1 Timothy 1

Paul opens his letter to his beloved Timothy by giving us his credentials in stating his apostleship meaning one who was sent by the Lord Jesus Christ, specially commissioned and sent forth to proclaim His Gospel throughout the world.  According to Acts 1:21-22 an apostle had to be present during the earthly ministry of Jesus from His baptism by John to His resurrection and ascension. We have twelve apostles in the Gospels.  Judas forfeited his place by his treachery and in Acts we discover that Matthias was elected to fill his slot evidently by the Spirit’s guidance through the casting of lot^‍

²¹ “Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, ²² beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”²³ So they proposed two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. ²⁴ Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen ²⁵ to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” ²⁶ Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.   Acts 1:21-26 (NIV)

Unlike the other apostles, Paul did not accompany Jesus during His earthly ministry, nor did he see the resurrected Lord before the ascension.  But Paul did have a personal encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus in an amazing account of God’s abundant grace and was appointed to this ministry by Jesus Himself as the last of the apostles as stated in 1 Corinthians:

³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. ⁹ For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.   1 Corinthians 15:3-10 (NIV)

That makes me ask the question if God’s grace to us is without effect.  Are we thankful for what God has done for us?  Paul’s apostleship was not something he had sought – indeed he had been vehemently fighting against the Way and because of this he was often in the position of having to defend his authority to others.  His ministry was appointed to him through a heavenly command.  Later in Timothy he states:

⁵ For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave himself as a ransom for all men--the testimony given in its proper time. ⁷ And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle--I am telling the truth, I am not lying--and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.   1 Timothy 2:5-7 (NIV)

Paul would become the greatest missionary in the history of the church and the author of a significant portion of the New Testament.  No surprise to God as stated in Scripture he had not been elected by men rather divinely appointed to be an authoritative representative of the risen and ruling Lord.  And he passionately and unabatedly did his calling.  Interestingly, we are all to be about our callings with such passion as well!  Scripture tells us:

⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV)

As we walk in faith, God will provide the power to accomplish these good works through us.  Always His power, always for His glory and always our good.  The One who gives the power gets the glory.  Eternal and lasting good works – not works merely done in the flesh – are only done through the indwelling power of His Spirit and are the only works that are eternal.  God does not own what mere flesh does.  But I digress….back to Paul!  

Paul emphatically made his point about being an apostle when he said in verse one that his apostleship was by the “command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus Our hope.”  “Command” here meaning “decree”.  It is interesting that Paul ascribed this command of apostleship to both the Father and the Son.  Also, many are inclined to think of God as a Judge rather than as a Savior.  Ordinarily we think of applying this title to the Lord Jesus Christ as it is most often used in connection with Him than with any other Person of the Godhead, but it is blessedly true that God the Father is our Savior as certainly as God the Son.  Remember, it was God Who “so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).  The death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross did not enable God to love men.  It was the expression of the love of God toward men:

¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.   1 John 4:10 (NIV)

Christ Jesus, of course, is our hope of salvation, righteousness, sanctification, abundant life now and life eternal.  We rest in His finished work on the cross.

Interestingly, in all of Paul’s writings in Scripture, only 1 and 2 Timothy have the greeting:  “grace, mercy and peace”, the others simply have “grace and peace”.  Further, all the others – excepting Titus - were written directly to churches while 1 and 2 Timothy were written to an individual – Timothy.  Individuals need mercy.  Individuals are conscious of their failures; they are conscious of their need of special divine help.  The addition of “mercy” adds the element of relieving affliction, alleviating suffering or distress, easing misery.  It is the concrete expression of pity and compassion undertaking to mollify (soothe the anger of) or remove the suffering.  Perhaps timid Timothy was having a very difficult time addressing the false doctrines in the church which were so rampant in Ephesus where he was ministering.  Paul loved Timothy dearly calling him his “true son in the faith” and was greatly concerned for him and desirous of encouraging him in his ministry.

