Grace, Not Law!

Stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines (1 Timothy 1:3)

Paul writes to the young disciple.

John Fitzsimmons, pastor of Sligo City Church, says this:

The exact nature of the false teaching is unclear. It apparently involved speculation about the law.

Yes. Exactly. The false teaching Paul is talking about is teaching that obeying the law can produce holy living and righteousness.

Check out verses 7-14:

They want to be teachers of the law, but they don’t know what they’re talking about… We know that the law is not made for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful…even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man…the grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly…

Paul isn’t singling the unrighteous, ungodly and sinful as other people. He includes himself. As he says next:

Christ Jesus came to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.

Paul is warning Timothy about the same kind of false teaching that is going on in the church today, that somehow we can live holy lives by obeying the law: performance-driven Christianity. But Paul is brutal about people who are teaching the law. Not only does he call them false teachers. He says:

They don’t know what they are talking about!

He says ‘the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel’ is this:

The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly.

GRACE.

Poured out on me abundantly.

Poured out on us abundantly.

This is the gospel!

We are all sinners, as Paul says:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

(Romans 3:23)

But like Paul, we are holy, righteous and blameless before God not because we obey the law but because the grace of our Lord was poured out on us abundantly.

Amen!