My latest study has been in 1 Timothy! I plan on going through, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus and writing as much as I can for all of your to see! To get the full effect of what I’m portraying, you might want to break open your bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 1. Enjoy and tell me what ya think!
The Goal of Admonition (1:5)
- There is more than an impersonal interest in preserving correct doctrine in all of this. For the goal of this admonition is love, flowing out of a cleansed heart, and a good conscience and genuine faith.
- Faith and Love in the Pastorals and throughout Paul’s letters signify a correct and personal knowledge of and belief in God, and its proper, active outworking in the life of the believer.
Pure Heart and Good Conscience are technical terms in the Pastorals.
- The heart was regarded as the inward part of the person and the center of one’s spiritual and thought life. The total inner life of the believer, cleansed from sin, could be depicted with the term “pure heart”. For Paul and for us, the conscience is that part or faculty of the mind that gives awareness of the standing of one’s conduct as measured against an accepted standard.
- Paul’s readers would perceive the conscience as sending internal signals evaluating the righteousness or wrongness of behavior (past, present, future) as a member of a group. We, on the other hand, view the conscience as concerned with right and wrong on an individual basis, not necessarily taking into account what others think and expect about us.
- The goal that Paul sets for Timothy in opposing the errorists through teaching is to encourage the development of “whole” Christians: cleansed by God, directed by his effected word, producing visible fruit. While the main concern is to reach believers who have been threatened by false doctrine, the goal embraces the heretics themselves, if they repent and return to orthodox beliefs.
The Authorized Doctrine (1:10-11)
What’s the difference between Christian doctrine and false doctrine?
- Sound doctrine. Sound means “health-producing”, and paul means this in the widest sense .
- The Christian life produces new life to those who accept it.
- Christianity then becomes more than assurance of a place in heaven.
- Involves a thorough renovation of the person, which begins with the way one thinks about God and oneself and continues from there to effect every part of a person’s life.
- Produces people marked by love, pure hearts, and good consciences.
