“... Holding faith and a good conscience”

Fighting the Good Fight: 1 Timothy 1:19-20

... holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

The two parts of “waging the good warfare” (or “fighting the good fight”), the Apostle tells us, are holding fast to faith (living trust in our loving, good God) and to a robust conscience (a clear awareness of right and wrong and a humble but committed determination to stay on the correct side of that divide). Note that the word “good” in “good warfare” is kalos, which is the general word for good, but also carries the sense of what is right and fitting. The word “good” in “good conscience” is agathos, which means “worthy”, “upright”, “fertile” – we might say a “clear” conscience, but that really doesn’t catch the full sense. It’s not about a blank rap sheet, so much as a strong and accurate moral compass which (carrying forward the sense of nobility and fertility in the word) has positive effects in the world around us.

What follows is one of those passages which, although nearly a “throwaway” in Paul’s prose, is one of those sit-up-and-take-notice points.

“By rejecting this”. What is the “this”? Some translations actually supply “conscience”; while not wrong, I don’t think that’s sufficient. The “this” is singular, but I take it to refer back to the “holding”. It’s not at all clear what the two persons named, viz., Hymenaeus and Alexander, have done (or failed to do), but the abandonment of conscience and a failure in trust in God go together. Vigorous faith is the foundation of Christian conscience, which is in turn the expression of active trust in the Father.

Now Paul uses an image that should “clear our sinuses”, as a friend of mine likes to say. He refers to the “shipwreck” of faith. Today, we’d be more apt to use an image from aviation or NASCAR like “crash and burn”; but a real shipwreck was just as dramatic, destructive, deadly. A ship hitting shoals in a gale would begin to break up on the rocks, splintering and taking on water. Men would be hurled into the waves, against the rocks, or into the depths of the ship. Rigging and sails, what had been the means of propulsion and movement about the ship, would become webs and cocoons of death. Prisoners and those weighed down by shackles, tackle, or equipment would be lost. Those who did survive faced exposure, hunger, loss of livelihood, financial ruin. The reputation of the captain and owner might also be seriously damaged.

The image is clear: turning away from trust in God and from a strong conscience on the stormy seas of life is inviting disaster. These two have suffered disaster in their discipleship, as a result of their own decisions.

Then more sobering words – shocking, even, from the Apostle: whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

What do we learn from this?

To blaspheme is to slander God: through abuse of the Name, through slandering or insulting God, by presumptuously arrogating to oneself privileges or titles not given by God, by claiming to have a word of knowledge or prophecy which is one’s own invention and not from God. The ultimate blasphemy is to turn away from grace, and it is for this reason that despair, though pitiable, is also such a serious sin. Again, we don’t know exactly what these two were involved in to trigger this reaction from Paul, but it must have come across as a serious challenge to the glorification of God and the trust of the church.

Second, we see that the consequences are serious, even devastating. “There is no free lunch” is an expression we hear in the business and commercial world; it is also true in the moral universe.

Third, we see the authority of the Church. Paul is able to act through prayer and counsel in a way which exposes Hymenaeus and Alexander to further trial and danger. Most of us in the modern Church are profoundly uncomfortable with such ideas. Yet just as a parent must sometimes punish a child or allow them to suffer the consequences of their actions to help them to learn and grow (painful as it is for the parent!), and just as a counselor or psychologist must allow a client to “hit bottom” and become sufficiently miserable as to motivate positive change, so also in the spiritual realm pain is sometimes the best, even the only, motivator for repentance. Our tendency to jump to shielding persons from the work of God in this way (to use Oswald Chambers’ term, to play at being an “amateur providence”) inhibits, and does not do, the work of God. (Caution: the alternate error, becoming a judgmental, pharisaic person, is just as deadly and just as common.) Paul uses the authority given him, no doubt in prayer, and no doubt with tears, to remove the hedge of protection in the lives of these two persons. I wonder: has the Church abandoned this sense of responsibility for the flock? Is this because of our own compromised bad consciences? Has this worked immeasurable harm to the cause of Christ and the work of building people up in the faith?

Fourth, we see the ultimate redemptive purpose of discipline in the Body. Paul doesn’t say, “They’re going to hell” – though, presumably, that could be the ultimate outcome. Rather, he focuses on their “learning”, on their present predicament being a means of growth and, ultimately, recovery. In this, Paul reflects the Gospel message that God’s intention toward us, though we deserve judgment and punishment, is grace.


Lord, it is a sobering thing to fall under discipline. More sobering, though, would be not to do so, not to feel Your guiding, restraining, correcting hand in our lives. Teach us both responsiveness to you, and the true yearning over the lives and souls of others, that we may not be inert but rather robust in our care of the flock of God, whether as members of that flock or as undershepherds of Yours. For the love, cause, and in the Spirit of Christ, amen.



(Lusby, Maryland)

“Wage the good warfare” (part 2)

WHAT IS THIS “GOOD WARFARE”? (1 Tm 1:18, part 3)

What is the “good warfare”? To what can we compare it?

Across thousands of years, leaders and countries have made great, heroic, sometimes ludicrous efforts to make their conflicts appear just. In the American Civil War, both sides prayed to the same God for victory in arms. Even the Nazis tipped their hats to this principle, going so far as to stage a phony attack on a radio tower in a border city as the “justification” to start a ground war in Europe.

