04 Why No One is Beyond God’s Mercy (1 Timothy 1:12-20)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Before he was an apostle, Paul had innocent believers put to death. He was so notorious that when God sent a man named Ananias to help him, Ananias begged God to send someone else instead. Paul looks back on that history and says something surprising. God chose him of all people, specifically because he was the worst case anyone could point to. Learn why Paul's past did not disqualify him for mercy and what that means for anyone who's ever wondered if they've done too much wrong to be forgiven. This is the fourth talk in our series on the book of 1 Timothy, and we will be looking at 1 Timothy 1, verses 12 through 20. I'm so glad you're listening. We are continuing in our study of 1 Timothy today, and we will finish chapter 1. You'll recall that the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, his young son in the faith, although Paul probably intended this letter to be shared. Timothy had traveled and worked with Paul for many years, and he has stayed behind in Ephesus to help sort out the problems in the church there, while Paul continued traveling. Paul began the letter by urging Timothy to correct certain teachers. These teachers were speculating on the law. They were approaching the law the same way the Pharisees did, looking for ways to prove themselves holy and righteous before God. Paul corrects that and says they need to understand that the law was given to teach us how sinful we are and how much we need mercy. But these other teachers are using it for vain discussion and empty speculation. Paul started the letter by identifying himself as an apostle, one of a select few people who were given the authority to teach for and represent Jesus after he ascended. And Paul has just talked about how Scripture was given to evil people because all of us are rebellious sinners. God never intended the law to be a means by which we earned our salvation. Quite the contrary, the law was intended to show us how sinful we are so that we would seek the mercy offered by the cross. So in this section, Paul is going to tie that theme of being evil to his authority as an apostle. He's going to say he was no exception, he too was evil, and he's going to explore the act of mercy that made him an apostle. Let's start with chapter one, verses twelve through fourteen. 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 first thing I want to look at is this phrase, I thank him who has given me strength. What's he talking about there? The Greek word basically means to empower or to enable or to make strong. The question from the context is what kind of strength, what kind of power are we talking about? Paul could be talking about physical strength. He could be talking about emotional strength or the psychological kind of fortitude or reserve it took to do the job of an apostle. But it seems to me those aren't likely possibilities. Physical strength is not something Paul ever really talks about a lot. And when he talks about that kind of inner resolve that equipped him for the ministry, he often attributes that to the work of the Holy Spirit, not Jesus. In fact, Paul frequently talks about how the Spirit works in our hearts to teach us, to open our eyes, to make us see the truth. In the upper room discourse, Jesus was preparing his disciples for the fact that he was leaving and he would no longer be with them. And he promises to send them the spirit of truth, as he calls the spirit to help them. The idea being that Jesus won't be physically present any longer to advise them, but God is going to send his spirit to take on that inner kind of advisory role. And Paul often talks about the spirit in that role. He doesn't usually attribute that to Jesus. But what Paul frequently talks about Jesus giving him is authority. He frequently thanks Jesus for making him an apostle. And in fact, in this letter, that's what he goes on to say. I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service. He says, I thank him who judged me faithful and empowered me to be in his service, who gave me strength to be in his service. And I think that's what he's referring to. Paul has the authority to speak for Jesus. Paul has the power in that sense. He has been empowered to speak for Jesus because he was chosen as an apostle. And I think that's what he means by him who has given me strength. He means basically the authority or the power to be an apostle. So I understand him to be saying, I'm grateful to Jesus who gave me authority because he counted me as worthy to teach his message and he put me into service, something like that. And this last phrase, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to a service, that's another phrase we want to keep in the context of this letter. If we read that in English and in isolation, we think Jesus found Paul faithful and trustworthy and therefore called him into service as an apostle. And without thinking about it, we might expect that Paul is explaining why Jesus chose him out of all the possible candidates. And we think the answer is because he found Paul superior, faithful, or worthy in some way. But I don't think that's the right way to understand it because Paul goes on to say, look, I was the least worthy. Paul says, if you were going to line up all the candidates from the most worthy to the least worthy, I would be at the end of the line. I am the least worthy of all. Even though