1 Timothy 1

Notes

Ver. 1. Paul, an inspired and immediately commissioned messenger of Jesus Christ, who is the great Lord and Redeemer, the author, object, ground, and bestower of all our solid hopes of grace here, or eternal glory hereafter—and of God our Father in him; 2. To his dearly beloved Timothy, of whose conversion, and establishment in the grace and doctrines of faith, God has made him the honoured instrument—earnestly wishes the most abundant manifestations and effects of God's infinite love and tender compassion, to support, relieve, and comfort you under all the temptations, labours, difficulties, and dangers of your station, together with all manner of peace with God, your conscience, and the saints, and all manner of prosperity, temporal or spiritual, from God the fountain of blessings, and from Jesus Christ who gives them to all believers. 3, 4. I earnestly desired you to tarry some time at Ephesus after I departed thence into Macedonia, that you might, in the most solemn and authoritative manner, charge the judaizing Christians there to beware of corrupting the gospel of Christ, which I preach, with anything different or contrary; and that they never regard or propagate any foolish and ill-grounded traditions, or any frivolous genealogies of descent from Abraham or any other patriarch, which leads to useless, intricate, and endless controversies, and have no tendency to promote the conversion of sinners to God, their establishment in the doctrines of faith, or their diligent perseverance in walking with God.—5. Now the end of that charge, which I ordered you to enforce, as well as of the whole law of God, in opposition to fabulous, fruitless, and perplexing disputes, is, to promote a spirit of love to God, to Christ, and to one another, as springing from a sanctified heart, and a faithful, pure, and quiet conscience, purged from dead works by the blood of Christ, and from an inward principle of sincere faith, without the least hypocrisy; 6. From which grand scope and important ingredients of practical religion some having wandered, have turned aside into a course of vain talking of things altogether unprofitable, and serving only to stir up animosities, strifes, and doubtful disputations; 7. Affecting to set up for doctors and interpreters of the law, and to impose it upon the Gentiles, while in reality they neither understand the true scope and design of it, nor what they say in their confident pretensions to explain it. 8. But we who, through the knowledge of the gospel, are enlightened in the principal design and tendency of the whole Jewish dispensation, are fully convinced that the law is a good appointment of God for answering good purposes, if it be properly used as a mean of bringing us to Christ; and that even the ceremonial law is of great use, if we consider it as a typical representation of Christ and the gospel church, and now fulfilled and abolished; and that the law in its own nature is holy, just, and good, and is of admirable use to convince us of our sin and misery, and to make us flee to Jesus Christ; and, as a rule of obedience, to direct us how to depend on him, and gratefully improve the benefits which we receive from him! 9-11. Fully satisfied that the moral law, though still continuing in force as the law of Christ's kingdom, is not designed to condemn a true believer, who is made the righteousness of God in him, and who, from a principle of faith, has an impartial respect to all his commandments, but stands in force for the condemnation of all impenitent, unbelieving, and obstinate transgressors, particularly those who have no fear of God in their hearts, no desire after him, and no care to be subject to his authority; and for those who wilfully rebel against his laws, and worship false gods; those who, being destitute of true holiness, contemn God and religion; those who murder their near relations or others, or who indulge themselves in fornication, adultery, sodomy, or other unnatural lusts; those who steal men or women, that they may either use or sell them as slaves; those who addict themselves to lying in jest, excuse, malice, or to procure gain; those who violate their promises, vows, or oaths, or swear falsely in courts of judicature; and, in fine, those who indulge themselves in any form of wickedness, contrary to the pure doctrines of revelation, and to the holy nature, design, and obligation of the gospel of our salvation through Christ, which so illustriously displays the glorious perfections, counsels, and operations of the infinitely happy, ever-blessed, and self-sufficient God, who communicates to creatures whatever happiness they enjoy—the preaching of which gospel was committed to me as a precious trust, to be faithfully preserved and dispensed wherever I come. 12. And while I think of the high honour of this important trust, I cannot but, from the very bottom of my soul, bless and praise our infinitely gracious Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, who has qualified, authorized, and strengthened me as an apostle faithfully to minister the gospel of his grace; 13. Even me, who, before my heart was graciously and powerfully reached and converted, had been a furious blasphemer of his divine Person and doctrine, an outrageous persecutor of his members, a most injurious reviler of his name, people, and interests. But my transcendent wickedness, proceeding from ignorant and blind zeal, not from any desperate and malicious opposition to the Holy Ghost's clear convictions of his Messiahship, to the everlasting astonishment of angels and men, and especially my own, I, after all, freely received forgiving and converting mercy, and was graciously put into the apostleship. 14. Yea, the free favour of the infinitely compassionate Lord Jesus to me-ward superabounded all expectation, estimation, or conception, in awakening and convicting my unbelieving heart, and developing deep and strong love to him, his people, and cause, to which I had formerly been so inveterate an enemy; and in the conversion of multitudes to himself by my ministrations. 15. Thus my own experience, as well as the whole tenor of the gospel revelation, bears witness, for the encouragement of sinful men, that its grand or summary article may be depended on as infallibly true and faithful, and every way worthy to be universally believed and affectionately embraced by all men, viz. That the great end of Christ's assuming human nature, and coming into the world under the character of a Saviour, to fulfil the law, and suffer and die for them, and of his being offered to them in the gospel, was and is that he might deliver them, Gentiles as well as Jews, from sin and wrath, and bring them to that eternal salvation which is in him—a transcendent and amazing instance of which has appeared in me, who exceeded all other sinners, however notorious, in my malignant blasphemy of Christ and persecution of his members. 16. And for encouraging the most enormous transgressors to believe in him, it must be remarked, that this astonishing instance of free, loving, and abounding grace towards me, was designed, by the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, not merely for the salvation of my soul, but that in me first of all, and as the very chief of sinners, Jesus Christ might set forth a distinguished example to what amazing length his patience and mercy can extend—as an encouragement to every sinner who shall ever, by his grace, be led to trust in him alone for pardon and eternal life. 17. Let therefore that infinitely gracious Lord Jesus, who is the Sovereign of all things, and head over all things to his church—everlasting, incorruptible, and purely spiritual; and who, together with his Father and blessed Spirit, is the infinitely and only wise God, and Giver of all wisdom to creatures—be henceforth and for ever magnified and adored in the loftiest strains.—18. The above charge I have committed to your special care, that, according to some prophetic intimations concerning you before you entered on the ministry, you may be more excited to improve your superior gifts and miraculous powers in acting the part of a diligent, courageous, and faithful soldier of Jesus Christ, in fighting under him against sin, Satan, and the world, and valiantly standing up for the truth against all opposition; 19. Holding fast the doctrines of the gospel in a firm faith and constant profession thereof, and holding it forth to others in your ministry, and studying to be conscientiously upright in preaching it, and living answerably to it; which some neglecting and rejecting, have, to their inexpressible danger, loss, and damage, entirely renounced its doctrines and their profession of it, and abandoned themselves to error and immorality; 20. Of which apostates I mention two infamous ringleaders, that you, and all other Christians, may beware of them, and bear testimony against them; namely, Hymeneus and Alexander, whose notorious subversion of the faith and holiness of the gospel, and dangerous errors and immoralities, laid me under the disagreeable necessity of apostolically casting them out of the visible church, and delivering them up to Satan, as his subjects—that by means of such awful discipline, they might be brought to a conviction and repentance of their wickedness, at least deterred from persisting in their blasphemous defamations of the name, doctrines, and ways of the Lord.

Ver. 3. When I went into Macedonia. This journey was made after Paul's release from his first imprisonment in Rome, which took place about A.D. 63. Immediately after his release, he probably carried out his intention of visiting Spain; then he turned again eastward, and after a missionary tour through Asia Minor, settled down for a time at Ephesus. He left Ephesus perhaps about A.D. 66, and wrote this epistle from some place in Greece, after passing through Macedonia. I think its date can scarcely be earlier than the close of the year 66. P.

Ver. 4. The 'genealogies' of the Jews were intricate and traditionary pedigrees, whereby they sought either to establish their offices as priests or Levites, their rank as descendants of David or the princes of tribes, their titles to properties, as descendants of the original owners; and, in other cases, the origin and preservation of their vain traditions, which they asserted they had received, and affected to trace, from Joshua and the elders. —Note, Even so, till this hour, does the popedom assert a 'genealogy' ascending to Peter, vainly denominated 'prince of the apostles.' And, though even tradition fails to establish any uniform consent as to the imaginary line of 'apostolic succession,' yet upon that unsettled, and therefore endless 'genealogy,' does Rome found her claim to supremacy over all churches, and infallibility in all doctrines. C. Ver. 9. The law is not made for a righteous man. Rather, 'the law does not lie against a righteous man,' either in its precepts, which he loves, Ps. 119. 97; He. 8. 10, or in its curse, from which Christ has set him free, Ga. 3. 13. C.

Ver. 13. These words, if interpreted by themselves, might lead to the conclusion that the apostle's ignorance and unbelief contributed in some way to his salvation; and so they have been interpreted: but taken in comparison with other Scriptures, the grace and good pleasure of God, and not any peculiarity in the state of the sinner, will be found the moving cause of salvation. The verse will be more easily understood, in accordance with the analogy of other scriptures, if arranged thus: 'Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious (but I obtained mercy), because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.' See, accordingly, ver. 16, which ascribes the divine mercy entirely to the divine wisdom and purpose. C.

Ver. 18. Prophecies. Some 'prophecies,' not elsewhere recorded, that prognosticated the future zeal and faithfulness of Timothy.—That thou (encouraged) by them, &c. C.

Reflections.—Solemn and important, honourable and delightful, is that trust which God has committed to gospel ministers. But they have need of abundant grace and mercy from Christ and his Father, to fit them for and assist them in their work, and support them under the trials they must undergo on account of it. For in manifold shapes of vain jangling, legal prattling, horrid blasphemy, and cruel persecution, Satan always labours to oppose the gospel, and them who faithfully preach it. And careless and erroneous teachers are great plagues to churches, and murderers of souls. It is absurd to inculcate or expect obedience to God's law without repentance and reliance on the Spirit of God, our consciences sprinkled with Jesus' blood, and an abiding principle of true faith be exerted within us. And it is the highest folly for unbelievers to seek happiness by that law which cannot but condemn them for their wickedness. Thrice happy are they who are delivered from it as a broken covenant, and are only under it in Christ as a binding rule of duty. Infinite is the excellency, and powerful the virtue of the glorious gospel. From an infinitely gracious God it springs, and to his high honour and praise it tends. Its matter is Christ, and all that is in or done by him. It suits, it extends to, and ought to be earnestly received by every hearer. The most guilty and obstinate ought to yield to its almighty force. And happy is it when ministers can recommend it from their own remarkable experience of its pardoning, regenerating, sanctifying, comforting, and self-abasing influence! But, alas! infinite is their danger who persevere in opposing it, or apostatize from their wonted profession of it.