1 TIMOTHY 1 (THIRD READING)
1 TIMOTHY 1 (THIRD READING)
CAC We were seeing last week that the danger is that teaching might be brought in that is contrary to the true standard. The standard now is not the law but the gospel, that is, the glory of the blessed God has shone forth in the way of glad tidings for man, and when we come into the sphere of what God is for man, we find everything centering in a risen and glorified Man.
Rem So in 2 Corinthians 4 we find the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.
CAC It is most blessed for us to dwell on these things, that God has put Himself into relation with men, and into communication with men, in a Man. God has come near, not in a mysterious and unknowable way, but in a Man. The truth of the Mediator is very important, and when we come into the sphere of grace we find that everything is administered by that blessed Man, as a Man risen, glorified in heaven, and He is the One in whom, and by whom, God is acting. All God’s acting towards Saul of Tarsus was by that Man.
Ques Are we not often content with the knowledge of the gospel of grace, without glory? While grace relieves us, it is only glory that transforms us.
CAC Yes, we limit it very much to meeting a sense of need. I do not think we get a proper thought of salvation apart from that. The real thought of salvation is that we should be for God, His great thought would be to make known what He is.
Rem I suppose God does not attain His end unless we are brought into conformity with what He [p. 345] is.
CAC We shall be fully conformed by and by, but we are being conformed now. God said of Israel, “This people have I formed for myself, they shall show forth my praise”. No doubt Satan thought he had scored a great triumph when he took man away from God, and brought about the fall, but God has reversed all this, so that His creatures should know Him in a way that no creatures could have known Him in an eternity of innocence.
Rem The depravity of man forms a dark background on which the attributes of God shine forth. We see this in God’s dealings with Saul of Tarsus.
CAC And God takes up that same created being. He does not destroy him, he saves him and brings him into an entirely new condition morally which is to God’s own praise. God’s salvation is very great, we narrow it up often. The salvation is worthy of the blessed God. If God moves He must move in a kingly way. It is very striking the title here, “the King of the ages”, that is what God is to the apostle. It is royal grace, grace acting in royal supremacy, it is very much the character of sovereignty here. So what the apostle has to say is all what Christ Jesus does. A Person has done wonderful things, and Paul is taken up with Him. We are not definite enough in testifying to what He has done for us. Paul is very personal; he says, He has saved me, He has given me power, He has done this and that.
Rem Paul was the chief of sinners.
CAC That brings out the skill of the One who saved him, the far-reaching power that has stretched out to the extreme point to save. Salvation is looked at more here from the side of the privilege of serving. It sets one free from all that hinders one from serving God. “That we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life”, Luke 1: 74. That is the idea of salvation. The first thing Paul says is, ‘He gave me power, He put me into the ministry. That is what that glorious Man in heaven did for me!’ The fact that Paul was a blasphemer and a persecutor only brought out the wonderful character of grace that was in a Man in heaven. It gives one a great idea of salvation to see it in Paul; a man who was a bitter enemy of God and of Christ becomes a devoted servant. That gives the measure of salvation; Christ can take up the chief of sinners, and make him a happy devoted [p. 346] servant. Salvation brings out the character of grace. There was not an incident in the life of Christ on earth that brought out grace like the salvation of Paul; there was no instance of a bitter enemy becoming a friend. The nearest to it is the thief on the cross who railed on the Lord and afterwards turned to Him, but that was not like a life of enmity. We see in Saul a life of enmity, and that brings out the royal character, the kingly supremacy of grace. God is the “King of the ages”; He rises up in kingly supremacy and says, I will reverse all the enmity of that man’s heart for my glory. There was everything active in Saul to overcome. And then such a character of grace! “He counted me faithful”. That was shown by the Lord giving him an appointment to the ministry; that brings out the Lord’s grace. I should not like to count myself faithful, but it is an immense encouragement to think of the Lord counting me faithful. That is Paul’s estimate of his Master; Paul says, He has given me this work to do because He counted me faithful.
Ques Was this Paul’s first impression of Christ?
CAC Paul is looking back, and thinking according to the knowledge he then had of the Lord. It is not the great light that dawned on him, but Christ Jesus the Lord was such a blessed reality to him, One who had spoken to him and he had heard His voice. Paul was summing up his thoughts of that Person, and what He had done for him. Paul says, “He has given me power”. The Lord always begins by setting you up; if He wants you to do anything, He gives efficiency. Every servant is made competent before he is set to work. What was before Paul was the peculiar sense of the grace of the Lord, that the Lord should put him on the footing of a faithful servant before he had done anything. That gives you power. If you have a Master who counts you faithful you would like to do anything for such a Master. We want a deeper sense of the way the Lord looks at things, He has furnished me with power. He wants every one of us to feel we are servants confided in by the One we serve, and we shall not serve properly until we feel that. The greater part of the service of christendom is legal, as if the Lord was marking all our failure and feebleness, but what He is noticing is what is well done.
Rem The Lord entrusted Peter with service after his failure, showing He had confidence in him.
CAC Yes, the grace of the Lord is so wonderful! How [p. 347] little one has known Him after so long. What a footing He puts His servants on! He counted Paul faithful before he had done a stroke of work, and then at the end of the course He says, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”. The Lord from start to finish of the course counts His servants faithful, and if that is how He looks on me, how I long to be what His grace counts me! Woe betide me if I disappoint Him!
All this is apostolic, but the principle applies to everyone. The measure of gift and service is a matter of sovereignty; one may be an apostle, and another only able to lie in bed and pray for the saints. The Lord’s attitude is the same to all who serve, He has not favourite servants; some are divinely fitted to take a large place, and some a small place, but His thought is the same for them all.
