1st Timothy 1:1-11

First Timothy is one of my favorite, favorite books. And of course, I don't need to do an introduction to First Timothy, but the thing that I love about First Timothy was that here was a guy writing to someone who he had raised up, and he had a message for this guy that it just oozes the love that Paul had for Timothy. And obviously my dad's covered the history of Timothy and Timothy's spiritual growth. Good things.

But today we get to start in verse 12 and go all the way to verse 20. This is way more material than I normally ever cover in any of the lessons that I've ever had to prepare, so you'll have to bear with me if I don't pull off a half an hour of Paul, I've got, I've got, I'm just going to go ahead and read starting in verse 12.

I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. 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. Yet for this reason I found mercy so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.

Now to the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight a good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan so that they will be taught not to blaspheme."

As I was preparing for this lesson, what I tried, my personal approach to preparing for lessons, is to at least at the beginning of the week before I'm teaching, to just read through the passage a number of times. And then as the week goes on, spend more focused time meditating on each one of the verses and passages that are inside of the greater section I'm supposed to teach. And as I kept going through this, I kept thinking, we would have broken this up into two or three or four lessons in one of the other Sunday school classrooms. And so, as we look at this, I've got it on the handout broken down into a couple subsections. And that's just because I can't help but do that. They're topically consistent passages or verses.

But Paul says that he thanks Christ Jesus our Lord to strengthen me because he considers me faithful, putting me into service even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. So one question that I have is what is the history of Paul that when he's saying this, what is he referring to that we have recorded in Acts or Galatians or any of the books where he talks about his history or others write about his history? Who's the first recorded martyr in Acts?

Stephen. And who was there? Paul. And what was he doing? Cheering. And holding coats, making sure that, oh, I wouldn't want your coat to get dirty while you go kill this guy. I'll hold that for you. He was a nice guy, right? Basically, it's referring to his actions and his attitude prior to his face-to-face, very abrupt, Sure. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, there's a fullness of what is there, but it's just good to have in our own minds the context of when Paul writes this, especially as we're going to get into the section where he says, I'm the foremost or chief of sinners, that's a pretty lofty statement. And in fact, that's probably what I wrestled most with as I looked at this passage. And we'll get into that a little bit.

But Paul Paul was a persecutor. We have recorded he was there with being an aggressor. In Acts 9 he's on his way on the road to Damascus being an aggressor and the Lord shows up and saves him. So we have a whole history of Paul here and he just covers it briefly. I think Timothy as the recipient of this letter was quite familiar with the story, so Paul doesn't belabor it with him. So then he says that the Lord considered him faithful and put him into service.

How long was Paul not out being a missionary, roughly from the time on the road to Damascus to when he's called to go out with Barnabas? Does anybody know? He references in Galatians chapter 2 verse 1 that he was about 14 years time. And of course when I taught Galatians I had to teach you the chronology and there's some interesting things that Paul adds in Galatians that aren't in Acts. So you get little tidbits like that. Paul was a believer but not out actively being an apostle traveling as a missionary.

He was teaching. It seems like the Holy Spirit instantly illuminated the truth of the New Testament doctrine, and he was able to go through the Old Testament and teach. If you read through Acts, you'll see that there's this immediate ability to teach God's Word. He was familiar with the Old Testament very intimately, and the Holy Spirit gave him the ability to teach. But he doesn't go traveling as a missionary for about 14 years.

But that would be Paul being faithful, and I think that's an important thing to note. Barnabas picked up on Paul's faithfulness quite quickly. He says he was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. Paul doesn't dismiss his behavior Okay, he's not dismissing his behavior, but how does he describe the motive of his zealous behavior that was leading to being an aggressor?

He says, I was ignorant of what was true. And the Lord got a hold of him and made it really clear. What's interesting is he has this guy that thinks he's passionate to God, but what does he say? An unbelief. Ignorant and unbelief. His ignorance was not... He was a disciple. He knew the Old Testament law as taught by the Old Testament rabbis. He had rejected Christ out of ignorance. So I have some questions here and let's ask them just because I think they're good food for thought.

