desiring to be law-teachers, not understanding either what they say or concerning what they [so] strenuously affirm.
Paul has just told Timothy that the aim of his charge is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Now he turns to the people who have drifted away from it. They still want a platform, and the subject they choose is the law. The sting of the verse is this: the thing they teach with such confidence is the thing they understand least.
The wish to be a law-teacher is not where the trouble starts. One writer traces it back to something missing in the heart:
There were some in the Christian circle who had missed these great spiritual qualities of Christianity. Without them, they turned away from the truth to empty talk. Christianity, based on the grace of God, brings the soul, in heart and conscience, into the presence of God. When this grace is "missed", religious human nature turns aside to empty words, and men become "law-teachers". Such people do not see what their false teaching leads to. They do not understand the true use of the law they insist on so firmly.
Paul knew these men. They had shadowed his work everywhere:
They aimed at being law-teachers, but they did not understand what they said or what they insisted on so firmly. They were clearly the same men who pressed the Jewish law on everyone, always insisting on law-keeping and its rules. They were false teachers who twisted the gospel. They followed the apostle everywhere and tried to damage his work.
Paul's last phrase is about confident assertion. Strong words can hide an empty mind:
Bold, arrogant, dogmatic language does not always mean a man is honestly convinced of what he says. It may point instead to a pathetic ignorance of the whole subject he is handling. And nothing is used with more ignorance than the law, by many who think themselves experts on it. They would sooner sit as judge than let the law judge and expose their own hearts. Yet that is the main purpose God gave it for.
These teachers never grasped who the law is aimed at:
Yet the law is good, if one uses it lawfully. Law has the bad in view, not the good. Law exists to detect, convict, and punish. Law never made a "just man," still less "the good" man… It is a sharp weapon to wound and kill lawbreakers. It was never designed to form honest motives or a life of true righteousness. Its excellence is that it spares no evil, and man is evil by nature. Grace, not law, saves sinners.
The mistake costs more than it looks. A believer who takes the law as his rule of life gives up something real:
A Christian who takes up the law as the rule of his own life must first give up his place in Christ. He must abandon that righteousness of God which he is made in Him. The law was not enacted for the Christian. Of course, no Christian means such folly. But that is what the error amounts to. The very principle of taking the law for himself gives up all his blessing in Christ, though he neither knows it nor intends it.
Commentators apply Paul's words far beyond his own day. One writer shows what preaching law does to the picture of God:
Some were falsifying the Gospel in the apostle's day by preaching the law. Of these he says, with contempt, that they understand neither what they are saying nor the things they assert. He would speak the same way about the religious leaders of our own time. They put men under law. They urge them to come into the presence of God with vows on their lips that no one can keep. The Gospel reveals Him not as one who demands, but as one who gives. It is a solemn thing to falsify His testimony.
Another writer turns the verse on a common habit — sending brand-new believers out to teach:
The custom of many nowadays is to say to every newborn soul in Christ, "Go and work for the Lord." So we hear a great deal of "preaching." But in countless cases we may well say that they desire to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
- Missed — the trouble starts before the teaching. These men had missed the grace and the spiritual qualities at the heart of Christianity.
- Turned — empty talk fills the gap, and it takes the respectable shape of law-teaching.
- Claimed — they wanted the teacher's title, and the law let them sit as judge instead of being judged.
- Exposed — Paul's verdict is not that they got a detail wrong. They understood neither their own words nor their subject. Loud confidence proved nothing.
- Corrected — the law is good when used lawfully. It convicts the guilty. It never makes anyone righteous. Grace saves sinners, and no law-teacher can do that work.
Now we know that the law [is] good if any one uses it lawfully,
Paul has just named teachers who wanted to teach the law without understanding it. Now he grants what no one disputes: the law is good — but good only when a person handles it lawfully, which raises the question of who the law was written for.
The law's goodness belongs to its own character, not to the results people get from it:
The law itself is "holy and just and good" (Rom. 7:12) whatever men may do with it. This verse says that when someone uses it lawfully, its practical effects are good. When people use it wrongly, as these law-teachers did, it does harm — though it stays perfectly good in itself.
The next verse gives the answer: God gave the law not for a righteous person but for the lawless. So using it rightly means turning it on sin. Wielding the sword and standing under it are worlds apart:
I hold that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully. It is useful to convict of sin, but it is not made for the righteous — at least so Scripture says. Using it to convict a sinner of sin is one thing. A Christian being under it is another. The difference is like holding a sword by the handle and running someone else through with it, compared with being run through yourself. The law is good, if one uses it lawfully; it is death and condemnation if he is under it.
Law of any kind has wrongdoers in view:
Law does not contemplate the good but the bad. Law is enacted to detect, convict, and punish. Law never made a just man, still less a good man. It is a sharp weapon to wound and kill lawbreakers. It was never designed to shape honest motives or a walk of true righteousness. Its excellence lies in sparing no evil; and man is evil, and that by nature.
If the law was given for sinners, then pressing it on people God has already justified turns it to the wrong target. That is exactly the mistake of the teachers Paul is correcting:
The law was not enacted for the righteous but for sinners. So to strongly enforce it upon those who were righteous, because justified by God Himself, was not a lawful use of it.
There is a second misuse, closer to home: taking the law up as evidence of one's own goodness. That reverses what the law is for, and it also asks the law for something it never carried:
Too many use it only to prop up their own self-righteousness. That use is completely false, for the law was not even given for a righteous man, but for the lawless, disobedient, ungodly, and sinners. It will expose and condemn sin without mercy, and it leaves the sinner — that is, everyone — under condemnation. It has no power whatever to forgive nor to justify, nor to take away the sin it exposes.
Since Paul calls the law good, it cannot be treated as cancelled. But good for what?
It is a very serious error to suppose the law is set aside. Far from it. The apostle in 1 Timothy declares, "the law is good, if one uses it lawfully." If the law were dead or set aside, it could not be called good for anything. What is dead is good for nothing. What then is the law good for? Not for justification, but for conviction — not as a rule of life, but as a rule of death.
Commentators differ here. Another writer warns that running the law down is itself a failure of the lawful use:
There is sometimes a mistaken effort to exalt the gospel by contrasting it with, and by implication belittling, the law. This is not "using the law lawfully." Even in its most legal and condemning passages, the law holds a foreshadowing of good things to come, by implication or prophecy.
If the law is not the believer's rule, something must take its place. Kelly points to Christ, the whole of Scripture, and the Spirit's help in applying it:
It is Christ Who above all acts by faith on the believer's soul. So he needs the word of God as a whole throughout his life, and the Spirit helps him to apply it in practical detail. This is the Christian's secret of true morality. In divine wisdom it ties the heart to the Saviour day by day. It makes the written word something to ponder constantly, for comfort and for careful application in the Spirit. But all of this is held in the sense of the true grace of God in which we stand.
The law is not the believer's rule, yet as Scripture it still teaches God's mind:
The law may also be used like all Scripture that teaches the mind of God. Ephesians 6 does this with obedience to parents: God thinks so much of it that it is the first commandment with a promise attached.
- Good — the law's goodness never changes, whatever people do with it. Only its effects change.
- Lawful — the lawful use is to convict of sin; holding the sword by the handle is not the same as being run through by it.
- Target — the law is written for the lawless. Press it on those God has justified, or use it to prop up your own goodness, and you aim it at the wrong person.
- Limit — it exposes and condemns sin, but has no power to forgive, justify, or remove what it exposes.
- Replacement — Christ, the whole word of God, and the Spirit shape the believer's walk. He stands in grace, not under law.