False teaching in the church has always been difficult to deal with.  Remember, the church was God’s idea, not mans.  It has always belonged to Him and it is not ours to run it is His.  The church’s marching orders were given by King Jesus Himself and we dare not forget that He is the Head of the Church.  Paul was relaying to Timothy God’s will through God’s Word which is always God’s way.  God never goes contrary to His revealed will found in His Word.  Jesus Himself stated:

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”   Matthew 5:17-18 (NIV)

The psalmist adding:

³⁰ As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.  Psalms 18:30 (NIV)

⁸⁹ Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens. ⁹⁰ Your faithfulness continues through all generations.   Psalms 119:89-90 (NIV)

The church has a guidebook and it is the Word of God.  The old hymn be Samuel Stone says it well:  “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord, she is His new creation by water and the Word.  From Heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride; with His own blood He bought her and for her life he died.”

This of course is not only true for the church at large but for each individual as well.  Further, conducting ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ can only be accomplished through the indwelling Holy Spirit – which every true Christian possesses.  Paul tells us in Romans:

⁵ Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; ⁷ the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. ⁸ Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. ⁹ You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.   Romans 8:5-9 (NIV)

We are called to obey God’s Word and conform to His will both individually and corporately as the body of Christ.  We are left to be His light pointing others to Him.  Our obedience to His revealed will is not only for others but it is for us as well.  That is our way to the abundant life which Christ greatly desires for all of us to possess.  This was Paul’s great concern for the Church at Ephesus and he writes to Timothy to stand up against the rampant false teaching found there.

Ephesus was a city filled with paganism and rampant immorality and idolatry, and because of these cultural pressures, Paul’s first concern was to tell Timothy that he must keep people from teaching false doctrine.  The summons is clear:  Address anything and everything that pulls people away or distracts from the pure milk of the Gospel.  Timothy was to guard the Gospel of Truth.  We too are called to guard the Gospel in our spheres which means not deviating from the Truth.  We guard it by the way we use God’s Word.

Two ways in which we are not to use God’s Law:

We are not to add to the law’s demands.  In verse 4 Paul talked about the myths and genealogies taught by the false teachers.  These false teachers were taking extrabiblical writings that included stories and myths about different Old Testament figures, and they were using these writings to add to God’s Word.  In essence they were putting rules and regulations on God’s people that are not in God’s Word.  Not too dissimilar to the religious Pharisees Jesus confronted.  Paul uses two words to describe these false teachers’ actions:  (1) Myths: meaning a tale, fable, fabricated by the mind and set over against what is real.  Used to depict a lying fable with all its falsehood and all its pretenses – cunning fables for the purpose of deceiving.  (2)  Endless Genealogies:  meaning the use of Old Testament genealogies as the source of fanciful tales and imaginative lore created by rabbis using a highly allegorical method of interpretation.  Outlandish stories and legendary personalities which were supposedly hidden in the text and purportedly discovered by clever rabbis using this allegorical method.  

We must not think the law saves.  These false teachers in Ephesus, along with the others in the first century, were teaching that obedience to the law, even some extrabiblical laws, could help someone earn the favor of God.  This teaching has been rocking right along since the first century and persists today.  Of course, most false teachers do not come right out and say that one must earn their salvation and sometimes they may even think they are promoting a more righteous standard for God’s people.  However, when you veer off from God’s gracious work in the gospel we pervert it.  The idea that by doing certain works, following certain rules or observing certain laws – you can earn God’s favor runs counter to the biblical gospel.  Isaiah words are appropriate here:  ⁶ All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.   Isaiah 64:6 (NIV).  This is not to say that there are not blessings in obedience and consequences to sin for the child of the King rather our obedience will not save us.  Our obedience reflects that we are His and we love and trust Him.  Christ alone saves the sinner.

When God’s law is used in the wrong way the results can be disastrous.  It is ever the object of the Devil to obscure the truth and get Christians occupied with something that will hide the glorious face of the Lord Jesus Christ and cloud the Truth regarding His finished work.  Furthermore, it is the whole Bible that the Christian needs not simply picking and choosing a few verses that are more palatable to us.  Tozer sates:

“The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection.  And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian."   A.W. Tozer

Paul claims that a wrong use of God’s law was producing arrogance and ignorance among those who teach.  These teachers were making confident assertions about things they did not even understand.  Arrogance and ignorance is a very dangerous combination indeed.  It produced confusion and deception among those who hear what the confused espouse.   