How long was Paul serving the church? He talks about mercy. What is mercy? And we did cover this in the past weeks, but as Paul uses mercy a number of times, I thought it was good to have that as a reminder. I was chatting with my dad online this week and I said, I've studied grace Well, I spent hours and hours and hours studying grace. If you were in Mike's Sunday School class, you've got weeks and months of grace. But mercy, I spent much less time studying. So what's mercy? Oh, no. We don't know what mercy is.

So I remember this from a song that the Newsboys did. They were a Christian rock band that is still around, but their musical style has changed to where I don't prefer them at all. But they had a song that was, when we get what we don't deserve, it's a real good thing, and when we don't get what we deserve, it's a real good thing. Mercy is when we don't get what we deserve. That's a rough, quick definition. When we get what we don't deserve, that's grace. We don't deserve God's blessing, but he has given it to us. So mercy is when you don't get what we deserve. What does justice show that we would deserve as human beings? Or Paul, before the road to Damascus? Death, suffering, and ultimately eternal judgment and separation from God. So mercy is there.

And I wanted to cross-reference Romans 11.32. If you have your Bibles, turn there with me. Paul says, for God has shut up all in disobedience so that he may show mercy to all. I think that's really important that we see that all in the flesh are shut up under disobedience. Categorically, we are disobedient as human beings in Adam. But what's the consequence of God being able to do that?

That He can also show mercy to all. And so that's an important distinction there. He's not going to pour out his wrath on all, because he can show mercy to all. And so that's a distinguishing factor of mercy. So Paul keeps going in this passage. He showed mercy.

And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant. So what's our working definition of grace? I just gave one, but there's the longer one that we've been using from Jaffer. Does anybody have that off the top of their heads? Okay, God's unmerited favor based on Christ's sacrifice. A good definition of grace. And how much grace does God give the believer? How much grace does God show Paul? It's unlimited as well as unmerited. So it's this infinite character.

And that grace leads to faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus. And so we see that the grace was abundant, and it was super abundant in the Greek there, and with the faith and love were found in Christ Jesus. And there's always this important doctrine that we get at Holly Hills, and it's in Christ. It's in Christ. The faith and love and the grace, we're all in Christ.

It's the identification truths coming out. Alright, so we've been through this passage here. We'll keep going so that we truck along and make through all of the material we're supposed to cover. So Paul writes to Timothy in this next section, 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.

Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life. So Paul's trustworthy statement is that Christ came to saved sinners. When Paul had acted in ignorance and persecuted the church, what did he believe the Messiah was coming to do? Set up his kingdom. But Paul says, okay, no, no, no. We know now that this mystery has been clearly revealed, or that Stalker has been clearly revealed, that Christ came to save sinners. And we can look at some cross references there in John and in Romans, but I don't think I need to bolster that point enough. Anybody's concerned that Paul is wrong? Okay, no hands went up, so I feel good about that.

Alright, but Then we get to the tricky part because he says, among whom, and he's referring to the center, plurality of centers, among whom I am foremost of all. Or if you have King James, what does it say? I am the chief. And that is kind of a sticky widget for me. So we're going to have to, I'm going to have to wrestle through it even if you don't. How about that?

How do we cope with this idea of Paul being the foremost of sinners and yet we have the Holocaust? Is there a disparity there? Hitler was involved with the massacre of five and a half to six million Jews. Don't you think he gets to be... There's a chronological situation there. But Paul is referencing again, and you mentioned this earlier, an attitude of disobedience. and a pattern of persecution. And that's an important distinction. So we have this chief of sinners issue.

It's not that big of a deal. We don't have to sweat the context in all of history. That's not the context. It also seems like it makes mercy and grace available to everybody because then no one could say, I'm even worse. That's right. We were all born in that. Yeah, and that's fundamentally one of the issues.

How many of you have gone and talked about the gospel and shared the gospel with someone who's not a believer and their response is, I'm not that bad. I get that somewhat regularly in my conversations, but what about the other one, I'm too bad. I've actually shared the gospel with folks and they've been like, oh, this grace stuff sounds really good. And I say, grace is so amazing and so sufficient that had Adolf Hitler become a believer, it would have been able to cover all of his sin. And that actually offended people. They'd all, whoa, whoa, that's too good.

