1 Timothy 1:5 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Now the end of the commandment is charity.’ The end of what commandment? The commandment in verse 3, ‘that thou mightest charge [command] some that they teach no other doctrine.’ The commandment’ here doesn’t refer to the Ten Commandments, though they are going to be mentioned very soon; it refers to the charge which Timothy has been given. In the Greek it is the same word – the charge or the commandment. The purpose of my commanding you this Timothy, says Paul, is that we shall produce in our ministry love from the Lord's people. The end or goal of the charge to Timothy to protect the truth is love out of a pure heart. You don't expect that. Surely the end of the commandment is salvation, surely the ultimate purpose and goal is heaven. But no, it is genuine self-sacrificing love, and love for God as Christ taught, means obedience to God. As unsaved people, possessing an unregenerate heart, we have unloving hearts. We are capable of times of purely natural love but not real love, deep love, unselfish love. Then comes the Spirit of God in his mighty regenerating work and the heart is changed and love is poured into it: a capability to love and we love God who forgives us and Christ who died for us. We are moved and affected, and love streams out of us and we come to love his word, and we love the gospel, and we start to love our fellow believers. Now we can really love our husband and really love our wives, and in the sense of pity and compassion we can even love lost souls.How do we read the verse? Are there three distinct ends of the commandment: love that comes out of a pure heart, then – a separate point – a good conscience, and thirdly faith unfeigned? We know that isn't the way to read the verse because the Greek makes clear that all three phrases – a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned – are governed by the words ‘out of’. The KJV expresses this with the word ‘of’ in italics, so we could read the verse as if the commas were not there. The goal of all Bible teaching is love out of a pure heart, and out of a good conscience, and out of faith unfeigned. They are the three supports of love. You think of a three-legged stool and the seat is love and the three legs that support the seat are a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned. It means this, that the love which is given to you in salvation, the loving heart, cannot flourish and grow in love without attention to these three vital supports. If they are not in place your love will wither. If they are in place it will remain and grow. This is the love which God poured into us, and which flows out from us.First, love comes out of a pure heart. It is possible to love God with inadequate love, a purely sentimental love. It may even rise to ecstatic proportions. No doubt many with such a love do genuinely love God, but many of them we suspect do not. You can join the people who wave their hands in the air and sing to loud rhythmic music and get themselves worked up to a kind of sentimental emotional pitch, but that may not be real love for God. Real love flows out of a pure heart. What we call love may be emotionalism only, or it may only be self-gratifying love. ‘I can get so much from God, therefore I love him.’ For some people that is as far as their relationship with God goes. You say, ‘What does God mean to you?’ They say, ‘Oh he makes me happy all the day long.’ True love flows from a pure heart. It means that the person has been born again. They have come under conviction of sin; they have repented of sin, and have been forgiven and given a new heart. Now they really appreciate the Lord for who he is. Their eyes have been opened and they love him not just because of what he gives, but because they see him and appreciate his attributes. I love him because I now know something about him, and I am grateful to him because my sinful life has been saved and he has done so much for me. A pure heart is a heart which is no longer all for me, but if I give way to excessive leisure or covetousness then I cannot love because my heart is no longer pure. Keep the heart clear. The most foolish and treacherous thing anyone can do is to fall to unclean images. That is an utterly polluted heart. Love also comes out of a good conscience. That partly means that your conscience does not operate at the level of rites and ceremonies. So many of the Jews of old fell into that trap, and so many Catholics do today. My conscience is concerned about whether I have attended mass or confession. The duties once done, satisfy the conscience. No, a good conscience is a conscience that is worried about sin and seeks the forgiveness of God. A bad conscience is a conscience that settles for less: doing a few duties and ticking them off. A good conscience is also a conscience that you cooperate with. When it tells you that you shouldn't have raised your voice, you shouldn't speak as you did, you melt and you repent. In fact, when it tells you even as you go to do it, you choke the words back and you mortify them. But if you say, I'm not listening, I'm going to express myself, I'm going to let it go and say or do that thing anyway, you suppress your conscience, and it won't speak so loudly next time. Your conscience is your warning light, your burglar alarm, your smoke alarm. So you think of what the Lord means to you. You want to love him, love his word, love the gospel, love fellow Christians. You can't do that with a conscience which isn't operating. And love comes from faith unfeigned. Trust in the Lord. Conviction about the truths of God which isn't put on. ‘Unfeigned’ translates not putting on an act. Have you put on an act in God’s house? Did you put on an act on coming into church and you sang the first hymn without actually thinking of the words? Oh, but I like the tune and I vaguely follow the words. If we don't mean the words, if we don't pray them, it’s an act; it isn't genuine. It you live like that in the worship service, in your interaction with Christians day by day, your Christian life becomes an act. It's not quite as bad as hypocrisy but it's an act; it isn't felt, it isn't meant, it isn't wholly sincere. If you live like that you can't really love. Love rests on this leg of genuineness and sincerity and meaning things. I want to be sincere as a person. I want to mean what I say. I want to feel the things I believe in. I want to trust when things go wrong for me; I want to stop going to pieces and panicking and worrying. I want to be able to roll the burden on the Lord and trust him and pray to him. I want faith unfeigned, not put on faith, not a play act. The genuineness and sincerity that takes over is a support to love. Then you can love. This in a single verse actually is the entire apostolic course for ministers on pastoral theology, all compressed into these beautiful terms. The end, the great goal of all Bible teaching, is love and this depends upon three supports.