1 Timothy 1:18

Verse 18 brings Paul back to where the letter began. He had asked Timothy to stay on in Ephesus and charge certain people “that they teach no other doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3–4), and “this charge” points back to that task. The word is parangelía, a command or mandate, and it comes from an apostle with all the authority that carries. The verb “commit” is paratíthēmi, which means to place beside, to set before someone (as food or truth is set before them), and so to deposit something with a person as a trust. Paul is placing the work of guarding the gospel into Timothy’s hands as a sacred deposit, and Timothy is its steward.

He calls him “son Timothy”. Timothy was a young leader whom Paul had discipled, and the name carries a father’s affection along with a father’s authority. Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus are called the Pastoral Epistles because they give practical guidance for leading the church, and this verse sets the tone for the whole letter, a beloved son receiving a weighty trust. Ephesus made the trust a hard one to keep. It was a leading Roman city, a centre of trade and of pagan worship, above all the worship of Artemis, and the young church there faced false teaching from within and pressure from without.

“War a good warfare” joins a verb and a noun from the language of soldiering. The verb strateúomai means to serve in a military campaign, and the noun strateía means military service or a campaign, and Strong’s applies it figuratively to the apostle’s calling as a life of hardship and danger. The word for good is kalós. The picture was plain to anyone in the Roman world, where military service and discipline were known to everyone. A soldier lives under orders, endures hardship and holds his post. Paul uses the same picture when he tells Timothy to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 2:3–4), and again near the end of this letter: “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12).

The battle is a spiritual one. Paul tells the Ephesians to put on the whole armour of God because their struggle is with spiritual forces of evil (Ephesians 6:10–18). For Timothy the good warfare meant contending for sound doctrine against the false teachers, living a holy life with a clear conscience, enduring the hardship and opposition that faithful service brings, and keeping up prayer, the study of Scripture and fellowship with other believers, which strengthen a soldier for the fight. It also meant fighting in the spirit of Christ, with love, even toward those in error.

Jesus fought this warfare first, and perfectly. He was obedient to the Father unto death (Philippians 2:8), he is himself the truth (John 14:6), and on the cross he triumphed over the powers of darkness (Colossians 2:15). He sends his followers out with all authority given to him and the promise of his presence (Matthew 28:18–20). Timothy fights “by” the prophecies, and beyond them by the power of the risen Christ who lives in his people, with Christ as captain, his victory as our assurance and his Spirit as our strength.

Verse 19 says how the warfare is fought: “Holding faith, and a good conscience”. The verb is échō, to have, hold or possess, and Timothy is to keep hold of both. Faith, pístis, is trust in God and a firm hold on the truth of the gospel. Conscience, syneídēsis, is the inner awareness that judges our thoughts, words and actions against a moral standard, and for the believer that standard is God’s word, made clear by the Holy Spirit. A good conscience is clear and free of the weight of guilt. It is good because it works as God meant it to, sensitive to sin, quick to convict and ready to lead us to repentance and obedience. The word for good here is agathós, a different Greek word from the kalós of the “good warfare” in verse 18, although the KJV renders both as “good”.

Paul joined the two at the start of the chapter: “the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned” (1 Timothy 1:5). Faith in Scripture is a commitment of the whole person, and it shapes the way a person lives, so faith and conscience stand or fall together. Paul ties obedience to conscience in Romans 13:5, Hebrews speaks of drawing near to God with a true heart (Hebrews 10:22), and Peter speaks of a good conscience toward God (1 Peter 3:21).

Both things Timothy is to hold come from Christ. Faith is God’s gift, by which we believe in him for salvation (Ephesians 2:8–9). A conscience defiled by sin is made clean by the blood of Christ, “who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God” and so cleanses our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). He bears our sins and lifts the guilt that would burden and corrupt the conscience. So holding faith and a good conscience is the Spirit-given answer of a heart that has received grace in Christ.

“Which some having put away” turns from Timothy to others. “Which” is the relative pronoun hós, and it points back to the good conscience. To put away, apōthéomai, is to push off or reject. It is a deliberate thrusting aside, and those who did it bear the responsibility for what followed. They silenced the inner voice of right and wrong, whether for the sake of sinful desires or of false doctrine.

The result is that “concerning faith” they “have made shipwreck”. Perí is the preposition the KJV renders “concerning”, and it ties the wreck to their faith. The verb nauagéō means to be shipwrecked. Paul knew shipwreck from his own voyages (2 Corinthians 11:25), and Ephesus was a major port whose people knew the dangers of the sea well. A ship that founders is lost along with its voyage. Once conscience is thrown overboard, faith loses its bearings, lies open to every storm of sin and false teaching, and goes down.

Hymenaeus and Alexander were men in the church at Ephesus whom Paul names as examples of those who had made shipwreck of faith. Naming them makes the warning concrete, and it shows that they had a leading part in the harm being done. Hymenaeus appears again in 2 Timothy 2:17–18, where he and Philetus were teaching “that the resurrection is past already”, a serious error that undermined the hope of believers and overthrew the faith of some. Alexander is probably the coppersmith who did Paul much harm (2 Timothy 4:14), which would mean his opposition to Paul and the gospel went on, though Scripture leaves that identification open.

Their sin is blasphemy. The verb blasphēméō means to vilify, and especially to speak impiously of God. Here it means speaking evil against God, Christ or the faith, whether by spreading false doctrine, by slandering spiritual truth or by conduct that dishonoured the gospel.

The verb is paradídōmi, to surrender, hand over or entrust, and “I have delivered” speaks of something Paul has already done. It was a formal act of excommunication. Paul put the two men out of the fellowship of the church, and so out from under the protection and blessing God gives his people, into the realm where Satan’s influence is felt more directly. Satanâs comes into Greek from an Aramaic form of the name, and it means the accuser, the devil, the chief adversary of God and of people. There the men might meet hardship, affliction of body or distress of spirit, all meant to humble them and bring them to repentance. The act would have been understood against the Jewish practice of cutting someone off from the covenant people, which left them exposed to the dangers outside.

Paul gives the same instruction about a man in the church at Corinth, and there too the purpose is that the man may in the end be saved (1 Corinthians 5:5). Satan’s realm stays under God’s rule. Christ has triumphed over every power, so even when someone is delivered unto Satan, God holds the outcome and uses the adversary’s realm for his own purpose of correction.

God entrusts his truth to people, and he stands behind the callings he gives, as he did for Timothy through the prophecies spoken over him. The two things Timothy is told to hold are both God’s gifts: faith, given by grace, and a good conscience, washed clean by the blood of Christ. The wreck of others is set before us as a warning, and the names of Hymenaeus and Alexander stand in Scripture so that the danger is plain to see. Even the hardest discipline in this passage aims at teaching, because God’s justice and his mercy go together and he wants the fallen to come home. The warfare is real, and the Christ who fought it first has already won it.