We need to be on guard, though, lest the cynical acts of others make us cynical as well. History does provide examples of struggles against tyranny, battles to liberate oppressed peoples and endangered communities, conflicts begun with dubious motives but the end of which occasions much good. Much of the best Christian teaching recognizes the principle of “just war” engaged in righteously and rightly, if reluctantly.

This is not even to mention moral campaigns such as the “war on poverty”, “war on drugs”, “war on terror”, the civil rights struggle and the battles against ills such as illiteracy and obesity.

Struggle, it turns out, is a normal, even necessary, part of life. It is with struggle and strain that we are born into the world and see our first light of day. Too-easy deliverance from struggle can even be harmful, such as for the animal who is helped to break out of its egg, and whose ability to fight to survive is compromised thereby. And some of our nouns representing the most noble traits and qualities were themselves born in struggle: hero. Duty. Valor. Virtue.

In annals, story, and song ... in sources as disparate as Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and “The Ballad of Private Rodger Young”, it is not the one who has nothing to live for or who knows no fear, but the one who has his or her whole life ahead and future at stake, who may feel that he or she has every good reason to flee the battle and turn their back on the fray, yet who is drawn or driven on by something higher, deeper, more important than one’s own existence, who is valorous.

What Paul is speaking to here is the passion of the quest. Paul recognized it in Timothy, saw a reflection of his own “upward calling”, that prize to which all else was subordinate, the struggle of most supreme importance that claims even one’s life.

The question for each of us, daily, is: have I given myself fully to the quest? Am I waging the good warfare?


Lord, remembering that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor riches to the wise, let my life’s energies be bent with all my strength to the quest and struggle for Your Kingdom. Let whatever lack there is in my swiftness, or strength, or resources be supplied by Your goodness. Let my heart’s cry be for that which is most important to You. In Christ, Amen.



Romulus, Michigan (DTW)

"Wage the good warfare”

CLARITY, DISCIPLINE, AND SACRIFICE: 1 Timothy 1:18 (part 2)

The Apostle calls his young charge to “wage the good warfare”. Military imagery – which Paul uses often – is out of fashion in many quarters today. Still, it’s quite apt for the Christian journey, beset as it is with problems, opposition, and the need for continuous focused effort. This is all the more true for those exercising leadership in the body of Christ.

What are some of the characteristics of this “good warfare”?

Clarity. A clear, precise battle plan, taking into consideration not only troop movements and the probabilities of enemy responses, but also capacity, supply, endurance and potential political and noncombatant complications, is essential. Are we as disciples clear on our purpose and mission? If we are leading others, is it seat-of-the-pants or week-to-week, or do we have a sense of the direction in which God is guiding and how our following should be lived out? I believe that if we’re putting more time and thought into our vacation, career, or dinner plans than we are into our discipleship, then the Holy Spirit is urgently calling us to take another, more careful look.

Discipline. Indiscipline yields negative results. In a sport, I lose the game – or at a minimum, Coach yells at me. Taking a class, I get a bad grade. Eat unhealthily and don’t exercise, and I feel bad, get gluey stuff in my arteries ... and maybe keel over at an early age. Spiritual indiscipline is no less a problem, even if the results can take time to show up.

In the military, the disciplines of rank, regulations and training serve a purpose: to keep the soldier alive and make him or her an effective weapon against the enemy. As disciples, we being molded into instruments that fight evil in the world and seek to establish God’s righteous, life-giving policy (i.e., the Kingdom of God).

Sacrifice. For the serviceman/-woman, distance from family, limited comforts, even privations and perhaps injury or even death are part of the service rendered for the sake of duty to one’s country. In every age this has been true, whether the “heat and burden of the day” has been borne for the Senate and People of Rome, King and Country, or the Flag and Constitution. Ultimately, indeed, every fight is for home and hearth and the ideal of one’s native land.

Recently, I’ve been reading a bit on the American Civil War, and retracing the steps of the Confederate cabinet after its flight from Richmond. Gradually, travel became harder, supplies less certain, dangers more oppressive, and even formerly rebel-aligned cities began to make their former leaders unwelcome. Yet with courage and equanimity, and even good humor, they bore all this for the sake of “the Cause”. If they could bear such things for a cause which history has shown to be defective (in fact, I think it was awful on a number of levels), how much more should I, a citizen of a vastly nobler Homeland, be willing to bear for its sake and the sake of my King!

There is of course one more aspect to warfare: allegiance. We have to know whose side we’re on, and live with full loyalty, to “the last full measure of devotion” as President Lincoln put it. This is both simpler, and more intricate, than we typically make it out to be.

On the way here, I was waiting in line at the airport in front of an enlisted man en route to his duty station. From his insignia, I could see that he was one of ours (i.e., a U.S. soldier), and also could clearly see his name and rank. This gave me the opportunity to thank him for his service. Gratitude aside, can others observing us clearly see both our allegiance and our identity in Christ?


Lord, you have called me to wage a sustained fight for You. Help me to do so with clarity and discipline, despising and bearing patiently the sacrifices, and with full and loyal allegiance. Help me to remember also that my fight is “not against flesh and blood”, and to need to approval beyond Your own. In Your hold Name. Amen.


Ellensburg, Washington (Lazy F Camp)