I was this rebellious blasphemer and prosecutor, Christ judged me faithful. Despite all that, he picked me. So instead of seeing this as a description of why Paul was picked, I think we should see it as an explanation of what Jesus did. He's explaining what it meant to strengthen him and grant him authority. It meant that Jesus considered him faithful to serve, even though he was a sinner. Now let's think about that. As an apostle, Paul is kind of like a trustee in a business relationship. For example, if you're writing a will, you write it, you sign it, and then you give it to a trustee, usually your lawyer. You're giving it to someone you consider able to guard it and protect it and keep the document until it's needed. The trustee is required to keep the document safe, keep it from being stolen, destroyed, altered, or tampered with in some way. And you have to trust your trustee. You deem him faithful and trustworthy to fulfill that role. But usually we don't choose our lawyers because they've proven themselves flawless. The trustee is chosen because the person entrusting the document just decides to trust them to it and then hold him to it. So the trust comes with the appointment. You see an ad, you read review in a newspaper, or you get a word of mouth recommendation, and you just decide I'm gonna pick this guy. He's gonna be my lawyer, my trustee. Well, that's similar to what happened to Paul. Jesus didn't wait until Paul proved himself faithful over years of ministry and then hand him the job. Jesus appointed him, called him, and trusted him with the job. And Paul spent the rest of his life living up to that trust. That trust was given, but it wasn't earned in that sense. As Paul is going to say in this section, none of us are worthy. None of us are faithful and trustworthy, but God in his mercy takes us out of our evil ways and makes us faithful servants. God did that for Paul, and Paul's grateful. He took a blasphemer or persecutor and one of his insolent opponents and showed him the mercy of appointing that sinful wretch into his service, and then on top of that, the further mercy of equipping him to do the job. And I think that's Paul's emphasis here. He's emphasizing the fact that this was a mercy, this was a grace, this was a favor that was shown to Paul. Paul was not worthy of the assignment. He had not proved himself to be trustworthy, reliable, or faithful. In fact, he'd proven the opposite. He was not a faithful servant of God, but Christ showed him that mercy anyway. And that brings us to our next phrase. I want to talk about in 113. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. Again, at first glance, we might think Paul is saying his ignorance exonerated him from blame. And that's why God mercifully put him into service as an apostle. And in English, that's what it sounds like he's saying. Even though I didn't said all these terrible things, well, I wasn't actually guilty. I got a pass because I didn't know any better, and therefore Jesus could pick me as an apostle. Well, we know that can't be his meaning because that doesn't fit with the rest of Paul's letters or scripture. Paul never speaks of ignorance as a free pass. He never speaks of ignorance as something that exonerates a believer. When Paul talks about people being ignorant, he means it as a criticism. To be ignorant is to be a fool, and you don't want to be a fool. Ignorant people ignore God and reject God, and they are condemned for that. Ignorance is not an excuse, in fact, it's a strike against you. Think about how this works in a courtroom. If a man stands before a judge and says, But Your Honor, I didn't know it was illegal. That's not considered a defense. It doesn't clear him of anything. In fact, it might make it worse because it could make him appear that he was so far from caring about right and wrong that he didn't even bother to find out what the rules were. And that's closer to what Paul's mean. His ignorance was not an excuse that got him off the hook. It was evidence of just how lost he was. He's explaining why this was an act of mercy. I was ignorant. I was unbelieving. I was a foolish blasphemer and a persecutor. There was nothing good about me. The way I behaved deserved only condemnation, and it was a mercy that God chose me because I had acted so foolishly, ignorantly, and unbelief. So I think Paul is declaring here that his foolish ignorance shows you what a profound act of mercy this was. His description of his sinful self covers all the bases. He says in his relationship to God, he calls himself a blasphemer, which was a crime punishable by death in the Old Testament. As far as his relationship to other people or to God's people, he was a persecutor, another offense, as he put innocent people to death because they disagreed with him. And as for his relationship to society, he calls himself an insolent opponent, or some translations have a violent aggressor. The Greek word there comes from the root hubris, which means arrogance or pride. It describes someone whose pride is so strong that it boils over into this fury and violence. It's someone who has an outrageous disregard for the rights of others. Now we might think that the mercy he was shown was the mercy of being appointed an apostle, and that is true, that's one mercy, and Paul would certainly say that, but look, he points to another mercy. In 14 he says, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. So what did the mercy of God do for Paul? It gave him faith and love for Jesus. It replaced hatred for God, hatred for Christ, hatred for God's people with a love for God, love for Christ, and love for God's people. So it replaced rebellion with faith. God didn't give him the condemnation he deserved. Instead, God came into his life and gave him faith and love for Jesus and then put him into service. Okay, let's go on to the next three verses, fifteen through seventeen. 