I like a medium grace. Can I get like a grace that covers all of my sins but not his, because I would like him to go to hell for that. But just like you said, we are all in Adam's centers, but Paul is an example here, and Paul being an example is really important for us to understand how that fits in both for the lost person, he's an example, and for the believer, he's an example. How many of you outside of this passage would think of Paul as a really great example for non-believers. Paul emphasizes this, but I don't tend to think of Paul as an example for non-believers, I think of Paul as an example for believers.

Because he tells us in 1 Corinthians 11.1, he says, follow me or imitate me as I imitate Christ. Okay, good, I can follow Paul, that's good, because he's following Christ. Okay, that's easy.

But he says, I'm an example also for those who are lost. An example of someone who was acting out very violently and wickedly against the faith. So, we have Paul talking about being an example and he's He has talked about the character and quality of grace and mercy in his own life. And when you've talked about grace and mercy in your own life, and maybe you've shared your testimony, what's your response to grace and mercy emotionally and personally with the Lord? Thanks. When I think about the awesomeness of the gospel, it is nearly impossible for me to not respond with a sense of being overjoyed for the awesomeness of the grace and mercy of God. And Paul has that same problem, and it's the best kind of problem.

Let's take a look at 1 Timothy 1.17, there's this little stanza. this prayer or this praise that's here. He says, Now to the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

And for one sentence, Paul has packed in a whole lot of theology and It's funny, because in past classes, you must have heard, well, I know that you mentioned it in this class, Paul, he likes a run-on sentence, right? He can write really long, long sentences. This one is a really short sentence, and yet it's packed with almost as much theology as some of his longer sentences.

So who's this king? Anyone? Is it Jesus? Is it God the Father? It's God the Father, I believe. Now to the King Eternal. What's the significance of God being eternal? I actually really, really like the idea of an eternal God. Theologically, it's very significant for you, even if you don't know it. Is God bound by the time-space continuum? Did he create the time-space continuum? And I think that's really, really, really significant. On the surface, it sounds like it's just so lofty.

Who cares, right? Except that if you're a god outside of the time-space continuum, prophecy is not that big of a deal. You can get it right 100% of the time because you're over all of it 100% of the time. It's not a big deal. If you take it from a secular perspective, prophecy is either really clever or really lucky or just a bunch of made-up hogwash and you might ignore it altogether just because it seems so improbable.

But you have an eternal God who is outside the time-space continuum and I think that is an important characteristic of the God of the universe. Then he says he's immortal or incorruptible depending on which translation you have. What does that mean? Is that significant? I mean, Paul seems to think it is, but... It's immeasurable and unchangeable. Okay. This is the part that is really, really important.

When I was a kid, we would drive in the car and my mom would often have the Christian radio station on and there was the Bible Answer Man. And while I don't agree with all of his theology, one of the things that really bothered me about the life of Christ is that he didn't ever sin. And of course I needed that now as an adult, I understand, but as a kid who got in trouble for sinning, it really bugged me.

It was like, come on! This is important! And people would call relatively regularly under his program and say, well what about this situation? Like when he was traveling with his family and then he stayed back at the temple and Joseph and Mary couldn't find him.

Was that sin? And so Dr. Barnes would go through and explain the why that wasn't sinful. But we need an immutable or unchanging God whose character is reliable. Yeah, the consequence of a mutable God rather than an immutable God is what we see around us in paganism. How many of you think Paul when he went into Mars Hill or the Areopagus, when he went there He was talking to these people who had numbers of gods, right?

When he went in there, he was saying, hey, here's this god, and he doesn't change. That would have got their attention. Oh, really? He doesn't change? Yeah, yeah. This is the unnamed god. Let me tell you about him. And that got their attention. But God's eternal, immortal justice is an important part of his character.

But he says invisible, and I think this one's kind of fun just because in the world we like, and have any of you kept up with the news, there's actually militaries developed invisibility cloaks. They actually work, supposedly. I've never seen one work, but I guess if it was working, I wouldn't know that I saw it work, right? Huh? Oh, that's a good point.

