Paul’s story is my story. I, too, was captured by incredible grace. My primary purpose is to be filled with God’s love. 

My prayer is that Jesus can use me as a pattern for others who would believe in Him for eternal life.

Paul begins his letter to Timothy and the Church, saying, “The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). 

Jesus fulfilled all the Law by His act of love on the Cross. Like Him, we fulfill all the law when we love each other deeply with a pure heart, a clean conscience, and the truths of our faith.

Paul continued with a warning about what he was seeing as a result of gross errors being taught. 

Some had missed the whole point. They had turned away from the essentials and spent their time on meaningless discussions and speculations that amounted to nothing more than empty words. 

They presumed to be expert teachers of the Law, but didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about. They were dogmatic about peripheral issues. They simply loved to argue.

The moral code of the Law was beautiful when applied as God intended—but the Law was established to bring conviction of sin to the evildoers and rebellious, the sinners without God, the vicious and perverse. The Law identified them as murderers, rapists, sexually impure, homosexuals, slave traders, liars, promise breakers, and all who oppose the teaching of godliness and purity in the Church (see vs. 6-11).

Paul continues by telling his personal testimony. He too used to be a blasphemer, a persecutor of believers, a scorner of what turned out to be true. God knew he was ignorant and didn’t know what he was doing. Jesus the Messiah came into the world to bring sinners back to life, like him, the worst sinner of all.

Then Paul said, I was captured by such incredible grace. Now, Jesus could use me as a pattern for every person who would believe in Him for eternal life (see vs. 13-16).