God's Law and The Gospel | 1st Timothy: Ch. 1

1 Timothy as a Pastoral Epistle

Of God, our Savior, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope. To Timothy, a true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification, which is in faith.

Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.

But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous person but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.

And I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has enabled me, because he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man. But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly and unbelief, and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which are 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. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first, Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering as a pattern to those who are going to believe on him for everlasting life.

Now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen. This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected, concerning the faith, have suffered shipwreck, of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

Sound Doctrine, Fables, and Endless Genealogies

You may be seated. First and second Timothy and Titus are called the pastoral epistles because they are focused on work related to pastors. They are related to the work that is to be done. Titus and Timothy are both given instruction by the apostle Paul, and so they in their pastoral work receive much.

And so they are very helpful to us to think about from the perspective of leading a congregation, things to do. And so it provides a sort of perspective on the church that is from a leadership position that allows you to think about the church and to think about the way that the church should be ordered, and therefore also what the community is supposed to look like.

So it provides interesting blueprints for us about the way that the church is to be formed and organized. This text starts off, and it tells us who it's from, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God, our Savior, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope.

Now this idea of the commandment of God, who is it that made Paul an apostle? Well, he was made an apostle by Jesus Christ, and he was commanded to do this work by the Lord Jesus Christ. He was met on the road to Damascus, and on the road to Damascus he was commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ to begin to do work and to follow him, and he was commissioned by Christ as the other apostles were.

And so he's an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God, our Savior, and that's a statement about Jesus, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope. This is a repetition. This is the idea that God and the Lord Jesus Christ are the same.

The Lord Jesus Christ is our Savior. He is our hope. He is our God. He is our Lord. He is the Christ, which is an office. He holds the office of prophet, priest, and king. The word Christ means anointed one, and so he is anointed for the three offices, prophet, priest, and king.

Now, who is he writing to? To Timothy, a true son in the faith. Now, Timothy is being sent to do work. He's doing the work of the Lord, the work of an evangelist, and in his work, what he is doing, he holds an office under the oversight of Paul the apostle.

He holds a revelatory office, but he is also doing work that needs to continue, the work of planting churches, organizing churches, and so we find instructions here that also would apply as churches are being organized by elders that are sent off to plant churches, and so we also find the work that needs to be done in terms of the continued organization of churches because he's dealing with Ephesus, and Paul's time in Ephesus we find talked about in the book of Acts where they had many elders, and so there's this work to be done to encourage the continued reformation of the church.

So, this is to Timothy, a true son in the faith. How is he a son? He's a son in that he's under the teaching of Paul. The possibility that there's conversion that occurs is one thing, but Timothy, we're told, was taught by his mother and grandmother, the faith, and so we don't have any particular reason to think that he came to conversion specifically under Paul's teaching.

Elsewhere, Paul talks about those who were evangelized as opposed to broadly discipled and talks about them as sons, but here this seems to be as one who is receiving discipleship. So, that term son, we remember the fifth commandment gives to us principles to understand in terms of the organization of relationships and in terms of authority and honor and deals with teaching us that not only are natural parents an authority, but all those who have authority from God in the institutions that God has made, the household, the church, and the state.

And so, as we think about those institutions that God has made, there's also individuals relating to each other, there's duty of honor owed to those who are of greater age, and there's duty of honor owed to those who have greater gifting.

And so, we find the use of father and son type of language in various places that show us that application, but here we have Timothy under the discipleship of Paul who has a higher office, the office of apostle, and so it's to Timothy, a true son in the faith, and he's a true son in that there's evidence that he has a true conversion, that he is a person who's walking in the truth and therefore giving joy to Paul who's teaching him.

There's a call of benediction here at the beginning, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. So, here we have the persons of the Trinity differentiated, the father and the son, and we have this call for grace in terms of the giving of salvation itself, but also there are gifts of grace, which are in particular the spiritual giftings and sanctification that occur, mercy, which involves the forgiveness of sins, but also the removing of temporal troubles, and peace, the giving of prosperity and the removal of strife.

