WWUTT 576 He Judged Me Faithful?

You do not deserve salvation. You do nothing to earn it. You have sinned. Death is what you deserve. But Christ is merciful and has not only forgiven our sins, but appointed us to his service when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing, and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Paul’s Strength in Christ and the Context of Philippians 4:13

Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the book of 1 Timothy. Still in chapter 1, I'll begin reading in verse 12 and read through to the end of the chapter. Paul writing to his servant Timothy says, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

Though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience.

By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. We come back again to verse 12, where Paul says, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord.

That sounds very similar to another verse, one a little bit more popular than that one. Philippians 4 .13, I can do all things through him, Christ, who strengthens me. That's a favorite verse among athletes, especially.

I think of Stephen Curry, plays basketball with the Golden State Warriors. His line of shoes, he's got verse references on the shoes. Not like the whole verse, but at least the reference. And Philippians 4 .13, I know, is one of those verses that he has put on his shoes.

Now, some might complain that Stephen Curry is taking that verse out of context, and that may be the case. But I appreciate something that Paul says at the start of Philippians, where he says, Philippians 1 .18, What then?

Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. So whether or not Stephen Curry has selfish motivations for putting a Bible verse on his shoes, I wouldn't be able to say.

But I do hope that it would direct somebody to the truth of the word of Jesus Christ, and maybe through a reference on a shoe, they could get saved. That would be the work of God that would be able to do that.

And so that's what Paul, that's who Paul is giving credit to when he says, I thank Christ for the strength that I have. Let's go ahead and look at that verse in Philippians 4 in context. Philippians 4 .10, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me.

Talking to the Philippians, you were indeed concerned for me, but had no opportunity. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound in every and any circumstance.

I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. So it is Christ who keeps us strengthened in the faith, whether we are in good times or in bad times.

Unless we think that it's easier to have faith in Christ in the good times. For me, at least, I don't know about you, but it's harder for me to keep faith in Christ in the good times. That's when I become complacent.

That's when I kind of kick back and relax and I'm not as active in pursuing of Christ. I'm not crying out to his name and begging for his mercy and realizing my sin and knowing that it is the grace of God that I need.

When times are good, I'm not as actively pursuing Christ as when times get really tough. That's when I tend to hit my knees. That's when I tend to pray. Even in those moments when I'm praying to Christ, when I really feel like I need to, I always end up apologizing to him in those moments as well.

Saying, God, I wish that I had this fervor and this passion when things weren't so bad. Why is it only when these things get tough that I come to you in this way? But then I wind up thanking Christ for the difficulty of the situation that would drive me to my knees.

That would drive me to the feet of my Savior on whom I rely for my strength. And so that's what Paul is doing here. Whether in 1 Timothy or in Philippians 4, he is giving credit to Christ for the strength that he has.

The strength to do what? The strength to keep on keeping on. To keep the faith in Christ Jesus. To believe. To rest on him for every need. Especially salvation from sin. And that's particularly the context that Paul is giving here in 1 Timothy 1.

So the context in Philippians 4 is more a matter of material need. Paul is saying, I don't need anything. I know what it's like to abound. And I know what it's like to be in need. But Christ gives me everything.

It is by his strength that I'm able to endure. Whether in plenty or in need. Here in 1 Timothy 1, the context is more related to sin. So Paul had no ability to believe in Christ. As a matter of fact, he was an enemy of Christ.

He was hunting down Christians and putting them to death because they worshipped Christ. This is exactly where Christ appeared to him in Acts 9 on the road to Damascus. Where Paul was going to arrest some more Christians.

Because they were Christians. And it was there on that road that Christ appeared to him and said, Saul, Saul, because that's his Hebrew name, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Saul did not believe, Paul, did not believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.

It is Christ who gave him the strength in his heart to believe when previously he was in unbelief. So in 1 Timothy 1 .12, I thank him, Christ Jesus, who has given me strength. Because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

Now, judged me faithful does not mean that Jesus looked into my heart and he could see that I was really a good person deep down to my core. I was really a good, faithful person. I just was kind of led in the wrong direction.

So he just took that fervor that I had in my heart and pointed it in the right way. That's not what Paul is saying here. He's not boasting in himself in any way as though to say that deep down in his heart he really was a good person and Jesus knew who I really was.

Well, it is true that Jesus knows who we really are, and that is wretched sinners who have rebelled against God and are worthy of his wrath. And yet he loved us in spite of the sinfulness that we had displayed before God, in spite of the fact that we deserved his wrath.

It is Christ who judges us faithful and appoints us to his service. We don't decide one day, hey, I'm going to start following Jesus. Now, as far as your experience is concerned, you were presented with a choice.

