which [things] some having missed, have turned aside to vain discourse,
Paul has just told Timothy that the goal of his charge is love — flowing from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. Verse 6 is the sad opposite. Some people never reached that goal. Missing it did not make them quiet. It set them talking, and their talk went nowhere.
What They Swerved From
The three qualities Paul named are not achievements of religious effort. Grace produces them. The law never could.
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.
A Missed Aim
This swerve is a missed aim. The men who missed it did not fall silent. Their talk was the evidence that they had missed.
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.
What "Vain Discussion" Is
Older translations call this "vain jangling" — plenty of noise, nothing that feeds anyone. A confident tone proves nothing about understanding.
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.
Why It Ends in Law-Teaching
The drift has a predictable destination.
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 same drift did not stop with the first century.
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.
The Inward Cause
The swerve started before the talking did.
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.
These people were not outsiders. They stood inside the Christian company.
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".
Summary
- Aim. Paul set one target: love from a pure heart, a good conscience and sincere faith. Verse 6 is about people who missed it.
- Source. Only the gospel of grace hits that target. Law and speculation never do, because questions leave the conscience untouched.
- Miss. The swerve began inside. What had seemed planted in the heart was let slip, and only then did the talking start.
- Drift. Once grace is missed, our religious nature reaches for the law. Teaching rules is work the human mind can do by itself.
- Result. The end product is empty talk that feeds no one. It comes with a confident tone that hides real ignorance of the subject.