So, grace, mercy, and peace, and we can think about peace also in terms of the peace with God and psychological peace, but so these here, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord, the emphasis in this case seems to be on the idea of God's attitude of demerited favor, grace, his forgiveness of sins, mercy, and the peace with God that comes by the redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ.

We get to verse 3, let me get into, Paul quickly gets down to business. He says, as I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine.

This charging of some, the word charge can be used in a number of ways. One of the ways the word charge is used is in terms of the idea of charges, you're rebuking somebody of sin, you're saying here's a sin that you've committed.

The other use that we have here is not that, it's this idea of charging some is giving people a duty, and not just a duty, but the idea that you're saying I have an authority to make you responsible to do this.

It's to put people under oath, you frequently find this idea of charging this, you're exhorting and then you're putting them under oath to do a duty. And so, the Lord Jesus Christ, for example, was before the Sanhedrin being tried unjustly, he was charged with an oath to answer the court.

Here I have this idea of charging with an oath, in other words, causing a responsibility in covenant to teach the doctrine, and not just to teach the doctrine, but to teach no other doctrine. So, the question of, if we're supposed to, if there's a responsibility for some people that are going to remain in Ephesus, who are those people?

And they're going to teach, they're charged to teach something. What is that? And they're not supposed to teach anything else. So, who are these people? These people are the people that are to remain in Ephesus, these are the ordinary officers, in particular the elders at Ephesus, that are to remain and teach the doctrine to the church.

What doctrine? Well, a doctrine is defined for us as there's continued discussion down the line here in these verses. In chapter 4, there's a teaching of things that are for godly edification, which is in faith.

This is in contrast to fables and endless genealogies. It's in contrast to idle talk. And there is this idea of, at the very end here, verse 11, not the very end of the book, but the end of this paragraph, so to speak, we have according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

So, the glorious gospel is something that is supposed to be taught. It was committed to Paul's trust. And, there's a command to teach doctrine and to not teach other doctrine. So, the doctrine that's supposed to be taught is the glorious gospel, which the word gospel can be used in three ways in the scripture.

One, it can be used to refer very specifically to the assertions, the indicatives, the declarative sentences, the promises. Those are ways of saying the same thing. The things that describe what is. That's in contrast to, for example, imperatives, which are commands.

It can be something where you think about the gospel and you're talking about the New Testament as opposed to the Old Testament. Law versus gospel in that sense. It can also be used in reference to the idea of the gospel being as the whole counsel of God.

And so, all that which has been revealed in the word delivered to the church. Now, verse 11 talks about the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. That which was committed to his trust was not just the New Testament.

That which was committed to his trust was not just the promises without any commands. What was committed to his trust was the whole counsel of God to be given to the church. We have the New Testament as a completion of the scriptures.

And so, what is supposed to be taught is the gospel. That's what the church is supposed to teach. And that gospel is the whole counsel of God and no other doctrine. So, what we find is the Apostle Paul has commissioned Timothy to do work to remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine.

Now, in contrast to the doctrine that's supposed to be taught, we have fables. Now, these fables, well, how do you know the difference between a fable and not a fable? Somebody might say, well, we should just investigate the stories and determine if they're fables or if they're true.

Well, how would you investigate them? How would you differentiate them? How would you figure out if they're fables or not? You might say archaeological evidence. You might say, well, we'll go through a reporting process.

We'll go around and we'll try to figure this out. Okay, so if that's the case, then the doctrine that was committed to Paul is going to keep growing because we're going to have all sorts of things that we have to go investigate to determine whether they're fables or not.

And the news that the church is supposed to preach upon then becomes something other than what is contained in the scriptures. It becomes things that are supposed to be found in a bunch of other places.

The fables, as opposed to the doctrine that's supposed to be taught, the fables are a human tradition outside of the apostolic deposit. That's what the fables are. They're human tradition outside of the apostolic deposit.

Elsewhere, there's discussion of this idea of Jewish fables. And you would imagine, well, why talk about Jewish fables? Because the Jews were the Old Testament church, and that's where the tradition of the church would start to build up, is in the church.