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 a 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. So apparently this statement, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, had become a popular saying at the time Paul wrote. We have similar sayings today, for instance, we might say, I'm saved by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone. And that statement has become a shorthand way to capture the ideas of the Protestant Reformation. Well, in the same way, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners had become a summary statement of the gospel. And Paul's improving. He says, yep, that statement captures who Jesus was and what his message was about. And this ties back to his earlier point that we can only use Scripture rightly when we understand that it was given to sinners like us. Scripture was given to sinners. Jesus came into the world to save sinners. The law exposes our sin to us so that we can turn around and seek mercy. And when we seek mercy, we find that Jesus is the one who came to offer it. He didn't come into the world to teach basically good and holy people how to be better. He did not come together around him only the cream of the crop, the most religious, zealous, and perfect. He came for sinners like you and me. Then Paul comes back to his own unworthiness. And this is really interesting. I used to think that Paul was speaking in a hyperbole here, that he was saying, There is nobody on the planet more evil than I am. I am the most evil person in the entire human race, and God picked me anyway. And that's hyperbole because even in his own day, Nero, for example, was far more evil than Paul ever was. But then I learned that this word foremost can have the connotation of notorious or infamous, and I think that makes a lot of sense in the context. That fits what we know of history. Paul was so zealous in his persecution of the church before his conversion that he had a reputation that struck fear into the heart of any and every believer. Paul was dangerous and everybody knew about it. And we can see an example of this in Acts. After Paul's conversion, God appears to a believer named Ananias, and he tells Ananias, Go and lay hands on Paul. And Paul's reputation is so terrifying that at first Ananias refuses. This is Acts 9, 13 and 14. But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name. So there and Ananias is saying, I don't want to go, I know about this guy. He's famous. Everyone knows how dangerous Paul is. So I don't think Paul's saying his sins were worse than everyone else's. He's saying his sins were famous. Everyone everywhere knew how badly he had messed up. Now, why is that significant? I think because of what he goes on to say, let me read verse 116 again. 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. So Paul's saying, God decided to use me as an example of how profound his mercy is, so that people for generations to come would hear the message and know no amount of evil puts you beyond the reach of God's mercy. He chose to show mercy to me, a very public sinner, to show people just how merciful he is. If I was not beyond the reach of God's mercy, then nobody is beyond the reach of God's mercy. Now, not because Paul is more evil than anyone else, but because his sins were obvious and famous and documented and well known. He was so obviously an enemy of God. He persecuted Christians, he blasphemed the name of Jesus Christ publicly for all to see. And if anyone could expect condemnation, Paul says, it would be me. Paul says, I was such an obvious example of someone who would spit in God's face that if God was going to crush anybody, it would be me. But what did God do? He showed me mercy. And the what's the point? Well, if God can show Paul mercy, as publicly defiant as he was, then no matter who you are, God can show you mercy as well. And he concludes to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. And this little prayer is the response to what he just said about finding mercy. Paul, the most notorious or infamous sinner, was shown mercy so that future generations could learn about the mercy of Jesus Christ. And that's the gospel. And what's the appropriate response to that incredible mercy? It's praise, honor, and glory to the God who made it all possible. What else can we do but be grateful to God who sent his son to die in our place and show us that mercy? So Paul is demonstrating in his own life precisely the kind of response all Bible teachers hope to inspire. This response is the fruit of sound teaching. Paul spent the opening verses in this chapter exposing the futility of the false teachers, their myths, endless genealogies, and vain speculations, producing nothing but empty arguments and distraction from the stewardship of God's household. In contrast, when Paul recounts the mercy shown to him, the most notorious of sinners, his immediate response is not another round of debate, but spontaneous worship. And that's what genuine Bible teaching is meant to provoke. True