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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadEzekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - 1 Timothy 2:7 - 2:7
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Ver. 7. The apostle here introduces his own relation to this testimony-bearing: Whereunto I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I speak the truth, (The received text has å ̓ í ×ñéóôù ͂ͅ but it is wanting in the best MSS., A, D, F, G, also It. Vulg. Syr. Cop. versions, and is therefore justly omitted by Tisch, and others.) I lie not), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. This personal asseveration, which seems at first thought peculiarly strong for the occasion, especially in an epistle addressed to his bosom companion and associate Timothy, we must remember, is brought in as an important part of the evidence which existed for the universal aspect and bearing of the gospel, in its character as a remedial scheme for the salvation of all who were willing to accept it. The position and calling he had received in the church of Christ had nothing partial, nothing exclusive about it. More even than any or all the original delegates of Christ, he was a witness to the universality of Christ’s overtures of mercy, having been appointed a herald to proclaim everywhere the glad tidings; a herald even of the highest rank—an apostle (however some of a grudging or contentious spirit might dispute his authority, he at least will hold fast to it, as a fact written in the depths of his spiritual consciousness, and will have Timothy also to assert it); and as an apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. In this his declaration respecting himself reaches its proper climax, announcing as it does his destination to labour among the Gentiles—the far off, the aliens—as the more special objects of his apostolic agency, and signalizing faith and truth as the elements in which it was to move, the prominent characteristics of the spirit in which he was to teach, and the subjects he was to handle. If emphatically faithful and true in the testimony he was called to give concerning God, how could he be otherwise in what he delivered concerning himself? Self, however, was not an object of concern with him, except in so far as it bore on the nature of the mission he was appointed to fulfil, and the gloriously free and world-embracing character of the interests it sought to promote. But both were of a piece; the one was the proper image and reflex of the other. In principle, we have the same mode of representation at 2Co_1:18-20. Taking this view of the passage, I would discard as very needless questions, whether the expressions faith and truth are to be taken both objectively, or the former only (with Huther and Ellicott) objectively, and the latter subjectively. In an experimental utterance of this kind, in which the internal and the external necessarily go together, it is hypercritical, and can serve no good purpose, to draw such distinctions.