We are in the book of 1 Timothy, at the moment. You may turn there if you would like. And we are focusing this morning on the second half of the first chapter of 1 Timothy. We'll read that first and then, we'll start. 1 Timothy 1:12-20.
Let's pray before we hear God's word. Heavenly Father, we commit the reading of Your word now to You, O Spirit. We ask that You will work in us what is pleasing and holy. We ask that we will understand and be enlightened in our thinking, that we will be convicted and comforted in our hearts. Lord, help me, guide me in the preaching, the declaration of the good news of Jesus.
In Your name we pray. Amen. 1 Timothy 1:12. 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, persecutor, and 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 honour 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. So far our reading. Last week, we saw Paul start his letter to Timothy by explaining to Timothy that the gospel cannot be found in obedience to God's perfect will. The gospel cannot be found, the good news cannot be found, in obedience to God's perfect will.
There is no saving power in trying to live a perfectly moral life. Specifically, in this context, there is no saving power in the intriguing new readings of the law, the new interpretations of some of the false teachers that had come into the church in Ephesus. More obedience, more knowledge, more spiritual superiority does not qualify anyone for salvation. Only as verse 14 says, the gospel of the Lord of the blessed God can save us. And only the gospel can be trusted rather to be sound doctrine as well.
Literally called here by Paul, healthy teaching in the original Greek. Healthy teaching, sound doctrine saves us. After having explained what the gospel is and isn't, Paul now moves into what the knowledge of this sound doctrine will do for a Christian. It will drive Christians to serve God. This is what Paul begins to explain now.
It drives Christians to serve God. Understanding the gospel drives them to testify about God's grace, and lastly, to fight to protect this good news. So as we see, in verses 12-20, Paul bases his teaching on what the gospel has done for him personally. So Paul has laid this charge for Timothy to live, to act, behave as a pastor, and then Paul says, this is what the gospel has done for me. And it is summed up powerfully in verse 15, where we read Paul saying, this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost.
So verse 15, in fact, becomes the exegetical key to understanding this entire paragraph. Really, everything flows into this, leads up to it, everything flows out of this. God saves sinners, Paul says. But as we will see in the passage, God saves sinners not simply from their sin. He saves them to serve Him, to testify about Him, and to fight for the gospel.
So let's have a look at those three areas. Firstly, we are saved to serve, verses 12-14. Paul says that he is thankful for the fact that the Lord Jesus has called him to serve the church because in all fairness, Paul never deserves to serve the church. Paul shares his story of being Paul the persecutor. Verse 13, formerly he says, I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent opponent.
Once upon a time, we know Paul was named Saul, and Saul was a brutal man. The biographer of Paul's life, the good doctor Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, takes us to Acts 9, where he tells the story of Paul's coming to faith, Paul's conversion. But he begins in Acts 9, and I think we can turn there, because we will spend a few minutes in Acts 9, and we'll reread from verses 1 and 2. But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, just the early term for Christians, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
If you can imagine the worst medieval witch hunters, if you can imagine the worst Roman Catholic inquisitors, if you can imagine the worst Gestapo Nazi police, that is who Paul was. It was a zealous rage that Luke describes here as breathing murder that fueled Paul against the Christians. He breathed threats and murder like a war horse smelling blood in the battle. And can you imagine for the baby Christians of that day, Paul was an ominous, frightening, and violent enemy. But Paul was famously outmatched when he met the Lord Jesus Christ on what is now famously called the road to Damascus.
Later in this same chapter in Acts 9, Paul, as he comes close to Damascus, meets an overwhelming light from heaven that falls upon him. It blinds him. And from this unapproachable glorious light comes a voice of the one who will become his Lord. And that voice asked him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? Saul asks, who are you, sir?
And the voice says to him, I am Jesus and I am the one that you are persecuting. Paul, the murderous beast, is overpowered by the Lion of Judah. And this is the personal history that Paul refers to here in 1 Timothy 1. And this story, this conversion is what drives Paul to marvel and write with deep humility in verse 14. It was the grace of our Lord that overflowed for me with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus.
In that moment, Paul realised what he had been saved from and what he had been saved to, and it was marvellous. An artist once submitted a painting of the Niagara Falls. We know the Niagara Falls, they're great majestic falls. And he put this into a gallery but gave it no title. So the gallery came up with an amusing name, and they called it More to Follow.