In the Old Testament, the only church was the Old Testament church. So where would the fables come from? The Old Testament church. The other danger is fables coming in from, you know, Greek mythology or Hinduism or whatever, right?

This idea of a tradition that's outside of the apostolic tradition, that's outside of the apostolic deposit, that's outside of what was delivered to the church. So we're not to give heed to the traditions that are outside of the scriptures as having any authority for our doctrine or life.

The endless genealogies. Well, this time, this would have been a reference to, in particular, claims of honorific genealogies, some reason why somebody might have authority, for example, in the priesthood in the Old Covenant.

And in the priesthood in the Old Covenant, you have a great concern to make sure you know where people come from, right? In Nehemiah and Ezra, the people who could be priests had to be able to demonstrate that they had a genealogy that went back to that priestly line to be able to defend that claim.

In the New Covenant, it doesn't matter. If we're trying to track a genealogy, the genealogies were useful to track up to the point of the fulfillment of particular prophecies that made reference to them, and the genealogies that had to be tracked, those prophecies have been completed.

The most important of which was getting to the Messiah. And so we have a complete genealogy going from Adam, the first man, to the Lord Jesus Christ without any gaps. That genealogy is meticulously and infallibly preserved.

That's the genealogy you need to care about. It's not an English genealogy, it's a genealogy that goes back 6 ,000 years. That's a relatively short amount of time. That genealogy is what we're to be concerned about.

Any genealogies besides that, that continue to be asserted as important major things for us to be dealing with as a church, is an effort to bring in Old Covenant things into the church, or things that are alien and stranger to the church altogether.

Another interesting thing, and this was, I don't believe this is at all what Paul meant from the text, okay, so what I'm about to say to you is something that I don't think is the intent that he has in the text.

But for our time, it's ironic to talk about how the church shouldn't deal with endless genealogies, because in our time, one of the great heresies that we have to confront is the heresy of macroevolution, where you go, we have millions or hundreds of millions or billions of years of genealogies from single-celled organisms up to us here in this room.

And those genealogies, not quite endless, but pretty long, are somehow important for us to understand. And if true, then we need to realize that the world was red in tooth and claw far before Adam, that death didn't enter the world because of Adam's sin.

No, no, no, death would have been going on for millions and millions and millions of years before Adam. And the Bible would be a joke. We should pay no heed to these relatively endless genealogies. They are silly stories about dust turning into living objects and material chemical reactions of brains turning into propositional thought, not to mention even the idea of the material world itself a changeable thing, having some sort of a beginning apart from the God of the Bible, or having itself an eternal existence.

We have to give no heed to these traditions, these fables, or to these endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification. Why do they cause disputes? Because you end up with an authority that is greater than the Word of God.

You have something outside of the Scriptures that becomes the judge or comes alongside of the Scriptures. Nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies which cause disputes rather than godly edification, which is in faith.

Godly edification is in faith. It's believing the propositional content that proceeds from the mouth of God. This content that we are to believe. God's Word is the highest authority. There is no higher authority than God's Word.

There is no higher authority than what God says. It provides godly edification. When it is believed, it builds up the soul. If the soul is built up, it's because it's been believed. There is no being built up in the soul apart from the revelation that God has given.

The Purpose of the Commandment Is Love

Verse 5. Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart. So we have the commandment here as a part of the doctrine that's been given. Another thing that helps us to know we're not merely talking about the indicatives.

We're talking about the whole counsel of God. The commandment, the purpose of the commandment, is love from a pure heart. Whenever you see love, you need to remember what we're talking about is the desire for the well-being of the object.

If you love something, you desire its well-being. You desire its good. Sometimes you can talk about loving chocolate or whatever, right? When you love chocolate, you're not desiring its well-being. You're valuing it as a thing that you think perhaps is for your good.

But when we talk about the love of rational beings, God, angels, men, we're talking about seeking the good of the object. So the purpose of love, of the commandment, is love. The commandments are detailed instruction that show us how to seek the good of the object.

So when we love someone, we are seeking their good, we desire their good, and the way we seek their good is to apply the commandment. And to do so from a pure heart, a heart that is consistently with integrity, without contradiction, pursuing the good of the object.