instruction in the gospel does not leave the hearer entangled in speculative chains of human authority and clever distinctions of philosophy. Instead, it drives the believer to the only fitting conclusion, praise to God who shows mercy to sinners like us. The hope for the proper response to the gospel is not self-congratulation or endless theological wrangling. It's the humble adoration of our gracious God. So the marks of faithful ministry is not impressive pedigrees or novel interpretations, but people whose hearts are so gripped by the gospel after hearing that ministry, they cannot help but praise God. Now he wraps up this section and transitions to the next, and this is the first of what I call the five charges in the book, which is how I organize the section. They come at the end of each section as I see them, and I see them as kind of a conclusion and also a bridge into the next section. So this is 1 Timothy 1, 18 through 20. 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 blusp. Okay, so Paul addresses Timothy as my child. I don't think he means that in any condescending way at all, the way sometimes we say, Oh, you're such a child. That's not what he means. He's describing his affection for Timothy, affection that's been born of many years of Have shared life and work together, they've forged a bond, and Timothy is like a son to him. This charge I give to you, Timothy, my child, in accord with the prophecies previously spoken about you. I think he's referring to the same thing we talked about in an earlier podcast, and he's going to mention again later in chapter four. As we talked about the laying on of hands was this symbolic ritual they did to commission someone to a job as a way of indicating their support and their encouragement to send this person out to do some task. We see this in Acts 13. When the church first sends Barnabas and Paul out on a missionary journey, they lay hands on them. It's kind of a way of saying you're going out as representatives of our church, and we are sending you with all our hopes and blessings. There's nothing magical in it. There's no channeling the power of God or something. It was a ritual, a symbolic act showing their commissioning and identification with them. So in Acts 16, when Paul meets Timothy in Lystra, Paul asks if Timothy can come with him on his journey. Acts 16 does not specifically say they laid hands on Timothy at that time, but it seems likely that they would have done so when they decided to send him off with Paul. Apparently, while they were doing that, Paul received some kind of prophetic revelation. And in that revelation, God revealed that he had plans for Timothy to serve him. And 1 Corinthians 4 17 implies that at least one of the ways Timothy served was as a teacher, which also seems to be what Paul is talking about here. So Paul says, This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may fight the good fight, holding faith and a good conscience. Now that should sound familiar, holding faith and a good conscience. We have been running into these words before through chapter one. And he says, wage the good warfare, fight the good fight, holding to faith and a good conscience. What's he getting at? Well, Paul doesn't specifically explain it here. The only clues he gives us to what he means by fight the good fight is this holding on to faith and good conscience. But we can put the clues together. In 1 6, Paul says, I remind you to fan into flames the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. So he's talking about this gift, the service that God has asked him to do. First Corinthians implies that's teaching. Paul has been talking to him throughout chapter one about correcting these false teachers. And the goal of our instruction is love through a good conscience, sound faith, and pure heart. Since this whole chapter has been about teaching in one way or another and Timothy's teaching, I think the charge, this fight the good fight also relates to his teaching. But why would he describe it as fight the good fight? Well, when you study scriptures, especially with the goal of teaching it, there's a lot of fighting going on. You have to fight against your own dispositions, your own tendencies. For instance, the tendency to be lazy, to take shortcuts, to just go with the first idea that comes into your head without any thought, prayer, or study. You have to fight against the tendency to avoid teaching truth that could get you in trouble because, hey, it's not very popular today, or it's divisive. Maybe the cultural elites in your town will hate you for saying it. You have to fight against the tendency to avoid teaching truth that people don't want to hear. Then you have to fight against the tendency to become arrogant and prideful and think you're better than others because you've learned so much. You have to fight against the tendency to start thinking that all that learning makes you better than others. And also that there's nothing left to learn. You can get into a spot where you think I've got it all figured out and I can't be wrong, I've got it all right, and you have to fight against that tendency. Teachers face all these temptations and more, and I think that's the fight Paul is talking about specifically for Timothy here. He's been talking about the goal of their instruction, he's been talking about the vanity of the false teachers, he's been talking about how to handle scripture properly, and then he gives this