It was of course a wonderfully whimsical description of the Niagara Falls because the Niagara Falls drops billions of litres of water every year. And it meets every day, more than meets, I should say, the needs of those below it. As sufficient as today's surge of water is for those who will rely on it, so it can be trusted that more will come tomorrow. And this is something of the language of this overflowing grace, which Paul is talking about here, when he remembers Jesus. Paul expresses this in another letter, Romans 5:20-21, where he writes, where sin increased, grace increased all the more.
So that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is a staggering truth that there is no amount of sin that grace cannot overflow. Indeed, grace increases the more we need it. And there is always more to follow. And so Paul says, in his ignorance and unbelief, God called him not only to salvation, but he knows He called him to service.
Verse 12, I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful, appointing me to His service. I received, he says, mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. Now, there's some debate about what Paul means here when he says, I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. Some say Paul is stating that God extended Paul mercy because he didn't know any better. Paul had grown up as a zealous Jew, he didn't know any better.
Ignorance is therefore an excuse that warranted God's mercy. But if we know Paul, and we understand the totality of his explanation of grace and mercy, I can't think that this is what Paul is saying here. Ignorance never merits grace. Nor can it mean where Paul says, I was judged faithful, that Paul had some underlying level of faithfulness that warranted God to extend mercy. That word used here faithful in verse 12 actually means worthy of trust.
God was willing to entrust me in His service once I was saved. Paul, when he is told that he was extended mercy because of his ignorance. It is not because of his ignorance he received mercy. No. He had to receive mercy because he was ignorant.
He had to be given grace because he lived in unbelief. Ignorance was never an excuse. What we see happening here is Paul knowing that his salvation is not simply in order to be saved. Paul sees that his salvation was also a salvation into service. God appointed Paul to serve, and that's exactly what we see also in Acts 9.
When God speaks to the respected old early Christian, Ananias. Ananias is this early Christian in Damascus, and Paul, blinded by this unapproachable holy light, is sort of led into Damascus, is bedridden for days, and Ananias must come at the command of God to lay hands on Paul and pray for him and bless him in the name of the Lord. Why must Ananias do such a crazy thing exposing himself to Paul, the man who came to capture Christians in Damascus. God says in Acts 9:15, go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine to carry My name before the Gentiles, and to kings, and to the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for My name's sake.
Paul knows that he's not simply been saved from sin. He's been saved in order to serve the living God. As Christians, this applies to us as well. We have been bought at a price, Paul will say. It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.
I am not my own. I belong to the Lord Jesus. We have been saved in order to serve. We have been saved in order to worship with our lives the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how Paul understands part of his salvation.
Then secondly, Paul shows us also that he's been saved to testify, verses 15-17. Paul's personal story of God's grace doesn't simply belong to him, he says, he understands it as belonging to the world. Paul's salvation belongs to the world. People must know what God has done in him and for him. So not only has he been saved to serve, he's been saved to testify, to proclaim the grace of God.
Paul's very personal praise for grace then widens from his story in 12-14, now verses 15-17. And he states not just his personal story, he says, of the world, 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, of whom I am the worst. And some have accused Paul of being really like, fakely humble, of kind of being sort of having this fake humility saying, the worst. Come on Paul, you can't be the worst. There's heaps of people worse than you.
Surely, there must be sinners worse than you, Paul. But Paul is utterly sincere when he writes this phrase. In fact, he said it before. This is the end of Paul's life where he writes this letter to Timothy. Earlier in 1 Corinthians 15:9, he writes this, I am the least of the apostles, unworthy in fact to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church.
Ephesians 3:8, to me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. But Paul understands that his salvation was for the reason that he might bring a testimony to others that God's salvation is very great. Verse 16, but I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, as the worst sinner, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. Paul the persecutor becomes Paul the apostle because he became absolutely convinced that Jesus Christ's power and eagerness to save anyone is real. Paul believed this with his whole heart.