But that's really hiding the visible, but it is not something that is technically invisible. God is technically invisible, because he's spirit, right? He is not... God the Father is not of physical form. Who was of physical form? Christ. So Christ comes as physical form, and that's an important quality there. In fact, Colossians 115 tells us explicitly that Christ came the physical form of God. And then Paul says the only God, and of course that's really important.

Hinduism, what does Hinduism teach us that we should do as beings and entities in this universe? Does anybody know? Hinduism actually teaches that you should construct your own gods. So not only is there more than one God in Hinduism, there's many, many of them, some of them are more important culturally than others, but you're supposed to make up your own God.

If you've heard of Deepak Chopra, who's a spiritual teacher, I didn't say that because he's such a sham, but he teaches all kinds of things and he talks about God being a woman and how we're supposed to please God and he gets all kinds of weird things out of it. He's constructed his own God. And he's constructed multiple deities. Paul says there's only one. And of course, if you came from a polytheistic or a pagan culture, this is going to be an important doctrine. And he says, honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. So, this is one of those verses that I wish was in a song. It's not in a song that I know of, but... What's that? This verse. Is this in a song? Yes. Oh, good. Have we sung it before and I don't remember? It goes, uh... Now on into the kingdom of eternal. I do know this song. There is no soul invisible. The only wise God. Be honored and gloried forever and ever. Amen. Amen, the honor and glory forever and ever, amen. We're going to have to do that song.

It's a round. It's a round. We might have to do that next week, because I get to do music. It's a round, it's a round. There we go. Because it's such a rich song. Obviously we've been over the points in it quickly. But it's a rich song and it's worth being able to walk around and sing and remind yourself and others of. So Paul keeps writing to Timothy, and I often wonder why verse and chapter breaks happen where they do, because it feels like after Amen, that should be the end of chapter 1.

We should be picking up on chapter 2 right now, but we're not. We have 18, 19, and 20 to cover. And they're kind of a transitional He says, This command I entrust to you, Timothy my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Himenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.

So, I told you that I really liked the book of 1 Timothy. When I was a teenager, I read this and I thought Timothy was more young than he technically was when he received this. It wasn't until later that I learned that he was in his late thirties probably when when this book was written. So I always envisioned him as this maybe late teens, early 20s guy, because Paul said, don't let anyone look down on you for being young.

And I just took that to heart. I thought, oh, this is, oh, I felt so kindred to Timothy. But because of that, I'm going somewhere. Because of that, I actually went to the elders of the church we were going to at the time. And I said, oh, will you pray over me? Because I really wanted some kind of prophecy like Timothy had. in my life. I thought maybe the elders will pray over me and one of them will have some great prophecy and it'll be awesome. So they prayed over me, they did, and nobody prophesied anything.

So I can't tell you that I have some special ministry like Timothy. Isn't that unfortunate? Don't you feel let down? But even though I felt let down, the truth of the matter is that Paul had a special relationship with Timothy, who had a special relationship with the starting of the church.

And he had this special prophecy. But we don't, or prophecies, we don't know specifically and literally what they were. Which was kind of a bummer for me, because I always wanted to know, what was it? We had this thing prophesied over him. What was the list? Because then I could hope that someone would pray that over me, right?

But Paul mentions these prophecies twice, he mentions them here and also in chapter 4 verse 14, that he had these prophecies concerning him. It is clear that since Paul is encouraging him to be faithful in his walk, that these prophecies at least implied some sort of pastoral teaching and church establishing impact.

At least it seems reasonable that that would be the conclusion we can draw. That's why Paul tells him that he needs to keep fighting the good fight, and keep the faith, and be conscious of functions. So let's ask this important question. When you look at this, Paul says that you do these things that are in accordance with the prophecy that we're given. Is Paul giving Timothy legalism? You've got to do this. Here's your checklist.

Otherwise, who knows? Maybe you're not going to fulfill the prophecies and the prophecies will be wrong. Is Paul worried about that? Again, one of the technical problems with prophecies is if you miss it, then it's a false prophecy and you've got a bad source of prophecy. So, you've got to watch out for those things. But Paul's not concerned about Timothy actually failing to fulfill the prophecies that were given.

