I. Taking the declaration of the text in its simplicity, and looking out over the Christian world, we are disposed, simply enough, perhaps, on our part, to say what a pity it is that people do not oftener ask themselves amidst all their conscientious observance of Christianity, and all their lifelong toil to do their duty by it, whereunto it all tends; what is the one general effect which He who ordained Christianity as a great commandment for us intended it to produce? Our text points to the fact that the end of the commandment is love; and it goes deeper than that, it shows us out of what love ought to spring. Now if there be a defect of water down in the stream we may expect to find its fountain yielding but scantily. There it will be that the origin of the mischief must be sought, and there that the remedy must be applied. It may appear that the springs are shallow and want deepening, or are uncared for and have been choked up, or both these faults may exist together. "Now the end of the commandment is love, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."
II. These latter clauses may be regarded as a limitation, a conditioning of the love which is the end of the commandment. The stream is not to receive impure accession, nor is it to lose its distinctive character and quality; and this negative meaning of such expressions in Scripture has ever been the more welcome one in the Church. They have not only a negative, but they have also a strong positive and declaratory force full of instruction to us of this day. The pure heart in our text, out of which that charity which is the end of the commandment is to spring, is plainly of this kind, singleness of purpose without admixture of side aims and selfish views; and here is one chief root of the evil among ourselves, that the stream with us does not run pure, our hearts are not set, our lives are not devoted to the simple glorification of God by Christ, but to the furtherance of some certain system of opinions or some defined set of agencies which have gathered round, and, for us, embodied the great central purpose of Christianity.
III. "Faith unfeigned" and a "conscience void of offence" are the real source of charity; and the charity which flows from them is no breaker down of conscientious conviction nor of doctrinal purity, no bringer in of indifferentism. That charity which necessitates compromise is of the world, and not of Christ. We need not surrender our differences; they are engraved into the very texture of our conscious life; the faith has taken hold of our hearts by these means. If we were to surrender them, in many cases not the differing belief would be our lot, but the gulf of fatal unbelief. Nay, let us evermore cherish them, seeing that with them is bound up the consistency of our inner life, the unfeignedness of our faith. Let us remember that not victory over one another, not victory in this world at all, is "the end of the commandment," that every blow struck at a member of Christ is a loss to the Church of Christ a loss to him that is stricken, but a far greater loss to him who strikes.
H. Alford, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 306.
References: 1 Timothy 1:8. L. D. Bevan, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 404. 1 Timothy 1:8-11. H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. xxiii., p. 147. 1 Timothy 1:8-17. Expositor,1st series, vol. ii., p. 131.