; the good conscience can no more be dispensed with than the living faith; and much must ever depend on the healthful, harmonious, and concurrent action of the two for the result that is attained in the Christian warfare. Concerning faith made shipwreck. They resolutely stifled the monitions of conscience, or drove from them whatever it suggested in the way of moral suasion to restrain them in the course they were pursuing. They thus, in the first instance, proved false to the convictions of their better nature; and this, by a natural process of reaction, led them to make shipwreck of faith itself.

20. Satan is but a creature and an instrument—one who has a definite sphere to occupy and a power to exercise in relation to the purposes of God’s moral government, but still only of a subordinate and ministerial kind. Thus Job was for a season

left to be bruised and afflicted by Satan; only, however, for a season, and in order that he might through the fiery ordeal be raised to a higher purity and a more serene bliss. David, also, was allowed to be tempted by Satan, so as to be thereby drawn into the vortex of severe retributory judgments, yet with the ultimate design of having the flesh destroyed and the spirit raised to a nobler elevation. So that

the delivering to Satan was in the apostle’s intention and desire only an expedient for accomplishing a spiritual cure. It was the most solemn form of ex-communication, and betokened that those against whom it was employed were in a most perilous condition—trembling on the brink of final impenitence, and, if capable of being saved at all, saved only as by fire. P. F.