I Timothy 1 – Verse by Verse
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Tag Archives: 1 Timothy 1
Palmer St. Podcast: Transforming Grace
God’s callings are always accompanied by His enabling. He will never call us to do something without also enabling us to do it. Many times the Lord asks us to do something that is impossible. And then, working in us, by His Spirit, He proceeds to do the impossible. The person who receives the most from God’s grace is not the one who has the most forgiven, but the one who is the most transformed.
Palmer St. Podcast: Teach Sound Doctrine
Americans spend about $300 Billion on entertainment each year. We obviously love to be entertained. In a culture like this, how can the church ever expect to compete for people’s attention? The answer is simple: We can’t. But happily, we don’t have to compete. The church is not here to entertain people, but to teach sound doctrine. No one can compete with us in that. It’s not easy to find it anyplace else.
Paul’s Faithful Sayings #1
Paul liked to give his understudies neat little proverb-like gems of wisdom to take to heart as they carried out their own ministries. He recognized the value of placing an important principle in an easily opened package – of saying something that needed to be remembered in a way that his guys would remember it. He called them “faithful sayings”.
Here is the first:
“This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” – 1 Timothy 1:15 (NKJV)
Anyone desiring to serve the Lord can benefit from a deep awareness of their sin. It enhances our humility and keeps us conscious of the fact that we fully depend upon Christ. No matter how long or how well we serve Him – and Paul served better and longer than most – we should never get past the fact that we do so by His grace.
This is not a morbid focus on our own shortcomings and should never lead to that. This is good sense and extremely useful in ministry. As we, Christ’s servants, deal consistently with sin-filled people in sin-filled surroundings, it helps to keep in mind that we are sinners saved by grace.
Paul considered himself the “chief of sinners”. During his ministry he was accused of many things, but offhand I can’t think of a case he was accused of arrogant or hypocritical self-righteousness. Maybe there’s a connection?