“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” 1 Timothy 1:18-19 -> me: My reading today was only 3 verses ending chapter one of 1 Timothy. I became caught up primarily in Paul’s use of ‘shipwrecked’ as a way our faith is impacted when we ignore or reject a good conscience. In order for us to ‘wage good warfare’, faith and morals are inseparably linked and epitomize the spiritual side of the Christian warrior’s armor. The Greek verb used for ‘reject’ verse 19 is a strong one meaning a violent and deliberate rejection. The nautical imagery is interesting in that a ship usually has everything we need in it for our voyage but if we ignore the charts and essentially do what we want against our conscience, we become unstable and prone to ground ourselves or break up on the rocks. We become stuck in an unwanted place and we miss achieving our intended destination. Dictionary: CONSCIENCE -> an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior. This plays out in that fellow Christian who has deliberately chosen to entertain an enslaving sin, or reject the prodding of the Holy Spirit in their lives. We see their faith consistent bashing into the rocks of doubt, confusion, or progressive unbiblical movements. Ignoring a good conscience can be an open door to falling subject to false teaching. Paul ends this passage with the calling out of 2 individuals (Hymenaeus and Alexander) who have been ‘handed over to satan that they may learn not to blaspheme”. Because Paul used the word ‘learn’ here it means that the handing over is meant to win them back into church through reconciliation as they learn their lesson through the reaping of the desires of their flesh.
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