God detests false teaching because it leads His people astray which leads to death and decay.  Ezekiel tells us:¹ The word of the Lord came to me: ² “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord! ³ This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! ⁴ Your prophets, O Israel, are like jackals among ruins. ⁵ You have not gone up to the breaks in the wall to repair it for the house of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the Lord. ⁶ Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. They say, “The Lord declares,” when the Lord has not sent them; yet they expect their words to be fulfilled. ⁷ Have you not seen false visions and uttered lying divinations when you say, “The Lord declares,” though I have not spoken? ⁸ Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: Because of your false words and lying visions, I am against you, declares the Sovereign Lord. ⁹ My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations. They will not belong to the council of my people or be listed in the records of the house of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord.’”   Ezekiel 13:1-9 (NIV)

Believers also need to beware of systems that do not build up our souls by focusing on things in Scripture that are not as clear and leave room for differing opinions – non essentials so to speak – for example when Jesus is returning.  He has given us signs to look for but not a specific date.  These type of things only serve to get Christians occupied with unprofitable questions – there are some people who simply delight to argue.  

“Some love the meat; some love to pick the bones.”  John Bunyan

¹⁴ Do everything without complaining or arguing, ¹⁵ so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe ¹⁶ as you hold out the word of life--in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing.  Philippians 2:14-16 (NIV)

That which builds up the people of God is heart occupation with Christ.  If we are taken up with Him we will become increasingly like Him which, of course, is the desire of God for all of His children.  Christ is our standard of righteousness.  The Word of God reveals Him as our example, and we seek to walk as He walked.  He is our Head.  The consistent believer seeks to be like Him, to love as He loves, and to behave as He would behave through His power for His glory and for our good.

²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.   Romans 8:29 (NIV)

⁶ Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.   1 John 2:6 (NIV)

The law was given to show us our sin.  Interestingly, the list Paul gives us in verses 9-11 seem to correlate with the ways we tend to break the Ten Commandments.  The law shows us what is good, and God uses this realization to retrain us from evil which leads to destruction as every sin carries with it a death sentence.  The law points us to the Truth.  It makes our rebellion apparent which is an essential part of our salvation.  We are sinners in need of a Savior – all of us – and if you don’t know you are a sinner you don’t realize your need for a Savior:

²¹ But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. ²² This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  Romans 3:21-23 (NIV)

¹⁰ As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; ¹¹ there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. ¹² All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”  Romans 3:10-12 (NIV)

The law does not save us, the law leads us to Jesus.  Again, it is Christ Who saves us:

¹¹ Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. ¹² We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. ¹³ If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. ¹⁴ For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. ¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  2 Corinthians 5:11-21 (NIV)

“The law is a hammer that breaks proud and obstinate hypocrites.”  Martin Luther

This humbling and bruising bring us into the arms of grace.  We find grace in the Gospel of Christ.  Lastly, the Law functions to show God’s will for the saved.  It instructs us, reveals His character and shows us how to love God and love our neighbor.  The indwelling of the powerful Holy Spirit gives us both the desire and the ability to obey God’s precepts.  Rather than being a crushing hammer to God’s people it becomes our divine guide to life in the full.  Our ever flowing living water.  Our Divine decrees which the Holy Spirit illuminates to us.  God is not a kill joy.  It is sin which is the kill joy.  His will is good, pleasing and perfect albeit it can be quite difficult.  That is why in verse five Paul tells Timothy the motive against the false teaching was love.  God’s motive behind everything He does is love – whether we feel it or not.  Indeed, sometimes His way can feel like the very breaking of your heart.  Kara Tippetts who finally succumbed to cancer wrote:

“My hope is not in a cure today. My hope is not the absence of suffering and comfort returned. My hope is in the presence of the One who promises never to leave or forsake, the One who declares nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God.” (Romans 8:39). Nothing. Your story is a good story. In the grief, pain and hard, the Author has a plan. It may feel like a desperate breaking of your very heart, but suffering is not the absence of God or good.”  Kara Tippetts

³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.   Romans 8:38-39 (NIV)

“Everything comes from love….God does nothing without this goal in mind.”   Catherine of Siena

We want to be a people who love God and love others out of the overflow of a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.  Only the Gospel produces this kind of response.  Flesh cannot. 