Believe in Jesus Christ and follow him or continue in your sin and rebellion and then you will face the wrath of God on judgment day. And when you were presented with the gospel, you made a decision to follow Jesus Christ.

Okay, so as far as your experience is concerned, you made a choice. But when it comes down to studying the theology of it, you realize that you could not have made that choice if it was not for the interference of Christ, stopping you dead in the tracks that you were in, which was leading over a precipice into the eternal fire of hell, unless Christ had intervened in your life and turned you around the other direction.

So it is Christ who has appointed you to his service. He has done this by his choosing. As Jesus said to his disciples, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.

And so Paul is equating himself with that same apostolic service here when he says that Christ judged me faithful. It's as though he's saying here that Christ judged me, saw that I was a faithless person, and made me faithful in appointing me to his service.

I think one of the best verses that helps us understand this is Ezekiel 36, 26, where God says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove this heart of stone from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh.

Basically meaning that I'm going to penetrate your hardened heart and I'm going to give you a softened heart. Verse 27, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

And so that's what happened for the apostle Paul. He gives credit to Christ for stopping him in the midst of the trajectory that he was on, which would have led to his death and destruction. Instead, he judged him faithful and appointed Paul to his service.

He says, verse 13, though formerly I was a blasphemer, I was a persecutor and an insolent opponent. Paul had blasphemed the name of God, though he was a Pharisee. As a matter of fact, when we read his autobiography that he gives in Philippians, he was like a rock star among Pharisees.

He was the son of a Pharisee and some scholars have even said he was the grandson of a Pharisee. It ran in Paul's family lineage. He was destined to be a Pharisee and the Pharisees were teachers of the law, but they were also legalists and they added to the law.

So they tried to show themselves even more righteous than the law itself because they could keep extra laws other than what the law said. For example, in the seven woes that Jesus gave in Matthew chapter 23, he says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. So the whole thing about tithing mint and dill and cumin, there's nothing in the law about tithing spices. It's just that the Pharisees would tithe everything to show, Hey, look how righteous I am.

Not only do I tithe what I possess in terms of like the money that I have or the things that the law specifically states that I need to tithe, but I can tithe all these other things too. And yet the law did not require that they had to tithe those things.

So it was the Pharisees in a self-righteous effort trying to show that they could, they could keep the law even more extensively than the law required them to keep it. And Jesus is saying the whole purpose of the law is to understand justice, mercy and faithfulness.

And you're not doing that. Everything is exterior. It's all on the outside, but there is no genuine heart that is after the Lord that loves God. Legalism is absent of love. There is no love in, in legalism.

It's just a strict adherence to a particular set of rules, believing that your adherence to those rules somehow makes you righteous. And so this was who Paul was as a Pharisee and was persecuting Christians because they believed in this grace that was given by God through Jesus Christ.

And Paul rejected that Jesus Christ was God, which made him a blasphemer. So formerly I was a blasphemer, was also a blasphemer in the sense that he thought that he could earn his righteousness by his works.

Well, that's blasphemy, because you are not righteous enough to earn the salvation of God by your works. You can't do it. You can't do anything to earn your salvation. It is Christ who has saved us by his shed blood on the cross.

And then we are justified by grace through faith, by believing in Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross and his resurrection from the grave. You are saved, not by any work of yours. It is the work of God.

So Paul believing that he could be saved by his works, that made him a blasphemer. He was blaspheming God, claiming that Paul was righteous enough without God, without Christ. I don't need anybody to sacrifice for my sins.

I am good enough. And that made Paul a blasphemer. And he was a persecutor, which we already talked about that. He was persecuting Christians. In Acts chapter 7, at the stoning of Stephen, fresh on my mind because one of our elders, Dave, read this story at our fellowship breakfast this past Saturday.

So that reminded me of this. At the speech of Stephen in Acts chapter 7, it mentions there toward the end of the chapter that there was a young man among the group that dragged Stephen out and stoned him to death.

And that man was Saul of Tarsus, who would eventually become the apostle Paul. So he was there standing by, aiding in the crowd, who was putting Stephen to death, the first martyr for proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord, and rebuking all the Jews for rejecting Christ as the Messiah, the Son of God.

And so then Saul even ventured out on his own to round up Christians and put them in chains or put them to death because they believed in Jesus Christ. They were maligning the law of God. At least that's the way that the Pharisees believed it.

So Paul was a persecutor and he was an insolent opponent. This word insolence simply meaning that there was no love or affection or care in his heart for any other human being. It was just his own righteousness that he was concerned with.

He had a zeal for the things that he believed in, but it was entirely self-serving. It wasn't really in the service of God. Right now in church, we're reading through 1 Corinthians 15 and moving through it very slowly because over the last two Sundays now, I've only gotten four verses into 1 Corinthians 15.

But it's here that Paul mentions his testimony again, talking about how he was one untimely born when it came to his appointment as an apostle. 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 3, Paul says, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, last of all as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preached and so you believed.

Why is it that Paul says that as an apostle he is one that was untimely born? Well, there's two reasons for that. First of all, because he didn't pal around with Christ. So the other apostles knew Jesus.

They were personally part of his earthly ministry in the three years between his baptism and his death and resurrection and then ascension into heaven. They were with him during that three to four year ministry, whereas Paul didn't know Jesus.

So he didn't become familiar with Christ, the Son of God, until that Damascus Road experience in Acts chapter 9. And Paul was likely close to the same age as Jesus. So somewhere in his mid -30s, mid to early 30s at the time that Jesus appeared to him.

The second reason that Paul refers to himself as to one untimely born is because he was a persecutor of Christians and the other apostles were not. And so this is why Paul considers himself the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because, he says, I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God, I am what I am. Not because Paul just wisened up one day and just kind of dawned on him that, oh my goodness, I'm killing people over this. What a wretched man that I am. No, it's by the grace of God that his eyes were opened to see what it was that he was.

And that he would be appointed by Christ to be someone who would take the gospel to the nations. It says there in Acts chapter 9 when Jesus was speaking to Ananias, he said, I am going to show him, Paul, how much he is going to suffer for my name.

And this is why Paul says here that the grace that he had received was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me that caused him to work as hard as he did to spread the gospel.

So this grace that he received was not in vain, meaning that he didn't just one day stop killing Christians. OK, you know, Paul, here you go. Here's your blessing. So stop killing Christians. And Paul went, OK, Lord, thank you for forgiving me.

But instead, the grace that he received was to the service of God. It was to his great glory, all to the credit of Christ and no credit for himself. That he might be judged, faithful, and appointed to the holy service of Christ, though previously he had been a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent opponent.

And then 1 Timothy 1 .13,. But I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. God showed mercy to me. The point Paul is making is simply this. He didn't deserve salvation. And he knew that what he deserved was to be destroyed.

He deserved it more than the other apostles deserved it. But his ignorance did not excuse his sin. He was still under the wrath of God for what he was doing to the very name of Christ. And yet God showed him mercy.

What he deserved was to be destroyed. But God was merciful to him, forgave him of his sin, and more than that, appointed him to the service of the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so Paul implores Timothy all the more to hold fast to this gospel and preach it.

As he witnessed Paul doing. And Timothy knew this about the testimony of the apostle Paul. But this is Paul presenting his little autobiographical account in such a way as to say to Timothy, If I am one to preach the gospel, you especially should be preaching it.

Following my example and not letting anyone turn to blaspheming Christ the way that I once did. Which is what he gets to at the end of this section. He talks about two men, Hymenaeus and Alexander, who were handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

So Paul was made a faithful minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. These two men who fancied themselves ministers were actually blaspheming Christ. And we'll talk about that a little bit more this week.

No One Deserves Salvation, and Mercy in Christ

None of us are deserving of the mercy and grace of God. None of us deserve to be saved. We did not earn our salvation. But God was merciful to us. Though previously we also had been blasphemers and insolent opponents.

We had also been persecutors, not in the sense that the apostle Paul was. You probably never put another Christian to death. But we were persecutors in the sense that we were divided from the people of God, the body of Christ.

Before we came to Christ, we were hated by others and hating one another. As it says in Titus chapter 3. So in this way, in our hearts, we were persecuting the body of Christ. But it is Christ who drew us near to himself and reconciled us back to God.

Where previously we were undeserving of God's love and mercy, it is by the sacrifice of Christ that we are now sons and daughters of God and among the people of God. And so let us grow together with one another in the faithful study of the scriptures and adherence to the true gospel.

Which we study about as we continue this exposition of the book of 1 Timothy. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you for the salvation that we have in Christ Jesus. And I pray that as we look toward the day and the things that we have to do today, that we are filled with this gospel, the hope of salvation that has been given to us in Jesus Christ.

No matter what comes our way, nothing can take this salvation from us. We have the guarantee and the assurance of resurrection from the grave if we have faith in Jesus Christ. So what can man do to me?

In anything that comes our way, let it become something that we rejoice in God for. We praise you for the chance to be able to celebrate God in even the most difficult of circumstances. Because you have saved us.

Though we did not deserve it, you have been merciful and gracious to us through your son Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study, When We Understand the Text.