Love from a Pure Heart, Good Conscience and Sincere Faith
A closer look at 1 Timothy 1:5.
5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. - 1 Timothy 1:5 (ESV)
Introduction
The book of 1 Timothy was written by the Apostle Paul to his “true child in the faith,” Timothy. Paul had invested time and effort into Timothy, he loved him as a son and he was helping to train him up to fulfill the call of God upon his life.
In addition to that, Timothy had a job. As Paul noted in 1 Timothy 1:3:
3 As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. - 1 Timothy 1:3 (ESV) [emphasis added]
Timothy was in ministry at Ephesus and Paul was reminding him in this letter of a tough part of his assignment. There were issues that needed to be addressed in the church there, and Paul was reminding Timothy about the job that needed to be done. As verse 1:3 says, Paul was reminding Timothy that he needed to confront certain people and “charge” them to “not teach any different doctrine.” And as Paul tells Timothy in verse 3:15, so that “you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God.”
This letter written by Paul reminds Timothy of corrections to be made, and also reminds Timothy of the doctrinal standards that dictate such standards.
For some of us, it is easy to deliver this sort of news to other people. We don’t mind confrontation and we don’t mind defending the truth (regardless of the subject). For others, this isn’t so easy. Though there may be a commitment to doing what is right, the confrontation part is not easy.
But defending truth is not about whether we enjoy it or not.
Or about if it is easy or not for us to do.
It is about what God says.
But how we do this matters, and in today’s verse we will look at an important reminder from the Apostle Paul about how this work should be done.
“The aim of our charge”
Hard work has to be done by Timothy. Timothy.
He is in a position of leadership. He is responsible for confronting members of the local church and correcting their theology. He must tell them what they are doing, identify that what they are doing is wrong, and direct them to immediately stop.
This is not a disagreement over the color of the pew cushions or the choir robes. Instead, these are differences over important matters of theology and doctrine. And as many people who have been around a local church know, it does not matter if the issue is pews, choir robes or doctrine, it is very easy for church members to get sideways with one another.
This is hard work.
And Paul knows this.
Because of this he takes special care to instruct Timothy as to how the matters he must address must be handled.
He begins this reminder in verse 5 by saying, “the aim of our charge.” By saying this he is giving Timothy direction and a goal. He is saying there is something that must be done - “our charge” - and it should be done a certain way - “the aim.”
When Timothy is finished with the work, he should be able to look back and see that not only was the task finished, but that it was handled in a certain way.
“Love”
The way the job should be done, - “the aim of our charge” - is “love.” Specifically, the aim of Paul’s instruction to Timothy, the way this job should be done is with a special type of love, agape love.
There are a four Greek words used in Biblical texts that are translated into the word love. For example, two of these are the word eros related to erotic love, and the word phileo related to a brotherly type of love.
In this verse, the word Paul uses for love is agape. As GotQuestions.org notes, “Agape is almost always used to describe the love that is of and from God, whose very nature is love itself.” Agape love is the special, self-sacrificing type of love that was exhibited when Jesus came to earth, lived perfectly as a man, was unjustly convicted and then suffered and died on the cross for us. This is the kind of love described in Romans 5:8:
8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8 (ESV)
And this is the type of love that Paul wants to be present in Timothy’s hard work that must be done. He is charged with delivering some tough news, but the work must be done with agape love present. The same type of love that was on display when Jesus went to the cross for us must be present in us.
Paul also reminds us that for this kind of love to be present and operating other conditions must be present in our lives. He tells us, “the aim of our charge that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
“From a pure heart”
If we want agape love to issue forth into our lives and what be present in what we do, Paul reminds us that the first thing that needs to be present in us is a “pure heart.”
Honestly, this sounds like a very good thing to have. It sounds like having a pure heart would make you a pretty good person. Someone like Mother Theresa or the Pope or Mr. Rogers. It is hard to argue against having a pure heart. Everyone should want one of these.
But as we ponder what Paul says - that our actions should come from a heart like this, a “pure” one - and try to figure out how to get one of these, we should realize that this is impossible own our own.
The “heart” that is being described here is not the one with four chambers that beats inside of us. Instead, this heart refers to the “core of our being” - the essense of who we are. And, unfortunately, in its natural state our hearts have a problem. As the prophet Jeremiah reminds us:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it? - Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)
The reason our hearts are sick is because we are sinners. Own our own, we are apart from God and this is because we have disobeyed Him. As Romans 3:23 reminds us, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Falling short of the glory of God means that we have missed the mark, or failed to keep the standard that God has set and we can do this in all sorts of ways. We can sin in word, in deed or in thought (or by mixing them all up together). We can sin by doing something or we can sin by not doing something.
And guess what? Mother Theresa, the Pope and Mr. Rogers are in the same boat.
Even though someone might outwardly apper to be a really good person, the reality is that we are all prolific sinners. Let’s take Mr. Rogers, for example. If Fred only committed one small sin per day over the course of his life of 74 years, he would have committed over 27,000 sins.
Even one sin per day makes Mr. Rogers a prolific sinner based on the standard of God. And 27,000 sins does not compare well to God’s standard of holiness and perfection.