Why? Because Paul knows that Jesus' sacrificial death was for him. Paul knew that on the cross, Jesus would die for his sins, and in that moment, Paul received the righteousness of Christ, even as he gave his sin for Jesus to bear on the cross. And in the resurrection of Christ, Paul received eternal life, new life forever. And if Jesus would do such an incredible thing for Paul, the worst of sinners, would Jesus not save others too?
This has to be our conviction as Christians as well. This is the reality that drives me as a pastor. Jesus has saved me, and if He can do that for me, He can do it for anybody. Only Christ's divine grace could save me. Only His sacrificial death can cleanse my soul.
But because Jesus is so abundantly gracious that He would save me, then no one on earth is beyond His grace. And because of this enormous thought, Paul breaks out into a doxology in verse 17. He just cannot control and contain that emotion. He writes, to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen.
He can't help himself. He explodes in wondrous gratitude to how amazing God's plan has been for him. John Calvin explains the moments when Paul suddenly breaks into these statements of praise, like we find here in 1 Timothy. Calvin writes this. He says, these sudden outbursts of Paul's come mainly when the vastness of the subject overpowers him and makes him break off from what he's been saying.
For what could be more wonderful? What could be more worthy of thanks than his conversion? At the same time, Calvin writes, he admonishes us by his example that we should never think of the grace shown in God's calling without being lost in wonderful admiration. For Paul, this sublime praise of God's grace swallows up all the memory of his former life. God, great and deep, and all the glory goes to Him.
When we are saved by the Lord Jesus, we are saved as examples. We are saved as trophies of His grace. Our lives must become testimonies of His mercy, and we would be audacious fools not to regularly point that out to anyone around us. We have not simply been saved from our sin. We've been saved to testify to His grace, and through that grace, to bring glory to God, the king of the ages.
And then Paul finally moves back to Timothy after having shared his testimony. Paul comes to Timothy in verses 18-20. And he reminds Timothy that Christians are also now saved to fight a good fight. Verses 18-20 actually becomes sort of the bookend by which he started chapter one, and he wraps it up at the end of this chapter. It becomes a restatement of what Paul had initially started saying to Timothy.
Paul had started by saying to Timothy, to charge certain persons not to teach a different doctrine. Paul is now returning to remind Timothy that this is his task to do as a pastor in Ephesus. Verse 18, this charge I entrust to you, Timothy my child, in accordance with the prophecies that had been previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare. We know, further in Paul's ministry in Acts 16, that Paul recruits Timothy to come and work with him on his missionary journeys. We know from that account that the elders of Timothy's church said to Paul, that he's a good man.
They spoke well of him, verse two says. At some point, perhaps when Timothy was sent out with Paul, we are to understand that Christians prayed for Timothy, that his elders laid their hands on him, passing on to him their authority and their support. We trust this man. Three things happened when this occurred. Firstly, Paul will say here, and then again further in 1 Timothy, that Timothy received a spiritual gift.
That secondly, a prophecy was made over him. And then thirdly, that the elders were the ones that had laid their hands on him. Now over the course of 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, Paul refers back to that moment several times to remind Timothy who is buckling under the pressure, who is shy and timid, who is a young guy speaking to older men. Paul refers back to that moment of authority, say, remember who you are, Timothy, you are God's appointed. You are the one that is entrusted with this gospel message.
Remember Timothy, you have been called by God. You have been approved by people whom you respect. And so here, Paul is inciting Timothy to remember his commissioning, and thus motivating him to carry out the charge, which was to defend the gospel of grace against the false teachers in his church. And Paul expresses this charge of defending the gospel as fighting a fight, as waging a good warfare. That is where we use that term, to fight the good fight.
People use it all the time, even today. We have no idea why we say fight the good fight. It's from the King James Version that we have here. Fight the good fight. So when a non-Christian says, I'm fighting the good fight, say, preach the gospel, mate.
When we are saved by Jesus, we are also saved to contend for the pure message of the gospel. And all of us are involved in that, not just Timothy, not just pastors, all Christians, pastors especially, but no less for the Christian. How do we fight that fight? Well, verse 19, this first half of verse 19 tells us, by holding faith and a good conscience. And John Stott points out that this little phrase contains what he says is both the objective and subjective necessity to ensure that this good fight is being waged.
