1 Timoteo 1:13-14

‘However that may be I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord abounded exceedingly with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.’

But he points out that however badly he had behaved, he had obtained mercy. That was the wonder of it to him. The God and the Lord to Whom he had refused to listen had shown him mercy. But nevertheless notice his caveat. It was because he had done it ignorantly in unbelief. He was insisting that he had not committed open, deliberate sin against what he knew to be right. He had not ‘sinned with a high hand’. He had actually been wanting to serve God, but his mind had been twisted. He had just got it wrong. He is not, however, by that justifying himself. He knew that in trying to serve God he had actually gone against all that God stood for. His own attitude had been in flagrant contrast with what God required. So he recognised only too well the depth of mercy that he had needed, and that he had had to be ‘engulfed in mercy’ (eleethen), for in the end all unbelief results from a rebellious heart which refuses to respond to God’s revelation constantly given to it (see for example Romans 1:19). Note also what ‘unbelief’ meant. It was his ‘not believing in Christ’ that represented unbelief, even though outwardly among his fellows he had a reputation for ‘loving God’. For to Paul any position outside of believing in Christ is ‘unbelief’. It is to reject God’s clear revelation. He is thus saying that it is not enough to have ‘sincere faith’, for he had had that, but that it must be faith in what was true, in ‘Christ Jesus’.

And the result of God’s mercy was that ‘the grace of our Lord abounded exceedingly with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.’ Here ‘our Lord’ is Jesus Himself. Paul is numbering himself with God’s true people as seeing Jesus as ‘Lord’. And he is stressing that the free, unmerited love and favour of our Lord, Christ Jesus, abounded towards him, bringing with it both faith and love which is in Him. The recognition of Jesus as Lord had transformed him. Thus the source of all Paul’s faith and love was Christ Jesus Who in wondrous mercy had worked it within him. He had been a man without love. And he was what he was now because of Him. We can almost hear him whispering in a hushed voice, ‘Amazing grace, how deep the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.’