from which things some, having missed the mark, have turned away to vain talking,
Parallel Translations
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from which things some, having missed the mark, have turned away to vain talking,
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from the which thinges some have erred and have turned vnto vayne iangelinge
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From the which things some haue erred, and haue turned vnto vaine iangling.
Cross-references (8)
Passages linked to 1 Timothy 1:6 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Titus 1:10 For there are also many unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision,
- 2 Timothy 2:23-24 But refuse foolish and ignorant questionings, knowing that they generate strife. The Lord’s servant must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all, able to teach, patient,
- 1 Timothy 6:20-21 Timothy, guard that which is committed to you, turning away from the empty chatter and oppositions of what is falsely called knowledge, which some profess, and thus have wandered from the faith. Grace be with you. Amen.
- Titus 3:9 but shun foolish questionings, genealogies, strife, and disputes about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain.
- 1 Timothy 5:15 For already some have turned away after Satan.
- 2 Timothy 2:18 men who have erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past, and overthrowing the faith of some.
- 2 Timothy 4:10 for Demas left me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia; and Titus to Dalmatia.
- 1 Timothy 6:4-5 he is conceited, knowing nothing, but obsessed with arguments, disputes, and word battles, from which come envy, strife, insulting, evil suspicions, constant friction of people of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. Withdraw yourself from such.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (15 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 6 From which some having gone astray He continues…
6 From which some having gone astray He continues to pursue the metaphor of an object or end; for the verb ἀστοχεῖν, the participle of which is here given, signifies to err or go aside from a mark.
Have turned aside to idle talking This is a remarkable passage, in which he condemns for “idle talking” all the doctrines which do not aim at this single end, and at the same time points out that the views and thoughts of all who aim at any other object vanish away. It is, indeed, possible that useless trifles may be regarded by many persons with admiration; but the statement of Paul remains unshaken, that everything that does not edify in godliness is ματαιολογία, “idle talking.” We ought; therefore to take the greatest possible care not to seek anything in the holy and sacred word of God but solid edification, lest otherwise he inflict on us severe punishment for abusing it.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain That which he spake before generally of vain and…
That which he spake before generally of vain and curious controversies, he applieth to them, which pretending a zeal of the Law, dwelled upon outward things, and never made an end of babbling of foolish trifles.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 6 From which some having swerved have turned aside…
6 From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling;
Ver. 6. Some having swerved] αστοχησαντες. "Having missed the mark," as unskilful shooters, being "heavenly wide," as Sir Philip Sidney translateth that proverb, Toto errant caelo.
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Having turned aside unto vain jangling] Ignoble quarrels, ubi vincere inglorium est, atteri sordidum, wherein a man cannot quit himself so as to come off with credit or comfort. (Mr Burroughs.) Mr Deal never loved to meddle with controversies of the times; he gave that reason, he found his heart the worse when he did. Grinseus, provoked by Pistorius to dispute, sent back the letters (not so much as opening the seal) with this answer out of Chrysostom, Inhonestum est, honestam matronam cum meretrice litigare, It is no honour for an honest matron to scold with a harlot. (Melch. Adam.) {See Trapp on "1Ti 1:4"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain From which some having swerved,.... The apostle, in this…
From which some having swerved,.... The apostle, in this verse and the next, describes the persons he suspected of teaching other doctrines, and of introducing fables and endless genealogies; they were such who departed from the above things; they erred from the commandment, or law, notwithstanding their great pretensions to a regard unto it; at least they missed the mark, the end and design of it; they went astray from that, and instead of promoting charity or love, created feuds, contentions, and divisions in the churches; and were far from having a pure heart, being filthy dreamers, and sensual persons, destitute of the Spirit of God, and were such who put away a good conscience, and made shipwreck of faith: such were Hymenaeus, Philetus, Alexander, and others, of whom he also says, they
have turned aside to vain jangling; which he elsewhere calls empty talk, and vain babblings, Ti1 6:20, from the solid doctrines of the Gospel, and a solid way of handling them, they turned to vain, idle, useless, and unprofitable subjects of discourse, and to treating upon subjects in a vain, jejune, and empty manner; entertaining their hearers with foolish and trifling questions and answers to them about the law, and with strifes about words, which were unserviceable and unedifying; they were unruly and vain talkers, Tit 1:10.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain From which - Love and a good conscience. Some…
From which - Love and a good conscience. Some are turned aside - An affectation of high and extensive knowledge sets a man at the greatest distance from faith, and all sense of divine things. To vain jangling - And of all vanities, none are more vain than dry, empty disputes on the things of God.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 6. From which some having swerved] From which…
Verse 6. From which some having swerved] From which some, though they have pretended to aim at the τελος, scope, or mark, have missed that mark. This is the import of the original word αστοχησαντες.
