NOTES for Ti1 1:8-14

Paul illustrates his words about the Torah, which leads the righteous to Christ and into the Kingdom, with the example of his own life. Speaking about his life before his conversion, Paul acknowledges that he was a persecutor of Christians, something that, of course, was known to everyone who knew the apostle. But by his own words, he was then just as sincere as he later was after his conversion to Christ, and he became a persecutor of the faithful solely out of ignorance (vv. 12-14). As we can see, in what concerns following the Torah, sincerity and faithfulness to what the person on the path considers right turn out to be the main thing for the apostle. This is not surprising: for the righteous person, what matters above all is spiritual integrity, which is manifested first of all at the level of the will, in the ability and readiness to make the right choice, to make decisions and follow them. Without such spiritual integrity, normal spiritual life is impossible in principle, as, for that matter, is any life at all. As for mistakes, when spiritual life is healthy, God can always correct them by showing the seeker the right path. That is exactly what He did with Paul, arranging for him on the Damascus road a meeting with the Risen One that overturned the future apostle's whole life.

Paul, as we can see, turned out to be spiritually ready for such a meeting. This is not, of course, about his expecting anything of the kind: in that sense, the meeting with the Risen One contradicted all his views and convictions. But he was ready in the sense that he resolved to part with them as soon as it became clear to him where the path of righteousness, leading into the Kingdom, now lay. The apostle has no illusions at all about his own sinfulness: he understands perfectly well that turning to Christ, and even the experience of the Kingdom, did not make him sinless; even now, years after his conversion, he continues to call himself a sinner, and of course this is not about what he did before, when he was a persecutor of the Church, but about what he knows himself to be now, already a witness of Christ and of the Kingdom (v. 15). But he knows something else as well, what all the righteous of all times have known: righteousness is not sinlessness, but the ability and readiness to follow God and bear witness to Him despite one's own sinfulness. For Paul, bearing witness to God means, of course, above all bearing witness to his meeting with Christ and to the experience of the Kingdom that was opened to him during that meeting and later, in the course of his apostolic ministry. And, of course, he understands perfectly well that without the direct participation of the Savior Himself, nothing of the kind in his life would have existed or could have existed (v. 16). Paul demonstrates by his own example how God turns a sinner who is seeking the righteous path into an inhabitant of the Kingdom.

The great apostle to the Gentiles, who perhaps labored more than anyone so that you and I might receive the news of Christ, does not give himself top marks. He considers himself not a righteous man but a sinner—and the foremost of all sinners. He constantly offers his repentance to God and constantly gives thanks for His mercy. Even Paul's apostleship is not his own achievement, but a response to Christ's call and a manifestation of the power He bestowed. God stopped Paul while he was persecuting Christians; God forgave him and appointed him to serve; God granted him the grace of faith and love for Christ—and to God he gives glory. Should we not learn from Paul to see these two things at once: our own sinfulness and God's perfect holiness?

The Epistle to Timothy is a letter written to a disciple and friend by a teacher awaiting death. Paul instructs Timothy and tries to protect him and the communities entrusted to him from temptations and troubles. The first part of the Epistle immediately introduces us to the Apostle's concerns. He tries to convey in words what is both simplest and most difficult in Christianity. The essential thing is living faith as trust in God and constant communion with Christ: living faith, not a legal code; life, not a set of rules; Jesus, not debates about who is related to whom, who has seniority, who is a sinner, and who is righteous. Before speaking about practical life and how Christian communities can and should be organized, Paul immediately reminds us that the chief and most important things are love from a pure heart and sincere faith.

As he begins his letter to Timothy, Paul mentions certain people who, judging from his words, were trying in the church at Ephesus to act as teachers of the Torah while, in essence, not understanding what the Torah is and why it was given by God to His people (vv. 3-7). It is hard to say exactly which "genealogies" the apostle mentions, but judging by the context, one can suppose that he is speaking about the genealogies of the Pentateuch, which occur there in great number. Considering that some of them are legendary, while the history of others is lost in the depth of the ages, it is no surprise that endless disputes, judging from Paul's words, were stirred up by discussion of this topic. Meanwhile, according to the apostle's testimony, the Torah is needed not for exercises in theology and not for discussions that in the end give no one anything spiritually, only arousing passions and perhaps even quarrels. Paul once again reminds us that the Torah is the instrument of a practitioner, not a theorist, a practitioner who needs a spiritual compass on the road to the Kingdom. It is not by chance that he says the Torah is needed not by the righteous person but by the sinner (vv. 8-11).

Of course, in this case he is speaking only about one aspect of the Torah, connected with the knowledge of one's own sinfulness; the apostle does not consider its other aspects. But, as we can see, without fully recognizing and grasping this function of the Torah, it was impossible to move further; it was impossible to speak about the inner Torah with those for whom the importance of keeping the commandments was not obvious. Meanwhile, in the church at Ephesus there were, apparently, certain "theorists" of the Torah who, perhaps having heard something about the inner Torah and lofty theological matters, decided that perfection in spiritual life could be attained by theoretically studying what, without practice, is not assimilated and brings no benefit. And Paul, as we can see, calls those carried away by this kind of "spiritual" theorizing to leave their theories behind and finally learn to keep the commandments, without which one cannot enter the Kingdom. And life itself in the Kingdom is not theory but practice. Practice which, like all real life, cannot be reduced to any theoretical concepts, however clever.