1 Timothy 1:16

Paul opens the letter as an apostle “by the commandment of God” (1 Timothy 1:1), and he has just warned Timothy against teachers in Ephesus who busied themselves with myths and endless genealogies and misused the Law (1 Timothy 1:3–11). Against them he has set “sound doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:10). Now he gives the clearest proof he has of that gospel, which is what it did to him.

Timothy was a young leader serving in a city given to the worship of Artemis and to a mix of religious ideas, and he needed Paul’s guidance and encouragement. Paul’s past as a zealous Pharisee who persecuted the church was well known (Galatians 1:13–14), and so was his conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). His testimony told Timothy and the church that God’s call and God’s strength reach past a person’s record, and it set a humble and thankful tone for all the instructions that follow.

“I thank” is literally “I have thanks”. The verb is échō, “to have”, and the noun is cháris, a word for graciousness and favour that also takes in gratitude. It is the same word that is translated “grace” in verse 14, so Paul’s thanks answers the grace he received. He thanks “Christ Jesus our Lord”, and the word “our” brings Timothy and every believer into the same confession.

He gives three reasons. First, Christ “enabled” him. The verb endynamóō is built from en (“in”) and dynamóō (“to empower”), and it means to make strong. Paul’s strength for his work came from Christ, and given his former hostility to the church, he could never have supplied it himself. He says the same elsewhere: his sufficiency is of God (2 Corinthians 3:5–6), and “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). He calls himself the least of the apostles, who is what he is by the grace of God (1 Corinthians 15:9–10).

Second, Christ “counted” him faithful. The verb hēgéomai means to lead, or figuratively to deem or consider. Pistós, from peíthō (“to persuade”), can mean trustworthy or trusting, and here it means trustworthy, someone who can be relied on with a charge. Christ judged a former enemy fit to be trusted with the gospel. That judgement rests on Christ’s own choice and his power to change a man, and he makes faithful those he calls. He is himself the faithful one (Hebrews 3:2).

Third, Christ put him “into the ministry”. The verb títhēmi means to place or appoint, and diakonía means service: attendance as a servant, aid, or official service. Paul’s office came from Christ’s own act, as he tells the Galatians when he says his apostleship came from Jesus Christ and God the Father and from no man (Galatians 1:1). The Lord who appoints servants is himself the Son of Man who came to serve and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). The risen Christ still gives gifts to equip his people for service (Ephesians 4:11–12), and his Spirit gives them power (Acts 1:8).

Paul names what he was with three words that grow in force. A blásphēmos is one who speaks evil, especially against God or sacred things, and Paul had denounced Jesus as a false Messiah and his followers as heretics. A diṓktēs comes from a verb meaning to pursue: one who hunts down and harasses. “Injurious” describes harm done with insolence and contempt, a proud and violent man. He moves from words, to pursuit, to violence.

Paul had been Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee trained under Gamaliel and zealous for the traditions of his fathers (Acts 22:3). To him the new movement, which preached a crucified Messiah, was a blasphemous departure from the faith of Israel and a threat to the Law, and so it had to be stamped out. He consented to the death of Stephen (Acts 7:58–60, Acts 8:1), he set out to destroy the church (Acts 8:3), and he obtained letters to arrest believers in Damascus (Acts 9:1–2).

“But I obtained mercy.” The “but” is the strong Greek allá, and it turns the whole verse. The verb eleéō means to show compassion, and it is passive here: Paul received mercy, by God’s initiative, as a gift he had done nothing to deserve. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound (Romans 5:20), and God, who is rich in mercy, made alive those who were dead in sins (Ephesians 2:4–5). Christ died for his enemies to reconcile them to God (Romans 5:8–10), and Paul was one of them.

The “And” of verse 14 is dé, a connective that carries Paul’s thought straight on from the mercy he has just described. “The grace of our Lord” is cháris again: God’s favour and his influence upon the heart, with its reflection in the life. It is the Lord’s own grace, personal and given by the one who saved him.

That grace “was exceeding abundant”. The verb hyperpleonázō joins hyper (“over, beyond”) to pleonázō (“to abound”), and it means to superabound, to overflow. Paul’s sin was great, and the grace given to him was greater still, poured out far beyond anything he deserved or could have imagined. John says that “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17), and Paul experienced it in that full measure.