So the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith. You must believe the Word of God in order to have true love. Because love depends upon knowing the definition of what's good, so you can seek what's good for the object.

Verse 6, from which some have strayed. What are they strayed from? A sincere faith. The faith is integrity. They have strayed from that faith. Why? Well, Paul starts by talking about not preaching, not teaching, any other doctrine.

And so when you have other doctrine being taught, it undermines the faith. From which some have strayed, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk. The faith is in contrast to idle talk.

The faith is in contrast to idle talk. The faith is useful doctrine, useful words. They glorify God. They build men up. They teach men how to love, versus idle talk. Verse 7, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.

So this desire to teach the law, whether the law here is commandments, or whether the law here is the desire to teach the Old Testament, or the whole counsel of God, the desire is to be teachers of the law.

Now, since he's in the narrow context talking about the commandment, he says the purpose of the commandment is love, I think he's talking about desiring to be teachers of commandments. Desiring to be teachers of the commandments.

But, when we talk about fables, and endless genealogies, and the desire to teach the law, there's a big emphasis here on things from the Old Covenant Church, where what we call Judaizing, holding on to Old Covenant ceremonies, also potentially the bringing in of human traditions, which I think is a significant emphasis in Ephesus.

You have the Judaizing, and you have the human tradition. You have these things coming in together, being a danger to this church in Ephesus. People desiring to be teachers of the law, but they don't understand the goal of the law, to seek the good of the person, the glory of God.

And they don't base it in a faith of integrity, rooted in the doctrine of the apostolic deposit, but there are extra doctrines brought in. Desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say, nor the things which they affirm.

Okay, so what they say, and what they affirm. How could it be said that they don't understand what they say, or what they affirm? It doesn't mean they don't understand any. The issue is, when there's false doctrine, there might be some truth there, but there's also this danger of an incoherence.

Now, to some extent, we all have to deal with that. We all have places where we have incoherence in our own thought. That's what our indwelling sin is. Our ongoing sinful nature is the fact that we have false beliefs.

We reason wrongly. And so those things where we have internal contradiction, those are places where we don't understand what we're saying, or what we're affirming. The greater degree to which that is true, the more the teaching of a person is going to be babble, or idle talk, useless speaking.

Because the more you just contradict yourself side by side, the more what you're saying becomes sort of useless, or people have to like ignore pieces and pick at the other, right? So this idea of the person, unless they already have discernment, what you're saying to them becomes more and more useless.

If you're a teacher who's only useful for people who already know the things you're trying to teach them, I mean, you're not a very good teacher. You have to be useful in helping people to understand stuff that they didn't understand before they were talking to you.

And so clear speech, useful talking about the things that are most helpful, most orderly, most clear, is how you teach the best, as opposed to idleness, desiring to teach, but saying things you don't understand, affirming things you don't understand.

The Law Is Good if Used Lawfully

Now, verse 8, but we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the holy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the gospel, the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

So the law is useful for the lawless. The preaching of the law is very helpful to show the breakers of the law that they are breakers of the law. You preach the law to show people that they need salvation.

This is the mirror use of the law. The lawlessness of a person is made plain to them with the teaching of the law. In an age filled with lawlessness, what gets shouted down? If you were to go to a street corner and just preach on the love of Jesus Christ and how if you believe he'll save you, are you going to get shouted down a lot?

I mean some people might like catcall you. That's not generally going to get a huge response. It's going to get a lot of yawns. If you want to make people yell at you, you start teaching about the law.

And this lawless wicked age will scream at you. They will shout you down. They will get red-faced at you. They will get furious. Take any of the Ten Commandments and preach it faithfully in detail, loudly, as people walk by.

And I promise you, you will make plenty of new enemies as you tell them the truth. The law puts hooks in the hearts of the lawless. It hurts. They don't want to hear it. They want it to stop. They want you to be quiet and if they can't get you to be quiet, they want to figure out how to put you in a place where they can't hear you.

If they can't put you in a place where they can't hear you, they want to avoid you. If they can't avoid you, they'll stop their ears. This is the effect of the preaching of the law in a lawless age. This is in contrast to preaching the law unlawfully.

