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1 Timothy 1 - Nisbet James - Church Pulpit Commentary

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1 Timothy 1

1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope;

2 unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Christian Ministry

3 As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine,

4 neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.

5 Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:

6 from which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling;

7 desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.

8 But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;

9 knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

10 for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;

13 who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

14 And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.

15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

16 Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.

17 Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

18 This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare;

19 holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:

20 of whom is Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

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1 Timothy 1

LOVE AND ITS SOURCES

‘Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.’

1Ti 1:5 What is meant here by ‘the commandment’? In the Greek, the word for ‘commandment’ is the same as that translated ‘charge’ in the third verse, and the meaning is, ‘the end, the point, of the charge you must give is charity.’ Now ‘charity’ is only another word for ‘love.’ There is only one word in the Greek for both of our English words, and the authors of the Revised Version rightly substituted the more comprehensive word ‘love’ for ‘charity.’ The Apostle Paul is here exhorting Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, how to deal with certain persons who were disputing about unimportant things instead of with the all-important principles of the Christiaa faith. ‘You have among you,’ the Apostle would say, ‘teachers, perhaps clergy, who need instructing in the things they should teach; they are making the people take up foolish questions, and neglecting the all-important things. Their teaching is “vain jangling.” Now the point of your charge that I am so anxious you should press upon them is love, “out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.” ’ In a word, the great subject which St. Paul urges Christian teachers to inculcate is love and its sources.

St. Paul tells us there are three sources of the true and blessed love which God asks for.

I. It must flow out of ‘a pure heart.’—There is a sort of love which can flow out of an impure heart. That is a mockery of love—a low, mean, contemptible thing. A pure heart! it is a priceless possession. Guard the treasure, for it is easy to lose, and hard to regain it.

II. Love must issue out of a ‘good conscience.’—Let us understand clearly what conscience is. It is the power or faculty within us which tells us when we do right or wrong, approving the right and condemning the wrong. Conscience needs to be well instructed and guided by right principles. But it is our best guide, and it is better to err with conscience than to go right against it.

III. Love is the outgrowth of ‘faith unfeigned.’—Faith is the power in the soul which makes real the unseen, which lives for another world; it is the realising faculty. Surely this faith in the unseen lies at the root of all religion. But it must be ‘unfeigned.’ It must be real—no mere words, no mere profession. It must set the soul in the presence of God. Above all, it must make real to the soul the living Saviour.

—Bishop Walsham How.

Illustration

‘What do you think of Father Damien, who, knowing perfectly well what it meant, went and lived in Leper Island, till he took the complaint and died? I could name men of high promise and prospects in this world who have, for pure love, given up all to live and labour among the poor and outcasts. Such characters may be rare, but they are not impossible; but, even were they rarer, remember there is God’s ideal given us.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT

The end of commandment is not love all at once; it requires no small amount of soil-forming and foundation-laying first. The true love of which the Apostle was thinking involves no little preparatory culture and accomplishing; it is emphatically the commandment’s end—the end of seed sown and work done.

I. True love is not by any means the very simple and easy thing which it is frequently assumed to be.—You cannot resolve to begin at once to be loving; you must become much that you are not, perhaps, to be so. True, it is not much to be for the most part gracious and kind and tender, to give away things, and indulge people, and think only of making them instantly comfortable; it is not much, especially for some persons—no straight gate, but a very broad, smooth way; it is their instinct, their nature—they cannot help it. One might say of them often, that they have not purity, conscience, or faith enough to be otherwise; for there is a love very pretty and pleasant, the influence and exercise of which is owing to the absence of these. But this is not ‘the end of the commandment,’ or ‘the fulfilment of the law.’

II. The love which St. Paul intends and desires is love—

(a) Rooted in purity.

(b) Rooted in conscience, and

(c) Rooted in faith, one of the highest and ripest attainments of the Christian life.

Illustration

‘There is the love of unbelief, of which the present day affords us some examples. A love which, recognising in man nothing but an outcome and development of matter, nothing but a perishing transient child of the dust, with no immortal future before him and no invisible Father belonging to him, says, “Let us at least try to minister to him while he remains.” This is the love, the cheerless, melancholy love of unbelief. And it is kind and generous enough; its drear eyes weep with them that weep; its pale hands are stretched forth to heal; but very different is the love which St. Paul contemplated, and to which the commandment leads. The commandment, with its declaration of the Divine Fatherhood, and the human Brotherhood of redemption and immortality, and the call to eternal glory—it teaches us the sublime worth and dignity, the awful greatness and sacredness, of man; shows us upon him, under all his dirt and disfigurement, the image and superscription of heaven; presents us to him at his lowest estate, in his deepest debasement, as a child of the Highest whom the Highest has come seeking through sacrifice.’



THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL

‘The glorious gospel (the gospel of the glory R.V.) of the blessed God.’

1Ti 1:11 There were those in Ephesus who contended that the freedom of the gospel released them from the obligations of the moral law. St. Paul, who was called to Europe, besought Timothy to abide still in Asia Minor, and convince them that the very design of the gospel was charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned. So far from the moral law being abolished by the gospel of our salvation, every claim of holiness, on which that law insists, is, the Apostle argues, in truest harmony and accordance with ‘the gospel of the glory of the Blessed God which,’ in deepest gratitude and reverence he adds, ‘was committed to my trust.’

I. ‘The Blessed God.—This remarkable name of the Triune Jehovah, Whose we are, and Whom we serve, ‘the Blessed God,’ demands our thoughtful and prayerful meditation. The word ‘blessed’ does not primarily signify here one who receives praise and blessing, but bears its ordinary meaning of happy, felicitous, blissful. The reception of praise and adoration must, we may humbly conceive, form part of the blessedness of God, and speaking after the manner of men may be said to increase that blessedness. But the term in itself simply signifies happy. This appears from its use elsewhere in the New Testament. It occurs fifty times; but here only, and in the fifteenth verse of the sixth chapter of this Epistle, where we read of the Blessed and only Potentate, is the word used of God. In all the other forty-eight instances it describes the blessed or happy man, as in the nine beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, or in the seven beatitudes of the Book of Revelation. This usage suffices to establish its meaning here. The Blessed God signifies God Who enjoys supreme felicity and infinite delight. We cannot, indeed, grasp or even gaze upon this full-orbed glory of the joy of God. It dazzles us. It is the light that no man can approach unto. But we may reverently ponder it fragment by fragment, we may humbly trace a broken reflection of it in ourselves; and then, for we are made in the image and after the likeness of God, we must confess it has the witness in itself, it is self evidencing; yea, it is a divine necessity.

II. The gospel of the glory of the Blessed God.—The Apostle speaks not only of the gospel of the Blessed God, but of the gospel of the glory of the Blessed God. This is more, far more. Glory is the manifestation of excellence. We may take this as a safe key for interpreting the word ‘glory’ in the Scriptures. The felicity of the Most High God being as we have seen so exceeding great, this excellent joy must needs overthrow. We see it in the firmament of His power; the heavens declare the glory of God. We see it in the earth below: the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. Nor do we marvel that when He created the heavens and the earth, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Brief, indeed, was that cloudless dawn of the history of man. Sin entered into the world, and death by sin. The land was as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness. And now a thick cloud was drawn between the creature and his grieved and offended Creator. But should darkness conquer light? Should hell baffle heaven? Should the wiles of the Devil thwart the designs of God? Nay, we quietly read over to ourselves, weighing every syllable, for the destiny of the creation is wrapped up in them, the words of the beloved disciple who had drunk the deepest into the spirit of his Master. ‘For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil.’ And the gospel of the glory of the Blessed God is unveiled before us in its large and luminous outlines.

(a) Once grasp the exceeding preciousness and perfectness of this salvation of God, and you will not wonder that St. Paul elsewhere writes, ‘Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed’ (Gal 1:8 ).

(b) Let us remember that the gospel of the glory of the Blessed God is too majestical a thing to be loaded with chains forged on any human anvil. It spurns the littleness of partizanship.

For the love of God is broader

Than the measures of man’s mind.

Nay, this gospel has vivified and is vivifying, has fructified and is fructifying, many other churches of Christendom beyond our own. It is the gift of God to man. It is heaven-born, and free as the air we breathe. Their sin, who would narrow it, is only less than theirs who would deprave it.

—Bishop E. H. Bickersteth.

Illustration

‘The gospel declares itself to be God’s greatest answer to man’s greatest want. The gospel does not profess to be one answer among many. It claims to be the one answer which God makes to the problem of sin, and the agony of sorrow. The gospel does not speak with hesitating, diffident tone. It does not put itself in an excusatory attitude. It does not ask to be heard on sufferance, and to be judged by some modified law of criticism. It stands clear out in the daylight. It says, in personal language, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.” ’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

WHY ‘GLORIOUS’?

Why was it that St. Paul, who did more than any other man that ever lived to make known this gospel in the world—why did he call it a glorious gospel? There were many reasons.

I. Because of its antiquity.—He looked down through the long vista of the ages past, and he saw how this gospel of the Blessed God was in the mind of God from everlasting.