Grace came “with faith and love”. Faith, pístis, is persuasion and conviction of the truth, and above all reliance on Christ for salvation. Love is agápē. The man who acted “in unbelief” in verse 13 now has faith, and the man who was injurious now has love. Both are found “in Christ Jesus”. The preposition en (“in”) marks Christ, Christós and Iēsoûs, as the one in whom these gifts are found and from whom they flow. Paul writes elsewhere that Christ lives in him (Galatians 2:20). Christ is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2) and the pattern of our love, for he loved us and gave himself for us (Ephesians 5:2). Through him a person becomes a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Verse 15 is one of the best-loved sentences in the Bible, and it gathers up everything Paul has said into the gospel itself. “Faithful” is pistós, the same word Paul used in verse 12 when Christ counted him faithful. Here it describes a word that is trustworthy and fully deserves belief. The phrase pistos logos, “faithful saying”, appears several times in the letters to Timothy and Titus (1 Timothy 3:1, 1 Timothy 4:9, 2 Timothy 2:11, Titus 3:8), and it marks a truth already known and trusted among the churches. In Ephesus, where some taught myths and endless genealogies (1 Timothy 1:4), Timothy needed a sure word to hold to. “Worthy of all acceptation” means that this saying deserves to be received and believed by everyone, wholeheartedly.

The saying itself is short: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” “Came into the world” speaks of his coming as a man, and “to save sinners” gives the reason he came. The word for sinners, hamartōlós, comes from hamartanō, “to sin”, and describes people marked by sin and estranged from God, which takes in all of us. Christ came on purpose, as he said of himself: “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He is the physician who came for the sick (Mark 2:17) and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). God commended his love toward us in that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that same Christ is now exalted as Lord of all (Philippians 2:9–11).

Verse 16 gives the reason for Paul’s mercy. “Howbeit” is allá, the same word as the “but” of verse 13, and “for this cause” tells us that God had a purpose in it. Paul obtained mercy so that “in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering”. “First” is prōtos again, the word just translated “chief”. Paul is the leading case, the foremost sinner in whom Christ first and most clearly displayed his patience.

To “shew forth”, endeíknymi, is to display or demonstrate. What Christ displayed is makrothymía, “longsuffering”: forbearance, patience, slowness to anger. Christ bore with Paul while he was still persecuting the church, and then met him with grace on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1–19). Paul says “all longsuffering”, the whole of Christ’s patience on show in one life. God is longsuffering toward us and willing that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). He will abundantly pardon the wicked man who returns to him (Isaiah 55:7), and he saved us by his kindness and mercy (Titus 3:4–5).

Paul’s story is “a pattern”, hypotýpōsis: a sketch or outline, a model to follow. In him Christ drew beforehand the shape of what he would do for “them which should hereafter believe on him”. To believe, pisteúō, can mean to accept something as true, and it can mean to trust and rely on a person, which is its sense here, with Christ as the one trusted. The goal of that faith is “life everlasting”. The preposition eis (“to”) marks the end it leads to, zōḗ is life, and aiṓnios is eternal, lasting without limit of time. Everyone who believes in the Son has everlasting life (John 3:16), and his grace is sufficient for each of them (2 Corinthians 12:9).

A life changed by grace speaks to others, as Paul’s has spoken to every generation since. Paul calls believers Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20), and each one who has received mercy carries something of the same pattern.

Having told what Christ did for him, Paul cannot go on without praising God. “Now” is dé again, turning the letter from testimony to worship. A doxology like this is an ascription of glory, and Paul gives similar ones to “God only wise” at the close of Romans (Romans 16:27) and Jude does the same at the close of his letter (Jude 1:25). Scripture is full of such praise, from Psalm 145 to the worship around the throne in Revelation 4.

Paul names four things about God. He is “the King eternal”. Basileús means king, one with authority to rule, and with aiṓn (“age”) the phrase means “King of the ages”, whose reign covers every age of history and eternity. He is “immortal”, áphthartos: undecaying, incorruptible, free from death and change. He is “invisible”, aóratos, a Spirit whom no bodily eye can see. And he is “the only wise God”, mónos sophós theós. Theós is the common word for a god, and with the article it names the one supreme God. He alone has perfect wisdom, and every plan of his is good and worthy of trust.

These words stood out in Ephesus. The city’s idols could be seen and could decay, and the false teachers there prized speculation and claimed special knowledge. Against both, Paul praises the one God who is unseen, undying and alone wise.

To him belong “honour and glory”. Honour, timḗ, is value, esteem and dignity. Glory, dóxa, comes from a root meaning to think or to have an opinion, and it came to mean reputation, honour, and then splendour and majesty. It covers both the splendour that is God’s own and the praise we give him. “For ever and ever” (eis aiṓn aiṓn) carries that praise through all the ages, and “Amen”, amḗn, a word taken from Hebrew meaning firm or “so be it”, is Paul’s own assent to all he has said.

These six verses carry Paul from thanks, through confession, to praise, and they show who God is along the way. He chooses the unlikely, strengthens those he calls, and trusts them with his work. He is patient with his enemies, and his grace runs over far beyond their sin. He sent his Son into the world for sinners, and he made the worst of them a pattern so that all who come after can see that the door is open to them.

Paul never forgot what he had been, and remembering it made him thankful and humble rather than ashamed. Every believer stands where he stood, as someone who has obtained mercy. The fitting answer to such mercy is the one Paul gives in verse 17: honour and glory to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, for ever and ever.