Look at verse 8. But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. The law is used lawfully as a thing that shows you the difference between good and evil. The law is used lawfully as a thing to restrain evil.

The law is used lawfully to show you that you're a breaker of it and you need salvation. The law is used illegally when you try to say that you must fulfill some level of law-keeping in order to have right standing before God.

Law-keeping, to have right standing before God, requires perfect and perpetual obedience from you as an individual person. The illegal use of the law is using the law to obtain the favor of God. We are, in the covenant of works, guilty.

In Adam, we are guilty from our own conceptions, being unbelieving and not glorifying God as we ought, and we are guilty as breakers of the law on individual offenses, not having done the things we should do and having done stuff we ought not to have done.

But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous person. It's not made for you to have righteousness before God. The law is not for you to have justification by its keeping.

But it's for the purpose of showing you your sin, your guilt. It shows you the difference between good and evil. Now, some types of lawlessness, what's classically known as antinomianism, says this, I am free from the law and I don't have to keep it.

It's not obligatory on me anymore. If the law is not obligatory on you, then you can't sin. Where there is no law, there is no sin. We know sin by the law. So the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate.

Insubordinate to what? To God, to God's commandments, and to God's law, which is the set of his commandments. The law is not made for a righteous person. It's not for you to be justified, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane.

The lawless and insubordinate, those who reject the law and those who are breakers of the commandments of God, who won't obey. For the ungodly, those who who are not concerned about their duties before God.

For sinners, those who break God's law. For the unholy, those that are not focused on the glory of God. For the profane, they're not set apart for God. They're focused on other things, a vulgar concern for the things of this world, as opposed to a separation from the world.

For murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, those who who kill, the people that they have a greatest duty of loyalty to, those people, the law is for them to see their law breaking. And I go, that person's real hardened.

How hardened do you have to be to murder your own parents? I mean, so what's that for? It's for taking hardened hearts and breaking them. That's what the law does. For fornicators, lots of people, want to try to find ways to justify sexual sin.

They try to find ways of taking verses in the Bible and saying, well, you know, sex outside of marriage isn't forbidden. It's just, it's just adultery. Now, fornication is forbidden. For sodomites, you can take that and make it so it means something that doesn't mean what it's plainly saying there.

There's a big thing now to say, you know, the Bible never talked about homosexuals until the 1940s. That's a recent thing people are talking about. Sure, the word homosexual was invented as a, like, more, I don't know, I was gonna say family-friendly, but I mean, like, not even that, right?

Like, I mean, it's supposed to be a less offensive way of referring to sodomites. You go, well, you know, until the 40s, we didn't even talk about homosexuality in the Bible. It's like, yeah, I mean, that's a lie.

Like, that's just, right? I mean, this is just taking something, sure, technically true, right? That word literally written out in the English in that exact way, yes, okay, fine. But the word sodomite, spin around, spin here.

This is not a new thing. Go look into the Greek terms if you're, don't do it, don't look into the Greek terms, just don't. But if you have to deal with it, and you have to deal with people who are saying, no, this isn't there, it's not in the Bible, people are making this stuff up.

Okay, fine, look into the Greek word, show them that what they're doing is a lie. That they're just pulling stuff out of context to try to say, you know, this word, they're trying to invent a new meaning for it as opposed to its historic usage.

So sex outside of marriage, forbidden. Sex between males, forbidden. Kidnapping, forbidden. For liars, and that seems a little bit less bad than murdering your parents, sodomy, kidnapping, right? These, we get into liars, then we go into a worse form, perjurers, right?

Those who are lying under oath. And if there's any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, the point of this list is to say, here's a whole range of sins. And these sins, all of them, by the preaching of the law, conviction is brought.

Hearts are broken, hard hearts shattered by the teaching of the law. You're in sin, this is forbidden, you need to repent. That type of preaching, that type of preaching, you're in sin, you need to repent, is a type of preaching that is unacceptable.

That's the thing that's not acceptable. I can, I can walk through lots of doctrine, and people will go, okay, Calvinism, blah. But, but people hate the preaching of the law. The preaching of the law. And the lawful use of the preaching of the law is to show people their sin.