II. Because it was unchanging.—Everything else about us changes. Feelings are transitory, even creeds are sometimes tampered with, doctrines are altered, the standard of morality shifts according to the requirements of the age, but the life of Jesus is the same, unchangeable.

III. Because of the triumphs it had already won in the world, in the Church, in the hearts of men, Jew, and Gentile, and Christian. Look at the little band of men as they go forth upon what appears a forlorn hope. Their banner is the Cross, their battle-cry is the glorious gospel. But wherever they go hard hearts are softened, and consciences are pricked, and idols totter and fall, and even imperial Rome is forced to acknowledge the power of the glorious gospel.

IV. Because he knew by his own experience that the gospel of the Blessed God tells men just what they need to know. It is in this respect that the religion of Christ stands head and shoulders above any other religion that the world has ever seen.

Bishop C. J. Ridgeway.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

GOD-LIKENESS

‘The glorious gospel of the blessed God,’ or, as the words might be more happily translated, ‘the glorious gospel of the happy God.’ It is in that word ‘happy’ that I find my message.

But the thought will come: It is all very well for you to talk about a happy God, it is all very well for God to be happy. God is above the water-floods, but I am down here in the waves. Ah, but is that all? God could not bear to see man unhappy down under the clouds here, and so in the Incarnation the happy God comes down and is made Man, and comes to make man happy, comes down to mend what man has marred. That is the glorious gospel of the happy God.

I will be daringly simple, and will give three short rules—

I. Be happy.—It is God-like to be happy. It is as much a duty (and a far more difficult one) to be happy as it is to be honest; be happy as to your past, do not let the past take the heart out of you. Then your future; open the back numbers of life and read the happy pages that are in that. Brood on the bright bits of the past. If you cannot be happy, flooded with the sunshine that comes from innocence, then be happy with the brightness that comes from the life of penitence. Be happy in the present; that is the great difference between Christianity and all other religions. It promises man a present happiness. Any religion, every religion, can promise a future happiness, but union with the happy God promises a man happiness here, now, to-day.

II. Look happy.—Expressions convey impressions. Jesus called a little child unto Him. Would that little child have gone if Jesus had looked unhappy? You know nothing about children if you think that it would. Look happy. Why is the religious person caricatured as always looking unhappy? why must we go about looking as though our religion was always making us feel unwell. Look what you are, in union with the happy God.

III. Try to make others happy.—Negatively, do not spoil the happiness of another person’s life. A man has no right to spoil the happiness of a woman’s life; a woman has no right to spoil the happiness of a man’s life. A big boy has no right to spoil the happiness of a little boy’s life. Positively, put your shoulder under another’s cross, give it a lift. Begin at home. Contribute your quota of happiness to home life, to the life of the country, to the life of the empire, and so to the life of the world.

Rev. Canon Holmes.

Illustration

‘A nation looks at life very much as a nation looks at God. Ask history if it is not true. Think of Germany, for instance, in the sixteenth century. Look at France in the eighteenth century. Look at England, the empire, as it is to-day. Is the Englishman’s conception of God the Pauline conception? What is the Englishman’s God? Is that a happy God? Is it not a God that is studiously kept outside the life that all are craving for, that all are longing for—happiness? Is the gospel of England to-day the glorious gospel of the happy God? I do not believe it is; and therefore, because men’s conception of God is not God as a happy God, the Englishman’s conception of the religious life in England is not a conception that makes men happy.’



‘THE FAITHFUL SAYING’

‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.’

1Ti 1:15 Why should the words ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ be a ‘faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation’?

I. Because the saying is clearly made up of the words of the Lord Himself.—On two different occasions our Lord referred to the purposes of His coming into the world, and that in terms which completely bear out the words of this saying.

II. Because of the light which it throws on the character of God.—The temptation to cherish hard thoughts of God is very old, and it is also very modern. ‘I knew thee, that thou art an austere man.’ This is the language which millions of hearts have secretly held in converse with the infinitely loving Creator. The saying of the text, when it is once received by faith, is a faithful exponent of the truth about God, and worthy of our acceptation.

III. Because it reminds us of the greatness of the work of Christ.—Never can a moral being say, under any circumstances, ‘It is good for me that I have sinned.’ Physical evil, pain, want, disease, may be made to lead to moral good—moral evil or sin, never. This sin is rebellion of the will against God. If our Lord Jesus had left this master-evil untouched, He would not have saved men, in the proper sense of that expression. The salvation I of man is a different thing from an improved condition of society. Our Lord came to save men by doing three things for the human will. He gave it freedom; He gave it a new and true direction; He gave it strength. He has pardoned believing sinners: He has put them by His grace on the true road which man should follow, and He has given them strength to follow it.