Paul now turns to talk of his gratefulness over the grace God had freely given him as the chief of sinners erupting into his personal testimony leading him to triumphant praise.

And in the midst of Paul’s praise he gives us one of the most concise, clear, and compelling descriptions of the gospel in all of Scripture.  It’s powerful, pregnant sentence that encapsulates the gospel in just nine English words:  “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”    Here we learn about the gospel, the grace of God and the glory of God.

First we learn that Jesus came into the world.  The word “came” teaches us that the gospel of God is incarnational and undeniable.  Jesus didn’t come into being in Bethlehem.  He already existed as the Second Person of the Trinity – the preexistent, eternal Son of God who was there with the Father and the Spirit before the foundation of the world.  John tells us:

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.   John 1:1-3 (NIV)

Jesus committed the ultimate act of condescending grace, coming into the world as a baby born in Bethlehem.  Amazingly, His great glory donning the robe of human flesh.  This is the incarnation.  Philippians tells us:

⁵ Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: ⁶ Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, ⁷ but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. ⁸ And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! ⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.   Philippians 2:5-11 (NIV)  

Why did He do this?  Christ came to live the life we could not live, to die the death we deserved to die, and to rise in victory over the enemies we could not conquer – sin and death.  There is no greater wonder in all of history and yet Paul tells us that it is true.  This is the very good news.  I am afraid that we hear it so much we take it for granted.  Unlike the myths and speculations of the false teachers, this is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.  This is reality and it is undeniable.

This gospel of Grace is universal and personal.  Christ came to save sinners – each and every one who would embrace this Gospel fully - and Paul tells us that he was at the top of the list.  Interestingly, before his encounter with Christ, Paul was persecuting vehemently the same churches he wrote his letters for!  He was seeking to wipe them off the map!  He oversaw the first Christian martyr giving his stamp of approval and devoted his life to arresting, imprisoning and killing Christians everywhere he could.  Until he encountered the risen Lord and everything changed.  Everything.  Amazingly, God caused His grace to overflow to the one person who seemingly deserved it the least.

Paul’s story tells us a lot about the nature of God’s grace.  Thankfully, we learn that the grace of God is unconditional for there was nothing in Paul’s actions to draw God to Him.  Paul’s salvation originated in God and God alone.  And the same is true for us.  We are not saved based on any condition in us rather we are saved solely on account of sovereign grace in God.  His grace is unconditional.

God’s grace is also purposeful.  This grace produced faith and love in Paul’s life but further still, it demonstrates God’s very long patience with us.  We must never think we, or anyone else for that matter, are too far out of reach for God’s grace – it always goes further still.  If we think we are beyond the mercy of God, hear this:  God chose to take the chief persecutor of the church and make him the chief missionary in the church to show He is patient, He loves, and He beckons sinners to believe in Him for eternal life.  No matter who you are or what you have done, these words are worthy of full acceptance:  “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (verse 15).  

Not only does God’s grace demonstrate His patience it leads to our praise of Him as well.  Paul’s response to God’s grace is worthy of emulation.  Indeed, a grace filled heart can’t help but praise:

¹⁷ Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.   1 Timothy 1:17 (NIV)

God is so totally other and is so worthy of our praise.  He is King of the ages – now and forevermore.  He is immortal.  He never grows tired or weary.  He never changes.  Death and decay cannot and will not ever touch Him.  He is beyond the limits of what we can see or imagine.  No one can compare to Him.  There is none like Him.  He is the only God and He will receive honor and glory forever and ever.  Though opposition and challenges come, God is the King of the ages, and He will lead, guide, protect, purify, sanctify, and preserve His church.  We can take that to the bank.