But he wants him to fight the good fight. How many of you here fight the good fight in secular contexts? I hear it pretty regularly, and maybe it was used in the Roman culture normally outside of Paul, and I don't actually have that information from my own studying. So maybe fight the good fight was normal. Everybody said that all the time. But it always reminds me of this passage when I hear someone use it in a secular context, especially lately with all the political warfare going on over the budget and all kinds of other things. Oh, we need to stand up for our political agenda and fight the good fight.

I'm going to go throw up somewhere. This is disgusting because Paul is talking about spiritual things and he's talking about the Holy Spirit indwelling Timothy and working out through him in a rich way that's going to impact the body and these guys just want to have their name remembered in history. They want to be remembered as the guy or the gal who actually brought about the change in the U.S. government that was so important and changed the whole world. But that's not the context here.

And he says, keeping faith in the good conscience. We're going to take a look at Titus chapter 1 in more depth down the road, but let's just turn to Titus chapter 1, 9. He says, the Greek is of a similar root there, he says, holding fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching, so that you will be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict. And this is of course talking about elders. But holding fast and keeping the faith are an important doctrinal point. that are for elders as leadership, but also for the body. He's talking to Timothy that he would have this, but it's going to come down as we continue to study through 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus, that these are core values. These are core characteristics of a believer who is maturing and walking in the Spirit.

But then Paul, he takes us down this rabbit trail, where he's talking about the people who shipwrecked. Who suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. So the question that we have to ask is, were these people, and he lists Ammonias and Alexander, were they believers at one point in time? And it appears that they were believers, but they walked away from the faith. And they shipwrecked. And that shipwrecking is something that really gets people caught up.

How many of you are familiar with Calvinism? Some hands. Calvinism is a whole construct of theology that's way more robust and complex than I want to get into for this morning's class. One of the tenets of Calvinism is called Perseverance of the Saints. And they'll take you to a few passages and say, Perseverance of the Saints. And they'll usually go to 1 John, that's a good place to go. And they'll say, if you're a believer, you're going to stick it out and never walk away from the Lord.

But Paul, he mentions here that these people shipwrecked and he handed them over to Satan so that they would see that this was the error of blasphemy. And here's the tough question. Does he say that they are not safe? He doesn't say that. In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul talks to the church there, he says, hey, you got this guy who's sleeping with his father's wife, which even the Gentiles don't do, that's pretty wicked.

But he says, I give such a one over to Satan for the burning of the flesh. I think my dad has put it well, he says that some people are going to get into heaven naked and smoking. The works of the flesh will be burned away, but their salvation is not lost. And so, one of the things that's important here is that we see that these people who are shipwrecked are not necessarily going to hell. And that's the thing that someone would on a quick reading possibly walk away from this and say, oh, these people lost their salvation.

Well, otherwise there wouldn't be ongoing teaching, so they'll be taught, not like he's given up on them, right? That he's going to continue to... Well, and the thing is that they've walked away and they've actually persecuted Paul in his ministry. There's some cross-references there for He says Alexander hurt him badly.

That just breaks my heart from 2,000 years later that somebody would hurt the Apostle Paul. recognizes identification, which I think is another, again, we have this problem with, if identification is true, then loss of salvation is a really big deal.

Because suddenly you're unidentified. And if this is possible, you'd think Paul would cover that pretty explicitly. But he never talks about unidentification. He does not get to see it without having the will to see it. He gives a reason for that. for a specific, it seems to me that that's a specific purpose.

Many of them, they are capable of learning, changing, being taught. And I think that's kind of where we are, too, sometimes. We need to do it more. We need to get our abilities and network teachable. And it wants us to be taught. that running alongside that point earlier that we looked at he said that the Lord was patient in verse 16 Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who believe in him for eternal life and God's patience is phenomenal his merciful response is phenomenal.

Now, that being said, I have on here, should we hand people over to Satan as believers? Is that an apostolic decision to hand somebody over to Satan? The truth of the matter is that the flesh is going to run headlong. If somebody is walking in the flesh, the flesh is going to run headlong into the burning of the flesh. It's going to happen. Paul does this as an apostle, but nowhere does he commend that we would do the same. I did this, but he doesn't say you do this.