—Rev. Canon Liddon.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE SAYING AND ITS MEANING

If in other matters truth is what one needs, in matters of religion it is the supreme necessity. There are no useful mistakes in religion, no happy errors, no falsehoods that help any one to be better.

I. The biggest truth in the world.—Is it true that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners? If it is, it is the biggest of all truths.

(a) St. Paul, living in the light, beautified by the light, walking with God, inspired, illuminated by Him, says, Brethren, I have tried this truth, I have tested it with the weight of my life, ventured all on it, put it to every test; and I come to you and tell you it is a faithful saying, something that will bear your weight, and answer your hopes, and never disappoint your confidence.

(b) It fits in with all that we might expect of God. We have a taste for truth; the sheep hear the voice, and can tell the difference between what is Divine and human. Everything good in us must have had its origin in something better in God, and something answering more nobly to our pity and our compassion, and our delight in saving, and our trouble when we look upon distress; something answering, but more nobly, to all of these must be in the heart of Him that made us.

II. This gospel is worthy of all acceptation.—There is an innumerable multitude who think, and think they believe this statement—think they do, and would be shocked if they were classed amongst sceptics or unbelievers—but who immediately turn aside and think of something eighteen hundred years ago—a fact of history unimportant to them. Now St. Paul, who had seen a good deal of life, says that this gospel is worth all men’s acceptance: that the richest should take it in order to increase his wealth, and the poorest in order to dissipate all his poverty; that the troubled should take it as the cure of every care, and the untroubled should take it as the preservative of all delights; that the guilty should take it as the gleam of hope that will restore them to peace, and the innocent as that which will preserve their integrity. It is worthy of all men’s acceptance: and some accept it, binding it to their heart, making that fact the main starting-point of the plans and purposes of their life; responding to it, adoring Christ, opening the gate to let Him in, helping Him in His effort to save them.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

INCARNATION AND ATONEMENT

It is of the deepest moment, especially in these anxious days, that our faith in the Incarnation should be distinct and unwavering.

I. We must unhesitatingly believe that our Lord and God did enter into our nature along its wonted pathway, and subject to all its limitations, but, so entering, remained, nevertheless, from the first moment onward of the human life He vouchsafed to live, very and eternal God, His outward glory laid aside but His attributes unchanged. The life of Jesus was thus, to use the expression of a great Christian thinker, always God-human. This is the faith handed down to us unchanged and unchangeable through ages of controversy.

II. The divine purpose of our Lord’s coming into the world was to save sinners.—The great Nicene Creed reiterates the same declaration. ‘For us men and for our salvation,’ the eternal Son laid aside His glory and came down from heaven. It was for us and for our salvation He came down, and was incarnate; for us and for our salvation that He was born as we are born, suffered—albeit in a greater and more transcendent intensity—as we suffer, died as we die.

The more we dwell on the purpose—the salvation of mankind—the firmer will be our hold on the truth and reality of the Incarnation.

—Bishop Ellicott.

Illustration

‘We are at last reverting to the primary belief of the early Christian Church that God is among us, blessing and visiting the children of men. Not a God outside the world, or as for ages has been the prevailing conception of God since the days of Augustine, transcendently above it, but a God within the world, immanent and abiding. To the early writers of Christianity the Incarnation was not a new principle in the development of the world. Firmly believing in the immanence of God in the world which He had vouchsafed to create, and equally believing in Christ, not merely speculatively, but in deepest and most heartfelt reality as very and eternal God, to them it seemed no strange thing that the indwelling God should at length reveal Himself to the world and even enter it under the conditions, and in consonance with the laws of human existence and development.’



A GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST

‘War a good warfare.’

1Ti 1:18 Every true man is a soldier. His path is one of conflict. As Napoleon carried the nations of Europe at the point of the sword, so the Christian soldier must conquer the kingdom. In order to do this he must be a good soldier; and we shall notice some few things which are involved in this.

I. He chooses his profession.—All true soldiers are volunteers. Pressed men do not as a rule make good soldiers; they seldom wear or fight well, and when men are forced into a religious profession from such low motives as slavish fear, or dread of God, they never bring much honour to Christ, and frequently turn back to the world, its praise and pleasures.

II. He exercises implicit faith in his Captain.—This is the life-giving root of his character and service.

III. He exercises himself—

(a) In faith.

(b) Meditation.

(c) Prayer.

(d) In the use of his weapons.

IV. He obeys orders.—His religion or soldiership commences and continues in obeying, and his obedience is prompt, minute, and implicit; he obeys, asking no questions, and at all risks.

