1 Timothy 1:15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Let us begin by thinking what St. Paul could possibly mean by calling himself "the chief of sinners." We know very well that he did not mean, that, either before his conversion or since, his life had been anything but most decorous and respectable. "Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God unto this day." And, in writing to friends, he could describe himself in those early years before his conversion, as "touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless." It is equally certain that he did not mean that his life had ever been careless, and thoughtless, and worldly. He speaks of himself in one of his Epistles as "profiting," that is, making progress, "in the Jews' religion above many my equals," that is, my cotemporaries. He had also been a very religious man; religious after a wrong pattern of religion, it is true, but still thoroughly and ardently religious after the common type and pattern of the day. And yet this man of blameless life and strict religion, writing quietly in advancing years to a favourite friend and pupil, can speak of himself as the "chief of sinners." What can he mean by such language? One thing is already quite clear. St. Paul must have thought of sin in a way very different from that in which most of us are in the habit of thinking of it. To us, the "chief of sinners" would be a man of utterly profligate and vicious life, who had broken the commandments of God in the most reckless and high-handed way. And so little does our notion of "the chief of sinners" agree with what we know about St. Paul, that, when he calls himself so, while we admire his humility, we barely give him credit for sincerity. He can scarcely have meant it, we think. But I am sure we shall make a great mistake, if we resolve that "I am chief" of our text into a passing pang of pain, shot into his mind by the sudden recollection of those old days, when, as the historian says, "he made havoc of the Church," and "breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord." None of us would dream of denying the fact of our sinfulness. That we are sinners we all confess. But the confession is often a very hollow one; means very little; means often only this — that we know we are not perfect, but we believe we are not worse than most people, and are a good deal better than some, and may reasonably expect to do well enough at the last. That St. Paul should speak of himself as the "chief of sinners," seems to persons, who are thinking thus of sin and meaning no more than this by their confession of sinfulness, only an outrageous extravagance of language — a temporary fit of morbid self-reproach. We may be quite sure of this, that so long as we go on comparing ourselves with other people, and judging other people, we shall never come to any real sense of sin, or to any. true penitence for it, or to any heartfelt desire for its forgiveness. Such comparison of ourselves with others is utterly false and misleading. Neither must we rest satisfied with judging ourselves by any external standard or rule of life, whether it be the law of God, or the law and custom and fashion of the society of which we are members. We may be models of propriety; exemplary in every department of conduct and life. And yet that may be true of us, which Jesus said was true of the religious world of His own day: "This people honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me." For indeed, this terrible matter of sin goes far deeper than outward conduct. Outward conduct may reveal the depths of sin within, may reveal them to the man himself, as well as to the world around. But no outward conduct is a measure of sin. Judged by outward conduct one would have said of St. Paul, that he was as near perfection as a man could be. At this point of our inquiry we must try to get nearer, if we can, to St. Paul's experience. The recollection of those old persecuting days was lying very heavily on his conscience, when he wrote the words of our text; not heavily in the sense of making his forgiveness doubtful, but heavily in the sense of revealing the possibilities of sin within. When he came to himself in the moment of his conversion, the fact that he had been a persecutor of the disciples of Christ, fancying all the while that he was doing God's service, must have made the first rude breach in the self-righteousness of Saul the Pharisee. Time and thought would only enlarge that breach and make it more practicable. If he had deceived himself so grossly once, fancying that to be right and virtuous which was so manifestly wrong and wicked, why not again? It is often such a rude shock as this to vanity and self-confidence that marks an epoch in a man's spiritual life, awakening, and ultimately transforming him. In this way it is that "men may," and often do, "rise by stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things." We must learn humility. We must learn the bitter lesson of self-distrust. No true progress is possible until this lesson has been learned. Along with this experience — perhaps as part of it — there went another. It was part of the sorrow and humiliation of Saul's conversion, that it revealed to him the painful fact, that his life and work had been set hitherto in a wrong direction; that he must break with his past, and begin all over again; that he had not only missed the mark, but had been aiming at a wrong one. Steadily did he set himself, nobly and courageously, to retrieve the past; to undo what he had done, and to do the very opposite. And again and again that old past rose up against him, to make the new course more difficult. In this way, I fancy — or in some such way as this (for who are we, that we should dare to gauge the experience of a Paul?) — he seems to have come to those deeper views of sin, with which his letters are pervaded. Our English word "sin" suggests little or nothing of itself to us; but the Greek equivalent, certainly, and, I think, the Hebrew also, have their meaning printed broadly and legibly upon them. To "sin" in those languages, is to miss the mark; to fall short of the mark; to go wide of the mark; to fail; to come short of the true standard. Now the moment we lay hold of this, as the deepest meaning and real essence of sin, that moment self-righteousness becomes impossible to us. There may be those here, who cannot bring the sense of sin home to their consciences with any keenness, so long as sin is regarded merely as "transgression of law"; so innocent and blameless have their lives been. But let them think of "sin" in this deeper, truer aspect, as missing the mark, failing to be that, which it is in us to be, and which God by His Spirit and His Providence is calling us to be, and who can hold out against the conviction, that he is in very truth a sinner, and a very grievous sinner, if not the very chief of sinners? And this sense of sin will become deeper, and this confession of sin will become more penitent and genuine, in proportion as we pass out of our natural darkness into the light of God, and begin to discern more clearly what our true standard is, and what our gifts and capacities are: what it is in us to be, and what God is seeking to make of us. The greater the gifts and capacities and endowments, the more keen will be the sense of failure and shortcoming. Such reflections as these, honestly pursued, cannot fail, to use St. Paul's expressive phrase, to "conclude us all under sin"; to bring the weight and pressure of a genuine sense of sin to bear upon us all. Now, however painful this may be, it is unquestionably the first step in the right direction. We cannot become what God would make us until we are made deeply and sincerely conscious of sin and infirmity, of unworthiness and unprofitableness. But we must not leave the subject so. St. Paul could never leave it so. His own personal confession of sin, deep and contrite as it is, is set in the midst of a burst of triumphant hope. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." Yes — "sinners of whom I am chief"; but then "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," and, therefore, to save me. (D. J. Vaughan, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. |
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