As believers in Christ in our generation – in our little speck on His timeline – we must fight for the Gospel.  As Paul exhorted Timothy, we must engage in battle for the sake of the Truth, holding on to our faith and a good conscience.  To make his point Paul uses two examples Hymenaeus and Alexander whom we know were among the false teachers at Ephesus and men who had wandered from the truth of the gospel.  Many commentators believed these men were elders in the church and indication that no one is immune to the temptation to wander from the gospel.  “Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.  Take my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”   

We fight for the gospel in two ways:

We fight for it in our own lives.  The Bible says we are in a war.  Believers will battle the darkness and it will affect our lives, our marriages and our families.  The battle is raging all around us.  Spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms are active, and they are warring against our very souls (Ephesians 6:12).  We battle Satan, self, and the world.   The Devil and all the minions of hell will seek to entice us with deceptions and incite divisions among believers because they do not want the gospel to resound in and through our lives, marriages, family or any other area for that matter.  Furthermore, the battle will look differently in each life.   We are not to be caught off guard nor are we to be fearful.  Rather we are to be prepared.  We are to know the Truth and stand fast in it.  We are in a war and we are to fight the good fight of faith through His power for His glory – standing strong amid all the challenges that come from the outside and the inside.  We are to keep the faith with a good conscience which means we keep our accounts short with the Lord, confess our sins quickly and turn from them.  It is impossible to hold the faith if one is not careful to maintain a good conscience before God.  Whatever the Spirit is working on in your life – do it!  Don’t wait.  It will not get any easier – believe me!   

We fight for the gospel in our churches.  Paul speaks of handing Hymenaeus and Alexander over to Satan in verse 20 almost certainly referring to excommunication from the church.  We can read more about this in Matthew 18:15-20 and 1 Corinthians 5:1-5.  This was a very solemn charge which the apostle Paul gave to his son in the faith.  People may wonder why such men have apostatized from the truth of God which at one time they professed to love.  Indeed, the wording “have rejected” literally means “a strong deliberate thrusting away”.  Theological error is often rooted in moral failure.    If we were able to look into the lives of these men, we would find that somewhere along the line they failed to respond to the call of God and they put away a good conscience.  Thus they lost the ability to appraise rightly doctrinal principles, and eventually they found it a relief to give up the truth they once so ardently proclaimed.  Make no mistake about it, we do not fall suddenly into grave error. We are more like the frog in the pot of boiling water.  Such failure is the result of permitting the conscience to become denied so that it no longer registers as it once did. Conscience is literally co-perception.  It is that which is within us enabling us to distinguish between right and wrong.  It is the moral law written on our hearts.  It is actually in “knowing with oneself”.  It was acquired by the fall in Eden as there was no need to monitor unfallen Adam about evil.  Conscious needs to be instructed by the Word of God.  The conscience may act vehemently as Paul’s conscious did against the infant church but it was misguided by untruth.  Once he met Jesus, the Word, he turned ninety degrees in the opposite direction.  Our conscious will accuse or excuse us according to the light we have.  We must always remember that sin hardens and that the conscience can become seared as with a hot iron and it no longer responds.  In this state men can commit the most wicked and abominable things with apparently the least exercise of consciousness.  As believers we are responsible to walk before God with a good conscience.  It is very dangerous to trifle with conscience for if we act contrary to this inward monitor, we find the reaction become less and less, until eventually here is no reaction at all.  It is then we are likely to make shipwreck of the faith.   In the case of these two men, they were excommunicated from Christian fellowship and put back into the world that they might learn not to play fast-and-lose with that which God had revealed.  These two men had professed to know and love Christ, but they had departed from the truth.  The apostle commanded that they be put outside the fellowship of the church of God.  In other words, thrown back into the world which at one time they professed to have forsaken.  The motive was love in that the discipline was with the view towards restoration.  1 Corinthians 5:5 states:    ⁴ When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, ⁵ hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.   1 Corinthians  5:4-5 (NIV)

These are Beth’s personal notes, due to this fact sources are not often stated.