V. He is true to his Captain.

VI. He endures hardness.

VII. He fights to the last.

Illustrations

(1) ‘It is said of a soldier of the French Guard who had been shot, that when the surgeon was cutting down, searching for the bullet, he said, “An inch lower and you will find the Emperor.” Whether this be fact or not, Christ has the supreme love of every soldier; the language of his heart is, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside Thee?” ’

(2) ‘During the last war between France and Germany, it is reported that on one of the battlefields whole rows of men were found shot down, lying on their faces with their fingers on the trigger. So it is with all good soldiers of the Cross. They fight with and for Christ, even unto death, and finally all such shall receive the crown of life.’



TRUE TO GOD AND TRUE TO SELF

‘Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck.’

1Ti 1:19 St. Paul explains to Timothy his object in writing to him—to encourage and stimulate him in the battle of life. In the responsibilities cast upon him; in the difficulties he will have to meet, let him be true to the high hopes formed of him. He points out—

I. Two conditions of mind and heart which must underlie all true and useful conduct.

(a) Faith. St. Paul speaks of faith in its widest sense, including faith towards God, and faith towards man and in man as made in God’s image and under His moral government.

(b) Conscience obeyed. Conscience is the voice of God within.

II. He states that these conditions may be given up.

(a) One may put away faith in God, doubt His love, give up belief in the perfection and holiness of His government. Men charge God with being partial, unkind, unjust. As a consequence they lose faith in humanity, in the possibilities of life, etc. Such a state leads to despair, antinomianism, rebellion.

(b) Conscience may be stifled, seared with a hot iron, but in the worst and most hardened criminal conscience remains, if as nothing else, as an accuser. But a good conscience may be put away. Oh, what a loss! It involves loss of self-respect, loss of faith in self, loss of power, loss of peace. Rejecting faith in God and disloyal to the voice within. How hard it is to sink so low! St. Paul uses a strong word—‘faith and a good conscience; which some having thrust from them’ (R.V.).

III. He speaks of the result which must inevitably follow.

(a) Shipwreck. In God’s moral government and in His revealed Word He has given us the rules for the voyage of life. But if one gives up faith in the Teacher, the chart is disregarded.

(b) Shipwreck concerning the faith. Though there be outward profession of Christianity, in heart and life it is shipwreck concerning Christ.

Let us be true to God and true to self.

Illustration

‘Ah, if our souls but poise and swing

Like the compass in its brazen ring,

Ever level and ever true

To the toil and the task we have to do,

We shall sail securely, and safely reach

The Fortunate Isles.’—Longfellow.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

FAITH AND LIFE

In these words St. Paul is warning not only Timothy, but all clergymen after him; and not only these, but through them all Christian people, of a great truth, which was too much forgotten in those days, as it is too much forgotten in these days—that a correct faith and a good and holy life must go together in order to our salvation. ‘Holding faith’; there he speaks of having and keeping the right and true belief. ‘A good conscience’; and there he points to the need of holiness, without which we can have not a good but a bad conscience, because it will accuse us of our bad actions which we have done.

I. Many people see the need of one of these two things, and neglect the other.—There are many persons who approve of honesty and goodness in life, but do not think much of a right faith. They see it is good that a person should not steal, or commit murder, or live impurely. They would have every one live honestly and respectably; but (say they) that is all that is needed. What a man believes doesn’t much matter:

‘He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.’

And there is a great deal that is very enticing and plausible about such teaching. But there is a mistake in it; and the mistake lies in making a right faith of small account. A true faith always tends to bring about good actions; and believing what is false inclines people somehow to do what is wrong. That is why St. Paul was so careful to teach Timothy, and through Timothy, the church over which he was set as a bishop, that they wanted both right faith and good life to keep their souls in the path to heaven.

II. Faith is the root of action.—What we do follows from what we believe, just as surely as a tree springs from its root. You could not get the fruit without the tree; you could not get the right fruit without its coming from the right tree; ‘a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.’ And this people do not always see.

III. There is also a danger in the other direction; and therefore with faith he mentions ‘a good conscience.’ The danger is that, while holding fast the faith, we should be tempted to suppose that to believe is enough; that a holy life is not necessary, or at all events not essential, to salvation. This would be just as bad a mistake as the other, and as dangerous. The Catholic faith is intended to show you God in Christ; to reveal to you the Divine Saviour; and if you do not see Him in the Catholic faith, if your heart does not grow wise by its teaching, you may hold it indeed, but it will do you no good; it is useless through your own fault; and the mere holding it will not save you.




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Rights in the Authorized (King James) Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Published by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.
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