Coming from a charismatic background, One of the things that's really interesting in Charismatic Theology is that the text of Scripture in historical context becomes a springboard for something that you can do. So if Paul gave such a one over to Satan, or Alexander and Ananias over to Satan, then maybe you should give people over to Satan. That's not what he's instructing us to do, but Charismatic, and frankly, in lots of circles that are within the church, if they have not been taught careful study and exposition of God's word, they're just, oh, Paul did it, I must need to do it. I'm an imitator of Paul, right? We looked at that passage, ah, I'm an imitator. First Corinthians 11.

But that's not what he's calling this to. I have on here one last question. What causes the shipwreck for the believer? There's multiple causes. The world around us is really trying hard to woo us back to worldly thinking. It's going to be through philosophy, it'll be through legalism, it'll be through any number of things that are distractants, that draw us away from things.

Marketing, there's some interesting, this is such a rabbit trail so I'll be quick. interesting writing has been done and research has been done, basically marketing went to the cults, there are groups within marketing circles, that went to the cults to discover what are the psychological tricks that the cults are doing and executing to get people to be just locked into their cult. And they've been trying to figure out how to bring that into marketing so that you will only buy this brand of product.

Listen, I only buy cotton mail because my bottom is worth cotton mail because I have bought into the cult of cotton mail. Who cares? I mean, it's going to go flushing down the toilet. In the grand scheme of things, some people don't even have toilet paper. But we have this cult mindset that gets brought in and we market it.

We market, Hey, you shouldn't be a Christian. I was telling my dad earlier, somebody online had said with this shooting, or shootings, and the explosion in Oslo, that the guy said, oh, if a Muslim had done it, every Muslim in the world would be expected to say, oh, that's not what Islam is supposed to do. But when Christians, because this guy apparently said he was a Christian on Facebook, which is the authority of all spiritual truth, right? then all Christians just go, oh no, he's just a nut, and he's acting alone, and this isn't our doctrine. And he was trying to draw out some kind of disparity that was there.

But the world has bought into religion as a brand. You're a Christian, okay, you fit into this niche. Oh, you're Muslim, you fit into this niche. You're Hindu, or whatever else. And they're all just multiple choices, like it's the difference between picking you know, an HP or a Dell or a Lenovo laptop or a Toshiba. It's all pretty much the same thing, right? Down on Windows. It's all a religion. And it's erroneous. Anyways, the world tries to shipwreck us through philosophy and marketing and shipwreck us and draw us away from our life. Who's our life? It's Christ. He's the one that can fulfill in us the thing that He has set aside for us to do as believers while we're here on this earth until we get to be called into heavenly places with Him, positionally and conditionally. Any other thoughts or questions? Things that you wish I'd covered or had never said? I guess your question about what's the value Oh yeah, I didn't ask that one. If grace covers all sins, what's the value of the clear conscience?

Or, let me put it this way, does Romans 6.1 apply? 6.1 and 2?

Let's go back there and read it and see what Paul says about grace and a clear conscience. He says, what shall we say then, are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be, how shall we who died to sin still live in it? So a clear conscience is one that knows that we're swimming in grace, but we're not swimming in grace because we walked in sin, but we're swimming in grace because we walked in spirit. So the value of a clear conscience is one that is walking in fellowship with the Lord. And so that's the answer to that question. Is the value of a clear conscience when we're walking in grace is that we are walking in fellowship, or have the potential to be walking in fellowship. Even though if we screwed up, grace covers it.

There's no sin that is too big. And I thought we couldn't always trust our conscience. A clean conscience is not the same as Jiminy Cricket. to put it in there, it would just give me crickets is Pinocchio's conscience, right? But a clean conscience is one that knows that I have not walked in unrighteousness. But trusting our conscience is the principle of looking to my own self for moral judgment rather than walking in the spirit.

Does that make sense? All right, any other thoughts, questions, disagreements? All right. Well, let's close in prayer and we'll be done. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the truth in your word. Thank you that we have your Holy Spirit to guide us and lead us as we walk in the truths that you revealed. Lord, I just want to pray that as we go throughout the week, we would be reminded of your eternal attributes and your perfect infinite attributes and that also Lord we would be aware of things that are trying to shipwreck us in our faith and instead we would be walking in the truth of your spirit. Thank you in Jesus name. Amen.