To Encourage You

1 Timothy 1:5 “But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”

What benefit is there in reading and studying God’s Word? Why do it? Why did those who wrote it do so? Surely there are many reasons. However, in one of the clearest statements about the purpose, at least that the letters of Paul were written, is given to us in the verse above. Here Paul tells his protégé, Timothy his purpose for writing the things he did. Paul’s mission was summed up in one word followed by a three-fold explanation of how that one word goal could be fulfilled. The primary purpose that Paul wrote what he did was so that those who read his letters would be encouraged to love, for to love God and to love our neighbor are God’s greatest commands. As Romans 13:8-10 so succinctly puts it, “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

So, how does someone love like that? To begin with, they must have a pure heart. When the Bible uses the word “heart,” it’s not talking about the physical organ that pumps our blood. Rather, it’s referring to that which rules us from the inside – our desires, emotions, and thinking. It’s referring to our thought patterns. As such, the Scriptures are a powerful cleanser. They’re a powerful sanctifier as they wash our minds like water washes us on the outside (Ephesians 5:26). They are an antidote for ungodly and likewise unloving worldly thought patterns. Like nothing else can, they enable us to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of (our) mind, that by testing (we) may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

And then secondly, God’s Word is effective in providing us with a “good conscience.” As one definition puts it, “the conscience is the soul reflecting on itself. It is a governor on our actions by reflecting on the highest standard we perceive” (Colin G. Kruse, Commentary on 2 Corinthians). But the conscience isn’t infallible. Before Paul’s eyes were opened, he thought he was actually serving God by persecuting Christians to their death. But then he met the Word of God incarnate and his seared, unfeeling, “bad” conscience was suddenly reformed into one that was good. In the same way, as we inform our own conscience by the infallible Word of God, our conscience benefits greatly and becomes a check on our thoughts and actions like it could never otherwise be.

And thirdly, God’s Word enables us to have a “sincere faith.” The word “sincere” as translated from the Greek language in which the verse above was written means “unfeigned” or “without hypocrisy.” Of course no one wants to be around a hypocrite, and hopefully, we don’t want to be one ourselves. In that true “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17), the Bible guides us into genuine, saving, life-changing faith. As we peer into its pages, it reveals the deceptions of our own heart and renews our mind as mentioned above in Romans 12. Put another way, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

May God’s goal for His Word find its fulfillment in our lives, for what could possibly be better for us than to “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”