1 TIMOTHY 1: 1 - 20
There are two parts to the epistle. The first part extends to the end of chapter 3; then chapter 4 introduces the second part. It is the provision for the maintenance of the doctrine, of the truth in the house God. The Church was responsible for guarding the truth. The Church was never (as it was made in popery) a teacher, but it is the pillar and ground of the truth. Instead of being the teacher it is taught, but it was responsible to God for what was committed to its responsibility. In these days of confusion there is very little guarantee for the maintenance of the truth, but God took care that we should have the Scriptures as a safeguard. God has preserved the truth in the Scriptures and in that way the Scriptures are a witness to the failure of man. Timothy has that kind of position as a guardian of the truth himself; he was not an apostle but he was a kind of typical servant for the continuance of the truth, to maintain the truth in its integrity when the truth was there. That was the kind of place that Timothy had. The Greeks were a people of very active mind and there was a great effort to incorporate the principles of previous systems of heathendom into Christianity. Ephesians 4: 14 refers to this kind of effort. There was a systematic effort to deceive, both by form of religion and philosophy. “Sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive”. You can understand that the natural mind of man would not care for the introduction of a system which had previously existed and which did not recognise man in the flesh. The unconverted cannot possibly enter into the thought of a man for heaven, he [p. 460] can only understand a man for earth. The effort of the present day is to bring every Scripture down to the level of the human mind. Everything supernatural is being discredited and an attempt made to ascribe it to natural causes and the like — the object is to shut God out. If God saw fit to come into a scene of moral confusion He must display Himself in a supernatural way. In fact the birth of Christ is the greatest of all miracles. No miracle that Christ did was so great as His birth.
If you accept the birth of Christ you accept the greatest of all miracles. In that way it is not difficult to see where people are; they do not see very far while they discredit what is supernatural. The birth of Christ is the incarnation, God came in as man into His own creation. It is in that sense that I speak of the birth of Christ. Timothy was to charge some that they do not teach otherwise, (it was really to guard the truth) nor to give heed to endless genealogies. This term is philosophic and heathen. It is supposed the idea came from the east, but it was all the speculation of man’s mind, Judaism too, whatever it foreshadowed in itself, it was the “beggarly elements”. It is useless to be occupied with the things which tend to questionings, because it only ministers to the human mind. We do not get the truth by reasoning or talking, nor is it guarded in that way. Timothy was to give heed to God’s dispensation which is in faith. When you get faith you get certainty because you have divine light. We have a dispensation set up here now on earth which is entirely in faith, in the original idea of it, it was never set up for sight. Effects morally may be seen, but people do not see what produces the effect because it is in faith. If there were ability to discern what produces the effect, it would prove such an one to be a Christian. In the original idea everything in this dispensation in the true character of it, is faith. What man has made of it is another matter. The truth of the kingdom is in faith, so too the truth of the house — it is true to faith.
