From 1 Timothy 1:15 the article shows that God is in the business of saving sinners. It points to the means God uses and the end to which they are saved.

Source: Australian Presbyterian, 2001. 3 pages.

Sin Banned Salvation Takes the Believer Down a Peg

It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.

1 Timothy 1:15

By our front door at home we have a board with about a dozen pegs where we hang our coats and hats. Those pegs are useful. They’re good to hang things on.

When I walk around my property, on each corner I find a peg driven into the ground. Those pegs mark boundaries. Anything on this side belongs to me. Anything on the other side of the bound­ary belongs to one of my neighbours. Pegs are useful. They define limits.

Why all this talk about pegs? Because people need them. Societies need pegs, and the church needs them too. We live in a day when people don’t know where the pegs are. They don’t know on what to hang their faith. They don’t know the boundaries, what’s inside and what’s out­side the Christian faith. They don’t know how to keep truth straight.

Talking about parents and children some years ago, Margaret Mead said, “It’s not that parents are no longer guides for the children. It’s rather that there are no guides.” If parents are no longer guides, that’s bad enough. But there are no guides, no guidelines, no pegs. We live in a day when, like Israel, “every man did what was right in his own eyes”.

Paul, in 1 Timothy 1:15, counters this. He gives us a peg when he says, “Here is a trustworthy statement deserv­ing full acceptance.” Here’s truth you can rely on. You may not understand everything about life, but here’s some­thing you’d better get straight. Five times in Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus he uses that phrase: “Here is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance.” He follows it each time by encapsulating some crucial truth.

The peg in 1 Timothy tells us three things. First, it tells us God’s purpose. Look at it: “Christ Jesus came into the world” — for what purpose? “To save sin­ners.” God is in the business of saving sinners. If you are serving in the name of the living God, then you, too, have to be about that business. The problem is we don’t have “sinners” anymore. We have victims. We have adult children of alco­holics. We have codependents. But we don’t have sinners. And if we don’t have sinners, we don’t need salvation. We need recovery instead.

We soften sin. A recent article in this journal commented on this. The author pointed out, “We don’t commit adultery anymore. We have affairs.” The word “adultery” communicates one thing, doesn’t it? To talk about an “affair” gives quite a different impression. Adultery sounds harsh. An affair sounds gentle and almost acceptable. In the same way, we don’t have homosexuals anymore. We have people with alternative sexual pref­erences. We’ve softened the concept of sin.

In saying this I don’t want to repeat the cold-hearted folly of Job’s counsellors. I’m not saying that all suffering is the result of personal sin. People do suffer at the hands of others; people are victimized.

What I am challenging is the idea that the issue of sin is no longer important in such situations. Paul says that God is in the business of saving sinners.

Even in the hearts of those who have suffered horribly at the hands of others, who have been victimized and sinned against, there beats a heart that with every beat pumps the blood of rebellion. Everybody needs saving because everybody, no matter what else has happened to him, is in active rebellion against the God of the Scriptures. That’s Paul’s peg. Saving sinners is the business that he — and we — are in.

This peg in 1 Timothy also tells us the means by which God accomplishes this purpose. Paul says, “He is saving sinners through Christ Jesus come into the world.” When Paul says, “Christ came into the world,” it doesn’t mean that Christ just changed locations from Heaven to earth. It’s much more radical. The Son of God became something that he had not been before. The second person of the Trinity took on human flesh. And Paul wants us to know that it actually hap­pened! A child was born in Bethlehem. A man walked the roads of Galilee and Judea. A man hung on a cross. A man rose again. Facts of recorded history.

People today want to tell us, “it doesn’t matter if Jesus rose again from the dead. It’s just the idea. It doesn’t matter if Jesus died on the cross to save his people from their sin. It’s just the idea.” But Paul says the idea isn’t going to do a thing for you. What you need is the fact of history:

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

I once made a serious mistake in my checking account. I thought I wrote a check for $50. Before I wrote the check, I noted it in the register, subtracting $50 from my $950 balance. But when I wrote that check, without thinking, I wrote it for the balance, $900, instead of $50. My register showed I still had $900. So I kept on writing checks. Unfortunately, there was no money to back up my idea. Soon I started receiving overdraft notices at 25 bucks a shot. I couldn’t understand it. I thought, “The bank can’t give these to me!” I had the idea of $900! But the idea didn’t pay bills! You need reality to pay bills.

In the same way, the idea of crucifixion or resurrection won’t do a thing for you. You need the historical reality of the Son of God actually coming into this world to save sinners.

Paul’s peg in 1 Timothy also tells us a third thing: how we enter into the life that Christ purchased for us. Notice how Paul concludes: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners among whom I am foremost of all.” I am the worst! There is no sinner worse than me.

I am tempted to say, “Come on, Paul, how can you say that? In other letters you tell us how good you are: You tell us that you were a Pharisee of the Pharisees, you were zealous for the law. You tell us in 2 Corinthians that you stood out in comparison to the rest of the apostles: “I’m not inferior to the least of the apostles.” How can you say that you are the chief of sinners?”

But Paul is offering us a peg that will keep us straight. Paul says this as he stands alone in the presence of a holy God. When you do that, you don’t think about the Pharisees who may be worse than you are. You don’t think about the adulterers or the blasphemers with a more notorious public record. They fade away. I’m sure that Isaiah was not the worst man in Israel in 740 BC. But when he came into the presence of God, he said, “Woe unto me, for I am a man of unclean lips!” When I stand in the presence of a holy God, all I can see is his glory and my sin; and I must say with Paul, “I am the chief.”

Notice that Paul considers his position as a sinner before God as the most important way to define himself. Though he certainly had been sinned against many times, he does not say, “I am the biggest victim of them all.” Though he had known discouragement and rejec­tion, he does not sum himself up by say­ing, “I have the worst self-esteem of all.” Paul knows what lies at the core of his being; and that’s why he says, “I am the worst sinner of all.” That is why he cries out to God in repentance: “Be merciful to me, a sinner.”

That’s what we are all called to do. This crisp statement of the gospel, this trustworthy statement, summarises your ministry as a Christian and a biblical counsellor. It tells you what your min­istry is about, saving sinners. It tells you how that salvation is realised, Christ Jesus come into the world. It tells you how you enter into that, through intelli­gent repentance and faith. May God increase our faith and our awareness of this peg:

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.

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