1 Timothy 1:19 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Holding faith’, fidelity, loyalty, faithfulness to the truth, faithfulness to the cause of Christ. ‘Holding’, grasping, the Greek is strong, clinging in faithfulness to the cause, and a good conscience. You need a good conscience to be in this warfare. You need always to be open to challenge. Am I doing enough? Am I doing it according to the Scripture, and am I doing justice to what God tells me? Am I being faithful and anchoring everything in the word? Or am I seizing on things, and my imagination is playing tricks, and I shouldn't be drawing that interpretation or that application? That's some of your best equipment: a good conscience. ‘Which some having put away’ – the Greek says ‘thrown away’, thrust away, forcefully – ‘concerning faith’, faithfulness, ‘have made shipwreck.’ Hymenaeus and Alexander are named. Hymenaeus is named again in 2 Timothy. They were false teachers at Ephesus, evidently. One of the false things they taught was that the resurrection was past already. In other words, there would be no bodily resurrection for Christians. That's awful; the resurrection is a fundamental truth. These people had become so impious that they would interpret how they liked. ‘I have got an idea’ – they would pick it up from the Essenes, probably – ‘that you can spiritualize everything, and the resurrection can be spiritualized. It's about what happened to me when I was converted. I was spiritually resurrected. The resurrection is already past.’ Maybe that was it. And because they were so lightweight, and they had thrust aside conscience and were not ready to be challenged, they came to these conclusions. They thought they were so clever and so wonderful. But this teaching blasphemes and reviles God, because Christ spoke of the resurrection in plain terms. The apostles spoke of it; it’s quite clear in the Scriptures. So they need to be reproved. Are they Christians who have just badly backslidden? It is just possible, because what Paul does to them, he does for a remedial purpose. It is very mysterious language: ‘Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan.’ What does that mean? Does it simply mean, I have told the congregation to excommunicate them? It may only mean that, but it may mean something more. Perhaps what the apostle has done is inflict aa punishment on them, by denouncing them and by the power of the Spirit – some illness, some punishment by way of serious illness. It wouldn't be the only time. Elymas the sorcerer became blind at the word of the apostle Paul (Acts 13:8). At the word of the apostle Peter Ananias and Sapphira died. Just as the apostles had power to heal by inspiration of the Spirit, so, at times, they had power to punish. Possibly that is what is happening here. ‘I have delivered him to Satan to convict him severely, to warn him, to make him think, so that he repents in the spirit of 2 Corinthians 7, with tears and longing for restoration and utmost humbling.’ Perhaps it means that.