[p. 461] The truth of the body, too — it is good for faith. Eternal life is not for sight, it is for the believing. The dispensation at present is in faith, that is, it is on the principle of divine light in the soul. The house of God has become a great house, and so the world takes account of it; but so long as it maintained its own proper character it was not taken account of by man. In the early Church they used to have councils to settle questions, but they generally took the character of disputations. It has been pointed out in Acts 15 that “after there had been much disputation”. The disputation settled nothing — then follows the wisdom of the apostle and they settled the question in a few sentences. It is a great thing to see what is the character of the dispensation, and that you do not make a step in it apart from light from God, it is in faith. When we do not see things clearly the great point is to wait for light from God. Now we get to the end of the charge (verse 5). The purpose of it, the end in view is the sense in which end is used here. The end is what is moral. It is love out of a pure heart — not out of a purified heart. A pure heart is not purified — in its spring it is pure, it is really the new man. Speaking of people in a practical way you can speak of their hearts having been purified by faith, but when you go to the spring, to the root of it, you go to a pure heart that takes account of the purity and holiness of God, and that is the spring of love. It is the pure in heart who see God. The pure in heart have taken account of the holy love of God and the result is they are responsive to that love. If a thing is holy it is holy — you cannot sanctify what is holy in the nature of it. It is the key to Scripture that God has introduced another Man. In the Old Testament you get most wonderful thoughts, but you do not get the man in the Old Testament. Take this passage, for instance, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him”, but [p. 462] where is the man that waiteth for Him? You have not got him. Then again, “Behold I create new heavens and a new earth” but where is the man for the new earth? In the New Testament you get the Man introduced. I believe the Lord when here while ministering to man, was in spirit totally outside everything of man. The Lord here was a Man in perfect accord with the glory above, although in a scene of pollution and sin. Now He is above and we are left here to answer to the glory above. Verse 5, now you get the accompaniment of love — good conscience and faith unfeigned. Faith unfeigned is in contrast to mere profession, people feign faith in these days; they get into the Christian circle and feign faith, but it is not real. The power was so great in early days that that became the attraction and people feigned faith. Simon Magus, for instance, his believing was not the result of a work of God in his soul, he was influenced by man and therefore with him it was only feigned faith. Unfeigned faith is the divine light in the heart. If these things are turned aside from, people turn to vain jangling and in the direction of law.
They went back and when people do deflect from truth they go back to a previous dispensation. It was true in Israel. They lost the sense of the divine presence with them, which blessing Abraham never had; they had it but very speedily lost it, they soon lost the sense of it. Abraham had no ark of the covenant. They lost it. Christianity too gives up the best thing in it, that is the presence of the Spirit, and they have gone back to a previous dispensation. Those who turned aside to vain jangling desired to be law teachers. What are the mass of ministers of the present day but law teachers? From the pulpits they teach morality and what is called Christian ethics. The truth is those who preach have so little experimental knowledge of God, that they cannot expound it. You can imagine, therefore, how exceedingly barren the pulpits are. One may [p. 463] study theology, but unless a man is in the light and sense of grace, in the light of the love of God, how can he expound it? Collegiate training is no good, for those who receive it are all educated men and it may be God is pleased to take up an uneducated man. He did so in early days. The apostle goes on to vindicate the law in its own proper place. It is a striking statement that the law is not for a righteous man. In fact, if man had been righteous there would have been no need for the law. It was given to restrain the awful wickedness of man. Then we get those for whom the law has application, and a terrible picture it is, see verses 9, 11. Murderers of fathers and mothers etc., and any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. When people are law teachers they do not understand much about the death of Christ. No man in the light of the death of Christ would go on with evil; it is “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus”. What we see in the death of Christ is that righteousness and love have both their place. The death of Christ is the entire condemnation in righteousness of everything to which man is prone; that is the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. There is in the cross the expression of perfect righteousness (the condemnation of man because of what man was) but there is also the expression of divine love. The condemnation of man’s state was met in the Son of God and hence it was the expression of the love of God, the love comes in in that the condemnation was in the love of God. “Blessed God”, is an extraordinary statement — it is the word as in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5. I cannot conceive in what way God is blessed, save in blessing in order to make men happy, and God finds His delight in doing so.
In this epistle God is spoken of as the blessed God, the living God and Saviour God.
It is a great thing to get hold of the thought of a [p. 464] living God when we are surrounded by generations of dying men.
The blessed God is the one who surrounds Himself with those whom He has blessed. Through the whole of Scripture there is the idea of blessing. It came in at the very beginning — then we get it after the flood, and then Abraham, etc. The Lord took up little children and blessed them. When the Lord was taken to heaven He was in the act of blessing His own. The law brought in curse, but blessing like a thread runs all through Scripture, and the source of it all is the blessed God. You can understand the blessed God being the source of the glad tidings of the glory. The nearer you come to God, the more conscious you are of blessing.