Ques In Old Testament times they had to win their spurs, but now is everything conferred on the servants?
CAC Yes, the Lord distributes His goods, that is the footing on which He starts them. We ought to feel He has trusted me; He gave me a pound, and what am I going to do with what He Has confided to me? It is a powerful incentive to devotedness, but one feels ashamed we should be such poor servants with such a Master.
Then we were seeing in a former meeting that the dispensation of God is in faith, and the end of all enjoined is love. Faith and love are what God has before Him to bring about in man, and now (verse 14), we find they are supplied by the grace of our Lord, they are supplied from heaven. This is a summing up of salvation; man is brought into faith exercised towards God, and love exercised towards man. The man who has these two requisites is saved; he is in right relation to God by faith, and to man by love. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”, to put them into that blessed relation.
Rem We have not to be concerned about others’ service, but only to follow.
CAC Yes, that is the only thing we have to do. The Lord said to Peter, Never mind others, follow me. It makes it all so simple, and such a system of liberty. The Lord is just as able to make me what He wants, as He was Paul. We need to be content. I often tell the Lord I would like to be what He wants to make me, nothing more. We may fall short, or try to go beyond. God is a God of measure, and He allots to everyone the right place, and He can effect perfectly all He [p. 348] desires in us if we are subject and follow Him. He can effect all in us according to the place He would have us fill.
You cannot surpass faith and love. The smallest servant who is acting in faith and love is morally as great as an apostle. An apostle may act in a large sphere, but he cannot go beyond faith and love; and we may act in a small sphere, but we cannot go beyond faith and love. We may all have a desire to serve, and there is never any need for jealousy. If I see a person doing more than I can, I delight in it; it is one of my greatest joys to see people doing so much. The great thing is the character of the men who serve, not the amount of their service, but that it should be the outcome of faith and love in Christ Jesus. There is a new order of man brought in for God’s pleasure, and that man is saved. Service flows from faith and love, and not from obligation.
Ques The apostle speaks of grace and mercy. What is the difference?
CAC Mercy takes account of the desperate condition in which man was found; it leads one to think of that.
Ques Is mercy sovereignty? “I will shew mercy on whom I will”.
CAC Yes, but that shows it is a desperate case, but if you think of favour (that is grace), you think rather of what springs in the heart of God. Favour is a different thought from mercy. Mercy and compassion are near akin; God acts in compassion and shows mercy from His own side; that shows the desperate state of man, but grace is more what is in the heart of God. God has not only compassion on a wretched sinner, but there is a blessed thought of favour in His heart. There is nothing more wonderful in the mercy of God than that He should pity His poor guilty creature. He says: I pity you, you are sinning against me with a high hand, but instead of being angry I have compassion, you do not know what you are doing! If you think of what God is, it is marvellous that He bears with His sinful creatures, and that He does not sweep them away. The most terrible thing that ever was done the Lord viewed with compassion. If we see dreadful things done, we feel that they ought to be punished. Well, the most terrible thing ever done, the murder of the Son of God, was viewed with compassion by the One who suffered it, and He prayed to His Father that He might view it with compassion, too; and He did.
Ques How do we get the grace of the [p. 349] Lord Jesus?
CAC It was grace that administered faith and love, they are not demanded, they are supplied. God does not say you must have faith and love, but He supplies them in the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the result is an entirely new order of man in this world, men characterised by faith and love, and by being in Christ Jesus: a new kind of man in this world. “Faith and love ... in Christ Jesus” shows us distinctly the moral force of the term “in Christ Jesus”. It is a present moral reality; it is not only God’s purpose in Christ in heaven to have us like that glorified Man by and by, but it is faith and love in Christ now. There is a people marked morally by what is not Adam at all. The same created being, once fallen, and lost, and marked by everything contrary to God, is now recovered in a new order altogether, and that new order is characterised by faith and love. It is not Adam patched up, it is a new order.
Rem The more faith works by love, the more grace one would have.
CAC Yes, if you make good use of the grace the Lord supplies, you would get some more.
Then it is interesting to think there is a course marked out for every servant from the outset, “According to the prophecies which went before”. Paul says to Timothy, I am charging you not on the ground of what I should like you to be, but on the ground of the prophecies. Let every christian take that home; it is true in principle that a course is marked out for every christian. Paul could say, “I have finished my course” — it was marked out for me, and I have covered every step in it. And now he tells Timothy to see he does the same. The course is a moral course, it is the maintenance of faith and a good conscience.
Rem The course being marked out would not justify anyone waiting and doing nothing.
CAC It would be rather the other way, “that thou ... mightest war a good warfare”. The very consciousness that the course is marked out is a source of strength. Divine sovereignty never has the effect of bringing people into fatalism.
Rem It is quite true, of course, as to Timothy, but I never heard of any prophecies going before on ordinary people.
CAC I quite accept that this is a speciality in Paul and Timothy, but it would not be brought before us here if there was not a principle in it. Mr. Stoney used to say that what a [p. 350] man was brought up to was connected with his service; he said once, ‘I was brought up to the law and I am going on circuit still’; my father said, ‘And I was a shepherd’. Mr. Stoney answered, ‘And you are a shepherd still’. The disciples were fishermen, and they were called to be fishers of men. The course we take is not a matter of indifference to the Lord, and faith is very important. We have a certain measure, and we should be up to it. J.N.D. said, ‘Do not go beyond your faith, and do not lag behind your conscience’. There is the side of sovereignty, and if that is rightly apprehended, it produces zeal and there is a jealous desiring. As to gift it is a subject of desire. It is a great indication that the Lord has called one to a service when one desires to do it, and if you desire to do a thing you pray about it. You soon see in a young convert what he is going to be by the way his desires work.