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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - 1 Timothy 1:20 - 1:20
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That is, of the number of those who have made shipwreck of faith and a good conscience are these two men. They made shipwreck of faith. But how: by renouncing Christianity expressly? No, but implicitly, by denying the resurrection, and maintaining such doctrines as utterly subverted and totally overthrew the faith.
Whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.
That is, whom I have inflicted the church's censure of excommunication upon, cast them out of the church, and delivered to Satan as God's executioner, who oft-times tormented the person with greivous diseases and bodily pains, called elsewhere, the destruction of the flesh, 1Co_5:5
Learn hence, That excommunication rightly administered is a very solemn ordinance, a shutting out of heaven him who is justly cast out of the church's communion here on earth.
But observe, The charitable intention of the apostle in denouncing this sentence of excommunication; it was, That they might learn not to blaspheme.
Mark, it was none of Satan's desire, but the apostle's that they might learn not to blaspheme. Satan was then God's executioner, when the church wanted the countenance of the Christian magistrate; and his design was destruction, but the apostle's was reformation; not to ruin, but reclaim.
Learn, That the end of the church's censure, in particular if excommunication, is not to serve to the destruction of the censured, much less to the private revenge of the censurer; but to reform and reclaim the offender, that others may be warned, and the infection stayed: Of whom is Hymeneus and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.