1 Timothy chapter 1 vs 4 to 7 - Love Law and a Long Way from the Truth - J Stewart Gillespie 

Every preacher ought to have a pastoral heart 

1:5 points to what ties together: 

The Lip 
The Life 

The pastoral epistles may not be epistles to pastors, yet they do reveal that every preacher should have a pastors heart. 

  1. The Conclusion of Love – 'the end' : 'telos' : end, conclusion, termination, completion 
  2. The Commandment of Love 
  3. The Condition of Love 

 

  1. 'pure heart' 
  2. 'good conscience' 
  3. 'faith unfeigned' 

The Conclusion of Love – 'the end' : 'telos' : end, conclusion, termination, completion 

What does that actually mean? 'love'? 

It is a Divine Attribute 

God is Love (1 John 4:8) 
God is Light (1 John 1:5) 
God is True (John 3:33) 
God is Spirit (John 4:24) 

It is the nature of God: 'God is Love' 

As the nature of God we cannot define it 

Because we cannot define it 

We cannot construct it 

Because we cannot construct it, we cannot imitate it / impersonate it! 

We cannot counterfeit it! 

Genuine love cannot be counterfeited by men 

Genuine love is only ever extended out from its original source – God 

The presence of such love is therefore definitive of / synonymous with regeneration (1 John 4:7). 

Love – Divine attribute: 

We can: 

Describe it 
Discern it 
Detect it 
Desire it 

We cannot Define it 

The chemists of a previous century broke down the compounds they found in nature, until they could break them down no further: 

                                    Elements 

Constructed the Periodic Table of Elements 

Chemicals brought to their simplest 

They get no simpler 

H20 – H2 + O2 

Salt – Na + Cl 

Sugar – C + H + O 

Once you reach these elements you could break them down no further chemically 

So too with love 

As a Divine attribute, it can be broken down no further 

We can: 

Describe it 

cf. 1 Corinthians chp 13 – love is eternal and abiding 

cf. John 15:13 – Love is a power greater than self interest, self preservation, most clearly seen in giving and sacrifice, the motive to disrupt the greatest joys and closest bonds (cf. Roms5:8). 

Love is seen in the sacrifice of relationships (Rom 5:9) 

Love is seen in the strength of relationships (Rom 8:35ff) 

Love is the product of the Spirits work in us (Gal 5:22) 

Perhaps the most succinct description of love in the New Testament is Colossians 3:14: 

'sundesmos' of perfectness 
'sundesmos' – 'together glue of perfection' 

Here is the essential agent of spiritual cohesion 

We live in God's universe 

We observe daily that God is the Master of holding things together 

He is the Master of cohesion! 

You will perhaps have noticed that when you go out the front door in the morning that you don't drift off into space! 
Planets held together by gravity 
Tissues held together by cellular adhesion molecules 
Water held together by hydrogen bonds 
Atoms held together by electromagnetic forces 

Here is God's means of cohesion in the spiritual realm: 'love' 

                        'the together glue of perfection' 

Love: 

cannot define it 
cannot construct it 
cannot counterfeit it 

If the end of the commandment is love 

What then is the end of love? 

To what does love bring us into? 

The 'together glue' with what? 

The moral qualifications of 1 Tim 1:5 would seem to indicate that 'love' here is the 'together glue' of our relationship with God. 

  1. 'pure heart' – Ps 24:4 – spirituality 
  2. 'good conscience' – 1 Peter 3:21 – morality 
  3. 'faith unfeigned' – Heb 11:6 – reality 

Love brings us into a relationship with God 

The truth brings me into love 

This is the purpose of our election (Ephesians 1:4) 

This is the destiny of our election – love relationship with God through Christ! 

The end of the commandment then is to bring me to 1 Timothy 3:16 – a relationship with Christ 

Interestingly the first mention of 'agape' in the NT (Matt 24:12), speaks of the necessity of love in our relationship with God 

Righteousness is necessary to maintain the correct environment for love 

We cannot synthesis love 

We can only maintain the right environment in our lives of Gods love to flow! 

  

The Commandment of Love 

Which 'commandment'? 

Is it the 10 commandments of 1:7ff? 

The 10 commandments 

Do not cause love, love brings about obedience to the commandments (Deut 6:1-6; 10:12ff) 
Love is a fruit of the Spirit, not of the commandments nor the law (Gal 6) 
Love is the product of the new birth (1 John 4:7) 
The law brings the knowledge of sin and thus the fear of judgement, which is the opposite of love (Rom 3:20) 

'commandment' : 'paraggelia' – found in 1:3,5,18 – 'charge' 

This is the charge of Paul to Timothy 

Which is the charge of Timothy to Ephesus 

Which is the content of 1 Timothy 

The Condition of Love