It's the mirror use of the law. That is one of its lawful uses. In contrast to the illegal use of the law, which is trying to justify yourself by law-keeping. And here's what's really weird, is there's so much of a mixing of law and gospel in so many churches, where you say, live by faith, and then also live by law-keeping, and at the same time, then also detailed application of the law being hated.

So we need to care about the law, care about the detailed application of the law, try to apply what the scriptures teach, and be very careful to not mix law and gospel. When you differentiate law and gospel and demand the very clear distinction of them, that will make some enemies in the church.

And when you preach the law, that will generally make enemies in the world, but it will also make a number of enemies in the church. These actions that are forbidden are sins that are contrary to sound doctrine.

You can't uphold the doctrine if you won't also uphold the law as teaching what the law says, because it's a part of the doctrine. And what the gospel saves us from is our sin, defined by the law. Verse 11, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

Now what does that connect to? This according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust, is connected to, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, the sound doctrine is that which is according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

The apostolic deposit, which is the gospel, is the sound doctrine, and we're to teach no other doctrine. Verse 12, and I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me, because he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man.

Okay, so this thanking of Christ Jesus, we can praise the various members of the Trinity, thank the various members of the Trinity, remember we make petitions to the Father in the name of the Son, for the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

We thank, we see this thanking of Christ by the Apostle Paul, because the Lord Jesus Christ enabled him. He enabled him because Christ counted Paul faithful, and put Paul into the ministry. That faithfulness is not a sinlessness, it's a qualification for ministry.

He was found to be qualified for ministry by the Lord Jesus Christ. And notice that these sins, these huge sins, are not sins that permanently disqualified the Apostle Paul from ministry. He was formerly a blasphemer, capital crime, a persecutor, he was literally killing believers.

So, a murdering persecutor, capital crime, and an insolent man. This idea of an insolent man is sort of the man who's so arrogant that he rejects authority. You might say rebel, he's a rebel. Rebellion, capital crime.

So what he's listing out here is, I was counted as faithful, as qualified to go into the ministry, even though in my past I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a rebel. Even though I'm a triple capital crime committer.

But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. Now the Apostle Paul, let's remember this, he studied with Gamaliel, he was a part of the Sanhedrin. The Apostle Paul was very learned, very knowledgeable.

What does he mean ignorantly in unbelief? Even though he had a bunch of information in his mind, he did not understand it properly. He had built it into a false system involving, for example, a doctrine of the illegal use of the law.

And so, as a Pharisee, Paul was not only holding to the Orthodox positions of the Pharisees, but seemed to have adopted the doctrine of tradition that the Pharisees had, that the doctrine of the elders was authoritative, and seems to have adopted a self-righteousness and had rejected the Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah.

Persecuting the followers of Christ, blaspheming the Lord of Glory, a rebel against the authority of Jesus. He did it without faith because he did not understand and did not believe the truth. And when he was given understanding and given a belief in the doctrine he then understood, he was forgiven through faith alone.

Verse 14, and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. So the grace of the Lord was exceedingly abundant. He gave Paul a huge amount of faith. He caused Paul to know tons of doctrine and to believe it.

He gave him a huge faith. You have a small faith if you understand and believe very little of what God has revealed. You have a big faith if you understand and believe a lot of what God has revealed. Christ was exceedingly abundant in faith to Paul.

And he was exceedingly abundant in giving love to Paul. He caused Paul to value God and to value his brother, to value his neighbor, to desire the salvation of men, to desire their good, to desire the glory of God to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

The gift of faith and the gift of love to Paul, both of which are gifts, were exceedingly abundant. Verse 15, this is a faithful saying. As you go through 1st Timothy, I want to really encourage you to mark off the faithful sayings.

The faithful sayings are little confessional statements. They're little patterns of sound words and the Apostle Paul is kind enough to tell us, I'm giving you one of these. Here's some patterns of sound words that I would encourage you to remember and to use, to meditate on them.

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. Now, if you take that and you say, all right, here's the worthy saying, Paul, I got it.