What that means is, on the one hand, we hold onto the objective deposit of the faith, the objective truth of the gospel message, the apostolic faith, the faith that has been recorded and passed down to us from Jesus to the apostles, to the early church, and now to us. We stand in that line. And so on the one hand, we hold that as an objective truth. And then on the other hand, we hold tightly onto this truth by the subjective, by the internalised reality of a good conscience. As Christians, therefore, we must firstly know what the faith is.
We must know what the faith is and therefore what it isn't. Objectively, rationally, purely, simply, we must know what Christianity stands for. Every Christian must know and believe God and understand Him. Because what you know and what you believe about God determines how you live. Doctrine therefore determines conduct.
Doctrine determines conduct. It always does. And so on the one hand, holding to the faith is central to fighting the good fight. But then on the other half, Paul says, having a good conscience is also necessary. There's a necessity to having a clear conscience when we are to fight the fight of upholding the gospel.
John Calvin once said, a bad conscience is the mother of all heresies. A bad conscience is the mother of all heresies. This is seen again and again in the Christian world, where church leaders have so chronically violated their consciences, that they are later willing to give up the faith in order to silence the burning conscience in their heart. When morals slip, doctrine ebbs. And when that happens, the gospel is lost.
A clear conscience, a heart that prioritises obedience to God and His will, that is the mother of sound faith. And that clear conscience put steel in my bones to hold out the truth. Without these things, Paul says in verse 19, people shipwreck their faith. Like Hymenaeus and Alexander, who Paul says he's spiritually handed over to Satan, which probably means excommunication from the church. Why?
So that they may learn not to blaspheme. There's a hope even here in the handing over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme and maybe come back to the gospel. Friends, who hasn't, this past week or two, had their hearts broken with the sad and sordid news of Ravi Zacharias, the absolute giant in the evangelical world. The giant in Christianity and Christian apologetics. Where reports recently published showed affairs with dozens of women in these twilight years of his life.
It's absolutely devastating. But the fallout of Ravi's actions is exactly what Paul is alluding to here. The good fight for the gospel is completely undone when there is no good conscience. And everyone is left wondering if Ravi could have done all these things, if his conscience could be so calloused, then what was his doctrine? What faith did he personally have even as he proclaimed, even as he defended the Christian faith to the world.
A clear conscience is the mother of sound faith, and it is the steel in my bones to fight the good fight. When Christians are saved by grace, and just maybe I should mention, Ravi was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he died before any of this broke. My prayer and I hope our prayer can be that Ravi saw that as judgement, and that he was able to confess and repent of that sin. That he might be like one handed over to Satan in that judgement, and yet saved as a man singed by the fires of hell before he would stand before his God. When Christians are saved by grace through simple faith in Jesus Christ, we are not simply saved from our sin.
We are indeed saved from our sin, and it is glorious. But we are saved for more. We are saved to serve and to lay down our lives. We are saved to testify, to announce to a watching world that Jesus can save even the worst sinners of all. And we are saved to fight the good fight, to protect the life giving message that Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst.
Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the wonderful testimony of Your servant Paul. That with Paul's life, honestly, brutally exposed by his history, known far and wide as Saul the persecutor of the church. O Lord, that You would grab that man, that You would save him radically, and that You would put him into Your service. We thank You for his life.
We thank You that through his life, he may be an example to us. More importantly than his example, we thank You for the truth that Jesus Christ can save sinners like Paul. Because it means that You can save us. And so Lord, for those of us sitting here this morning who have never known You as Saviour, I pray, Lord. Will You give them the inkling?
Will You give them the burning heart? Will You give them a heart that is aflame? Their conscience that is burning. That they need a mighty Saviour. And that that Saviour is and can only be Jesus Christ.
Lord, may they confess their sin to You today and may they take up belief and trust in You. And then for the rest of us, those who have tasted Your grace. Lord, help us not to trample underfoot the work of the Son of God on our behalf. Help us to see that we have been saved for service, that we have been saved to testify, that we have been saved to contend for the good news of Jesus. Help us to do this with knowledge and understanding of the faith and help us Lord to do this in good conscience.
Help us not to trip up. Help us not to undermine. Save us from hypocrisy. Lord, we thank You for these truths. We thank You that by Your sanctifying power at work in us, we can ask for these things.
We can believe for these things. Lord, please today, extend us the grace we may receive that. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.