Thoughts on 1 Timothy 1:18-20

"This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, 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."

I see two main points in these verses. First the Christian life is an all out war. When I first became a Christian I expected life to get much easier. I looked around at the “Christians” I knew and they always seemed to have a smile on their face and a jolly demeanor. None of them looked as if they were involved in any type of war. When I gave my life to Christ my experience was nothing like what I thought it was going to be. Life got very very hard. The battle between the flesh and the spirit had begun. When you become a Christian you get a new heart (Ezek 36:26-27) and the desires of your new heart are in direct conflict with your former desires (lust, greed, idolatry etc…) (Gal 5:17). Every day becomes a non-stop battle against the desires of the flesh. As hard as it was (and still is) I had a sense of purpose and fulfillment that I had not felt before. Life was difficult but I was not alone and I was joyful to be engaged in the battle. I knew I was fighting the good fight and that the Holy Spirit was giving me the ability to do so. If you are reading this and you are considering giving your life to Jesus please understand that your life will become much more difficult. You will be enlisting in a war that won’t end until Jesus comes and redeems creation. Life will be hard but you will not be alone and you will experience joy and purpose like you have not known before.

Secondly, we must fight this battle while holding on to faith in Jesus and with a clear conscience. If at any point in battle we begin to get proud and think we can fight on our own we will begin to transfer our faith in Jesus to faith in ourselves. The only way we have a chance in this war is through faith in Jesus living lives empowered by the Holy Spirit. We must also fight with a clear conscience. This means keeping short accounts of our sin and repenting daily to Jesus who died on the cross so that we could be forgiven. This means living the Christian life with one goal in mind: glorifying God. We should never live so that our motivation is the compliments and praise of others. This means that we cannot live as hypocrites, preaching the Gospel and not living by it. What we preach with our mouths must line up with what we preach with our living. If we fail in either of these areas Paul says we will make a “shipwreck of our faith”, living unfruitful lives in an attempt to glorify ourselves.