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These verses are occupied with a description of what God's dispensation was meant to produce, and indicate how it came to pass that many failed of it. "The commandment" or charge which Timothy had received had this as its end or purpose — the promotion of "love out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." By love is meant the right relation of the whole nature both to God and to man; for love to man is in the highest sense a consequent of love to God.

I. THREE CONDITIONS Of this love are specified.

1. A pure heart. This is essential to any vision of God. Unless we are purified our affections will naturally fasten upon selfish objects, or even upon those which are evil.

2. A good conscience is often insisted upon in Scripture as one of the inestimable blessings enjoyed by God's children. Conscience is the activity of consciousness towards the ethical aspect of things. But conscience is "good" if it is healed and purged by the Saviour's touch; if, instead of condemning us, it gives us confidence towards God; if it is reliable and unbiassed in its decision on all questions brought before its tribunal; and if it not only directs the will, but spurs it into instant activity.

3. Faith unfeigned is the third condition of God-accepted love. Though mentioned last, "faith" is the germ grace — the seed principle. To us fallen men there is no way to a "good conscience" and a "pure heart" but that of "faith" in Jesus Christ — that faculty which, laying hold of Him the Mediator, brings us into fellowship with God and all unseen realities. The apostle now turns from the conditions of love to —

II. ITS COUNTERFEITS, exhibited in those who, professing to aim at it, miss their mark and swerve aside to "vain janglings" — that is, to empty talking and disputation. Too often the Church has had members who have been destitute of moral and spiritual perceptivity, but have made themselves at home in speculations and controversies. And the worst tempers are to be found among the members of the more talkative and disputatious sects. Paul heartily abhorred "vain babbling" — talk on religious subjects which was sometimes made a substitute for holy living; and in the Epistle to Titus, as well as here, some sharp sternwords are uttered against it. False teaching is not to be lightly regarded or easily welcomed, as if it could have no evil effect on moral and spiritual life. For example, the philosophy of materialism, which represents our thoughts and affections as nothing but the emanations of movements in our physical bodies and brains, is ultimately destructive of moral responsibility and of belief in a coming immortality. "Continue thou in the things wherein thou hast been taught." Do not foolishly give up the faith which was associated with all that was sacred in your childhood. Remember that there is a sphere of existence outside the range of your senses, beyond the proof of your reason, of which you know nothing unless you accept the glimpses given of it in this Divine revelation. Beware lest, like these Ephesian heretics, you swerve from the faith, having turned aside unto vain jangling.

(A. Rowland, LL. B.)

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KJV: Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:

WEB: but the goal of this command is love, out of a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith;