1 Timothy 1:5–6

I am afraid the word "commandment" often gives the English reader a wrong impression. People in the Christian world turn so readily to what we call the Ten Commandments, the ten words of the law, that whenever the word "commandment" comes up, you can expect many — even children of God, who ought to know better — to slip straight back to the law without noticing. That was far from the writer's thought here... What the apostle means by the commandment is the charge he was laying on Timothy, his child in the faith and fellow worker.

The man saw that the love which fulfils these two great commandments matters far more than offering all the sacrifices the law required. The sacrifices had their place, but they were only a means to an end. Love is the goal, "the aim of our charge," as 1 Timothy 1:5 tells us. The goal is greater than the means.

The aim of the charge is not idle speculation. It is love — God's own nature — enjoyed and active. It is purity in the affections, a pure heart that sees God. It is a conscience with nothing on it, happy in God's presence. And then faith: the spirit of dependence on God and confidence in Him. What a bright state to be in before God!

Second comes a good conscience. This one is very personal, while the first takes in other people. To keep a good conscience we must obey what we have learned from God. "A sincere faith" completes the three, and it connects the soul directly with God. It brings God into everything, in simple, genuine confidence that He is supreme.

These are the effects of the gospel when it comes home to believers, and the law simply cannot produce them. The law may convict us of the hatred and impurity of the heart. It may prove that the conscience is evil. And it has nothing to do with faith... The law works out wrath, not grace, and so it brings death, not life. This is not because the law is not good and holy, but because man is evil, godless and powerless.

A sincere faith in Christ clears the conscience of guilt and produces love out of a pure heart.

The charge was not to do some great service or make some great sacrifice. It was not doing great things before men, but being in a right condition before God. Love in the heart, "a good conscience" and "a sincere faith" are qualities that God alone can see, though others may see the effect they produce in a person's life.

In the first chapter he says the goal of the charge he told Timothy to keep, and to press on the saints, was "love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." Later in the same chapter he says, "holding faith and a good conscience," and tells him that some have put away the good conscience and so made shipwreck of the faith... Some have fallen into the great mistake of making everything of conscience and nothing of faith. It is just as great a mistake to make everything of faith and nothing of conscience.

What he calls for is love out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. The law does not produce this. Neither do human imaginings and questions. Only the gospel of grace does. Speculative questions, and anything else like them, do not touch the conscience or bring anyone into the presence of God. A sincere faith in Christ clears the conscience from guilt and produces love out of a pure heart.

The people the apostle describes were opponents who pushed the Jewish law, and he tells them plainly that they had missed their aim. Could they really claim a pure heart, or a good conscience, or sincere faith? What they showed was not love but empty talk. Through Christ even the weakest Christian walks in truth and love. We are loved perfectly, and so we love. Christ's sacrifice cleanses the heart by its power, and it makes the conscience good as well. Faith knows that all the evil and ruin are fully met in Christ's death and resurrection. So it rests at ease and pretends nothing, because all good is truly given by God and secured in His Son.

But some had turned aside from these ends of true soul-prosperity, to "vain jangling." This is simply idle, empty talk that gives no good to the hearers. They wanted to be teachers of the law. Yet Scripture solemnly declares that they understood neither what they said nor what they so forcefully affirmed. Bold, proud, dogmatic language does not always show honest conviction about the truth of what a man claims. It may instead point to a sad ignorance of the whole subject he is handling.

Some had left these great landmarks of Christianity behind and turned aside to empty discussions. And here we meet again the same corrupters of Christianity: teachers who pushed the Jewish law. They had rejected the Saviour, and then they filled the apostle's path with thorns. They wanted to teach the law. The human mind is equal to that.

The Christian world has largely turned aside in two directions. On one side it teaches made-up claims in the name of science. On the other it turns to genealogies tied to religious succession, apostolic and otherwise, with all the ritual built on that. So the religious arena is full of questioners and echoes with the uproar of vain jangling. What God aims at producing, and does produce where the truth holds sway, is love.

Those who swerved from the truth and turned aside to vain jangling — and there were many such in the apostle's day — did so because they had first let slip what once seemed to have been planted in their hearts by God.

There were some in the Christian circle who had missed these great spiritual qualities of Christianity. Lacking them, they turned aside from the truth to empty talk. Christianity rests on the grace of God, and it brings the heart and conscience of a person into God's presence. When this grace is missed, our religious nature turns aside to empty words, and men become "law-teachers".