Of course we don’t really know about Mr. Rogers and his sins. This is just an example of someone who appears outwardly to have a “pure heart,” and example of someone who appears to be a really good person. The reality is that Scripture tells us that even our very best works that we could do for God on our own would be the equivalent of dirty menstural cloths in God’s eyes (Isaiah 64:6).
We all have a sin problem. We all have dirty hearts. We all need need something extraordinary to happen in order for our dirty hearts to be cleansed so that we can fellowship with God.
And He has made a way for that.
The prophet Isaiah shares this good news with us:
18 “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool. - Isaiah 1:18 (ESV)
And again in chapter 36:
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. - Isaiah 36:25-27 (ESV)
Though our hearts are naturally unclean when we are born and get worse as we live and grow older, God has made a way for our hearts to be cleansed. And that way is through His Son Jesus Christ.
We come to Him by realizing that we are sinners and our sins have been committed against God. We realize that we are guilty and we have no way to pay for our crimes. We realize that we need God’s mercy and grace and we reach out for the way that He has provided through Jesus. We trust that Jesus came to pay off our debt, we tr
ust His work not ours, and we allow Him to reign as Lord and Savior in our lives.
When that happens, our hearts are made pure and God’s Holy Spirit comes to live in us. We don’t get Him later after we’ve done something special or prayed another special prayer. We have the Spirit right then, right at the moment we are saved. He comes to live in our former heart of stone that is now a heart of flesh.
So when Paul reminds Timothy that his actions must be done in love that flows from a “pure heart,” he is speaking of something that cannot be done without Jesus Christ. Without Christ, Timothy’s work - his charge - cannot be fulfilled as it should be. And this is the same for us.
“A good conscience”
Though our hearts are made pure when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior, and though are sins - past, present and future - are forgiven, we are still going to sin in some amount until we go to heaven. Though we will hopefully sin less and less, and will hopefully be more aware of the sin in our lives, sin will still be present.
Therefore, there is a need to examine ourselves so that we can continually be aware of how we have sinned. We need this so that we can confess our sins to God as a part of a healthy relationship with Him and seek the repentance He gives. We need this so that we can be aware of how our sins may have affected others. And as Paul reminds us in today’s verse, we need this so that the actions we take will be properly aligned with what pleases God.
He refers to this in 1 Timothy 5 as “love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience.”
Our friends at GotQuestions.org define our conscience as:
“The conscience is defined as that part of the human psyche that induces mental anguish and feelings of guilt when we violate it and feelings of pleasure and well-being when our actions, thoughts and words are in conformity to our value systems.”
The Holy Spirit works with our conscience to help us know when we have sinned.
These are not feeling of condemnation, the feelings that try to tell us we don’t really belong to God. No, the Bible tells us in Romans 8:1 that if we are in Christ, we are no longer condemned. Instead, we are provided with feelings of conviction. We are prompted to fix or address a situation where we may have sinned.
Paul is reminding Timothy that when he goes to do his tough job, he needs to do it with love. And to do so lovingingly, he needs to check himself. He needs to do his work with a “good conscience.” He needs to thoughtfully examine himself with the Holy Spirit’s help to ensure that if he has sinned against someone, or if there is some other impediment, that situation needs to be fixed first before doing the hard job.
“A sincere faith”
Finally, Paul reminds Timothy that “the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.”
As the ESV Study Bible notes tell us, this means to do something without “pretense and hypocrisy.” It means to do what has to be done for the right reasons. It means to do what has to be done not just because it is what we want or demand, but because it is what is right and necessary.
Agape love can be done in no other way. Otherwise, our actions would not represent a self-sacrificing, Christ-like type of love.
Paul is reminding Timothy of a tough assignment. It is not one to be taken lightly and not one to be done simply because it is what Paul demands. It is not to be done whimsically or without much thought. It is to be done because they are trusting what God has instructed and because they are acting with “a sincere faith.” And in doing so, his work will be done in love.
Application
If we are looking for a verse that reminds us of how we should live our lives, 1 Timothy 1:5 is that verse.
It was directed to Timothy as a reminder of how his work needed to be conducted.
This hard work was to be conducted with an aim of agape love.
And in order to do that, Timothy needed to check himself.
He was reminded that in order to do his work properly, he needed a pure heart. And the only way he would have this is through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
He was reminded to check his conscience, to make sure that he was standing rightly before God before interacting with others.
And he was reminded to act with a sincere faith. He needed to act through the sincere belief in what God was telling him to do.
In order to meet the aim of agape love these things had to be present in Timothy. And the same is true for us, no matter what we are doing.
But more than that, more than this being some sort of moral check on ourselves, this should be how we want to live and conduct our business. If we are followers of Jesus Christ, this is our aim. We are called to love God with all that we have, and we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. In order to do this within the spirit of God’s command, we need these reminders.
We won’t always do these things perfectly. Our hearts are prone to wander and we are prone to sin. We need the reminder to check our consciences so that we can repent and make things right with others. And we need the constant reminder to live our lives from a sincere faith.