(b) 1 Timothy 1:3-20. Reminder of Paul's Verbal Charge.
1 Timothy 1:3-11. The False Teaching, and a Digression on the Law. Some years before, Paul had foretold that error would assail the Church in Asia (Acts 20:29 f.). His fear had now been realised. On his recent visit to Macedonia (Intro. § 5) he had already given Timothy instruction concerning it, and this he here renews. The authority of the errorists to teach is not disputed. Perhaps all Christian men could engage in teaching; Zahn, INT, ii. 96: it is the content of their doctrine that is challenged. This seems to have taken the forra of a speculative Judaism its exponents posed as teachers of the law dealing with legendary matter (e.g. the Haggadah) alien to the Gospel's purpose. Such doctrine is (a) evil in tendency, leading to vain talking and aimless discussions (including, perhaps, the trivial casuistry which constituted no small part of the Halacha Hort) (cf. Titus 1:10); (b) irrelevant, missing the true end of the Christian teaching not useless controversy, but love (1 Timothy 1:5) and so constituting a different doctrine (1 Timothy 1:3); (c) ignorant, its propounders understanding neither their own assertions nor their subject-matter (1 Timothy 1:7). This disparaging reference to self-styled teachers of the law, however here follows a brief digression (1 Timothy 1:8-11) does not imply condemnation of the Law itself. It is only its misuse that Paul deprecates. The Law is good if a teacher builds on knowledge of its true design, the restraining of wrongdoers. Such a view of the Law, indeed, is that which harmonises with Paul's own Gospel of God's glory.
1 Timothy 1:5. conscience and faith: viewed throughout the Pastorals as closely inter-related.
1 Timothy 1:6. swerved: perhaps failed or forgotten (Exp. VII, vi. 373).
1 Timothy 1:8. good: the Gr. word signifies beauty as well as goodness (cf. Romans 7:16).
1 Timothy 1:9. law: either the Mosaic Law or law in general, probably the former if the accompanying list of sins follows, as some hold, the order of the Decalogue. For supplementary view, see Romans 5:20. Moffatt (INT, p. 410) needlessly sees in this paragraph proof of the writer's sub-Pauline environment. murderers: more probably smiters (mg.).
1 Timothy 1:10. sound: contrast 2 Timothy 2:17. This apt metaphor (cf. mg.), not found in Paul outside the Pastorals, was common in ancient Gr., and must have been familiar to him. doctrine: the conception, found in the Pastorals, of a system of belief to be accepted and guarded, has erroneously been declared un-Pauline. Not only was it an inevitable development in the Church's thought, but it is revealed in Paul's earliest epistles (1 Thessalonians 4:1; 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 15:2 f., etc.).