charge to Timothy, and look where he goes after it. He talks about two people who lost the fight and shipwrecked their faith. I love that image of the shipwreck. The significance of a shipwreck is that you don't arrive at your destination. So if you're taking a ship from port A to port B and you shipwreck along the way, you never make it to your destination. And in some ways, that's a perfect analogy for sanctification. Our sanctification by the Spirit of God is like a journey. We are moving toward a point that the Spirit of God wants us to arrive at. And the Spirit wants us to arrive at a strong, mature faith. He wants us to be so grounded in the truth that there's no turning back, and we respond like Paul with that praise to God for all the mercy he has shown us. That's our goal, that's our destination. But we get shipwrecked before we reach that destination. Various choices and temptations could knock us off course so that we abandon the faith and never arrive. This is the same point Jesus made in the parable of the sower and the seed. The sower threw seed out on all kinds of soil, but only one kind of soil reached its destination. Only one kind of soil produced a strong, mature faith. The others were distracted by the worries of the world, lacking roots that couldn't grow, and they fell away. Well, Alexander and Hymenaeus got shipwrecked. Instead of holding on to their faith and good conscience, they let go. They never reached their port. At first they were intrigued by the gospel, they claimed to believe it, but some winds of other doctrines came along and blew them off course, and they landed somewhere else. They didn't end up at the destination of having both feet planted firmly on the rock solid truth of the gospel. Now what does he mean by handed over to Satan? I don't think he means that he's seeking revenge or he's wishing them ill or something like that. Because he says, I've handed them over to Satan in order that they may be taught not to blaspheme. I think all he means is, look, I have stopped treating them like Christians. I have stopped encouraging them in deceiving themselves that they are on the right path, and I'm telling them the truth about their spiritual state so that they can fix it, so that they can wake up and repent and be redeemed. It's a little like what a family does when they finally stop covering for someone who's an addict. For years, maybe they make excuses for Uncle Eddie and they smooth things over and let him believe everything's fine. The addiction's not a problem, it's not hurting anyone, but at some point, out of love, not cruelty, they stop and they tell Uncle Eddie the truth. This addiction is destroying you, and we're not going to pretend it isn't hurting you anymore. That's closer to what Paul means by handing these two guys over to Satan. He's not attacking them, he's refusing to let them keep believing this comfortable lie that everything is okay because that lie is killing them. Now, why did they get shipwrecked? Because they rejected the faith and good conscience. The same ideas Paul's been talking about since 1.5. They rejected the truths of the gospel. They got captured by other prophecies and worldviews, and they didn't cling to the truth. Timothy needs to fight that fight because all of us are capable of deceiving ourselves. We're all capable of being pulled off course by the cares of this world, the love of money, or things like the approval of people around us. Hymeneus and Alexander didn't set out to shipwreck their faith. They just drifted one compromise at a time until they landed somewhere far from where they started. But notice where this whole passage began. It didn't begin with a warning. It began with Paul, the foremost of sinners, overwhelmed by a mercy he never deserved. That's the anchor. The fight, the good fight, the fight to hold on to faith and good conscience is not a fight to earn God's favor. It's not a fight to prove to God how trustworthy and faithful you are. You're not alone in this fight. You have an ally. You have the Holy Spirit. And if God has given you his spirit, then God has promised that you will win this fight and he will never let you go. Not because you're holding so tightly to God's hands, but because God is holding tightly to yours. So the fight is to keep believing that, to keep believing God will save you, even when the world, your own pride, your own failures tell you otherwise. Here's a prayer worth praying for every teacher and leader you know in your church, including yourself, if that's you. Pray that God would keep them on track, that they would hold fast to the faith and hold fast to their good contents, never forgetting that the same mercy that reached one of the world's most famous sinners, the Apostle Paul, is the mercy that holds you and them steady today. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. The blog version of this podcast is on wednesdayintheword.com slash 1Timothy4. You can find all the episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com, along with almost 500 other episodes and series. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads. It's all free to help you grow in your understanding of scripture and help you learn to study for yourself. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please leave me a positive rating wherever you listen. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coast. You can hear Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.