TEXT [Commentary]
C. Timothy’s Responsibility (1:18-20)
18 Timothy, my son, here are my instructions for you, based on the prophetic words spoken about you earlier. May they help you fight well in the Lord’s battles. 19 Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked. 20 Hymenaeus and Alexander are two examples. I threw them out and handed them over to Satan so they might learn not to blaspheme God.
NOTES
1:18 my son. The Greek is used in 1:2 (see note). In both cases it denotes a spiritual sonship. Timothy’s faith in Christ was the result of Paul’s gospel ministry.
fight well in the Lord’s battles. “Well” is actually an adjective that modifies “battle”—the good battle. Paul’s point is that the war is a just one.
COMMENTARY [Text]
Paul concludes the first chapter with a charge to Timothy to “fight well in the Lord’s battles. Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear” (1:18b-19). In so doing, Paul returns to his opening charge (“command certain persons”—see note on 1:3). But now he turns the military language on Timothy: lit., “this command I entrust to you.” The command is “to wage the good war” (NLT, “fight well in the Lord’s battles”). Paul was depicting the pastor’s role as that of a warrior in service to his or her king. This is wholly appropriate following a doxology to “the eternal King” (1:17). Paul was passing on the pastoral mantle to Timothy much as Moses did to Joshua and Elijah did to Elisha. Timothy was to wage the good war because of “the prophetic words spoken about [him] earlier” (1:18). The text is literally, “the prophecies made upon you” (epi [TG1909, ZG2093] + the accusative). Paul was undoubtedly thinking of Timothy’s commissioning, when the presbytery (tou presbuteriou [TG4244, ZG4564])—a group of elders—laid hands on him (4:14). It is reasonable to think that those with the gift of prophecy confirmed Timothy’s call to ministry at this point.
The armor Timothy would need to wage this war is twofold. He needed to arm himself with “faith” and a “clear conscience” (cf. 1:5). This combination is found three times in 1 Timothy (1:5; 1:19; 3:9). Faith surfaces elsewhere as a piece of Christian armor. In 1 Thessalonians 5:8, faith and love are the breastplate. In Ephesians 6:16, faith is the shield with which the believer can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. The armor of a “clear conscience” is not found elsewhere. The conscience functions as the Christian’s moral compass. If the conscience is in good working order, guilt is the net effect of a wrong action. The conscience can be “violated” (1:19) and become “dead” (4:2) and “corrupted” (Titus 1:15). So it must be in a healthy condition to do its job.
Without a good conscience, Timothy could end up like Hymenaeus (cf. 2 Tim 2:17) and Alexander (cf. 2 Tim 4:14) who had shipwrecked their faith (1:19-20). Hymenaeus is mentioned in 2 Timothy as holding to the belief that the resurrection had already occurred (2 Tim 2:17-18). Alexander was probably the coppersmith who, Paul claimed in his subsequent letter, caused him great harm (2 Tim 4:14). It is unusual for Paul to name names. He is typically discreet in referring to the opposition (cf. “certain people” in 1:3 [NLT, “those”]; cf. 1 Cor 4:18; 2 Cor 3:1). To be named in such a way indicates that these two individuals most likely played a crucial leadership role at Ephesus.
The sequence of events is important. “Some,” Paul states, “have violated their consciences.” The loss of the conscience as a moral compass leads, in turn, to faith’s shipwreck (1:19). The image was a vivid one for Paul. We know of four times that Paul himself had been shipwrecked during the course of his missionary labors (Acts 27; 2 Cor 11:25). He also spent a night and a day in the open sea (2 Cor 11:25), probably clinging for dear life to a piece of wreckage or ship’s cargo while awaiting rescue. The implication is that moral collapse invariably leads to a crisis of faith. Sound ethics and sound theology go hand in hand. When one falters, the other is not far behind.
Paul himself had already taken action against the two named leaders. “I . . . handed them over to Satan so they might learn not to blaspheme God” (1:20). “Blaspheme” is the word Paul used earlier of his own pre-Christian life (1:13). “God” is not found in the Greek text, although it is a reasonable conjecture. “To blaspheme God” would be to publicly slander him in some fashion. In his subsequent letter, this may well be what Paul meant by Alexander causing him great harm (2 Tim 4:14). To slander Christ’s ambassador (Paul) would amount to slandering Christ himself.
Paul’s response was to “[turn] them over to Satan” (1:20). Paul used the same language in 1 Corinthians 5:5. Most understand both references to be shorthand for “Satan’s realm.” The means by which this transfer happens is excommunication from the church (1 Cor 5:13). To expel them from the church is effectively to impel them into Satan’s domain. The punishment is variously understood. Some think in terms of some kind of physical disability inflicted by Satan—much as Job was inflicted (Job 2:5-6). Others think of the punishment in terms of exclusion from communal fellowship. Whether physical or spiritual, the deprivation is not intended as a permanent state of affairs. Church discipline is always remedial in character (2 Cor 2:5-11). The intent is to bring about understanding and repentance—a learning experience. In this case, the goal is to “learn not to blaspheme” (1:20). This does not, however, mean that the learning experience is a painless one. The term Paul chose means “be chastised” or “be disciplined” (paideuthōsin [TG3811, ZG4084]) rather than the NLT’s “learn.” Here applies the proverb: “Without pain there is no gain.”