Turned aside unto vain jangling] The original term, ματαιολογιαν, signifies empty or vain talking; discourses that turn to no profit; a great many words and little sense; and that sense not worth the pains of hearing. Such, indeed, is all preaching where Jesus Christ is not held forth.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain From which some having swerved - Margin, “not aiming…
From which some having swerved - Margin, “not aiming at.” The word here used - ἀστοχέω astocheō - means properly, to miss the mark; to err; and then, to swerve from compare 1Ti 6:21; 2Ti 2:18. It does not mean that they had ever had that from which they are said to have swerved - for it does not follow that a man who misses a mark had ever hit it - but merely that they failed of the things referred to, and had turned to vain talk. The word “which” ὧν hōn, in the plural, refers not to the law, but to the things enumerated - a pure heart, a good conscience, and unfeigned faith.
Have turned aside unto vain jangling - Vain talk, empty declamation, discourses without sense. The word here used does not mean contention or strife, but that kind of discourse which is not founded in good sense. They were discourses on their pretended distinctions in the law; on their traditions and ceremonies; on their useless genealogies, and on the fabulous statements which they had appended to the law of Moses.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain From which--namely, from a pure heart, good conscience, and…
From which--namely, from a pure heart, good conscience, and faith unfeigned, the well-spring of love.
having swerved--literally, "having missed the mark (the 'end') to be aimed at." It is translated, "erred," Ti1 6:21; Ti2 2:18. Instead of aiming at and attaining the graces above named, they "have turned aside (Ti1 5:15; Ti2 4:4; Heb 12:13) unto vain jangling"; literally, "vain talk," about the law and genealogies of angels (Ti1 1:7; Tit 3:9; Tit 1:10); Ti1 6:20, "vain babblings and oppositions." It is the greatest vanity when divine things are not truthfully discussed (Rom 1:21) [BENGEL].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 6. Having swerved—The Greek, missing the mark, as an…
6. Having swerved—The Greek, missing the mark, as an archer. They undertook to hit the mark, the end, but were induced by the seductions of the fables and genealogies to waver and miss.
Jangling—This word, in which the sense is indicated by the sound, is suitably selected by our translators for a word not belonging to classic Greek, used by St. Paul to express contempt of the fables and genealogies with which the errorists were befooling themselves.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 6. from which] Plural from which things, that is…
6. from which] Plural from which things, that is the love and its threefold helpers, in the grace, the life, and the creed.
having swerved] Lit. ‘having missed the mark,’ another of the words peculiar to these epistles, occurring only ch. 1Ti_6:21 and 2Ti_2:18.
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vain jangling] empty talking; the word occurs in the adjective form once again, in the still stronger warning against the same class of teachers in Tit_1:10, where they are said to be mostly ‘of the Circumcision,’ and to give heed to ‘Jewish fables.’ The law of which they are setting themselves up to be teachers is of course the law of Moses, but corrupted by allegorical interpretations and philosophisings which whittled away the keen edge of its moral precepts and blunted all sense of the paramount necessity of holy living.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (6) From which some having swerved have turned aside.—This…
(6) From which some having swerved have turned aside.—This sentence is rendered more accurately: From which some, having gone wide in aim, have turned themselves aside. These words seem to tell us that these teachers had once been in the right direction, but had not kept in it; indeed, from the whole tenor of St. Paul’s directions to Timothy it is clear that these persons not only had been, but were still, reckoned among the Christian congregations of the Ephesian Church. The presiding presbyter appointed by St. Paul could have exercised no possible authority over any not reckoned in the Church’s pale.
Unto vain jangling.—These men, having missed the true aim of the commandment, have now turned themselves to vain, empty talking, which could lead to nothing except wranglings and angry disputations.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Which things for which, A.V; talking for jangling, A.V…
Which things for which, A.V; talking for jangling, A.V Having swerved (ajstochsantev); literally, having missed the mark, as in the margin. It is found in the New Testament only here and 1 Timothy 2Ti_2:18. In Ecc_7:19 (21, A.V) and 8:9 (11, A.V) it is used in a slightly different sense, "forego" and "miss." In Polybius and Plutarch repeatedly, "to miss the mark.... to fail," with the kindred astocov ajstocia astochma, These men missed the true end of the gospel purity of heart and conscience and life and only reached vain and boastful talking. Have turned aside (ejxetraphsan); 1Ti_5:15 1Ti_6:20; 2Ti_4:4; a); Heb_12:13; but not elsewhere in the New Testament. It is found in the active voice in the LXX, and is common in all voices in classical Greek. Vain talking (mataiologi) here only in the New Testament, and not feared in the LXX, but used by Strabo, Plutarch, and Porphyry. The adjective mataiologov is used in Tit_1:10, and applied especially to those "of the circumcision." The Latin equivalents are vaniloquus dud vaniloquium. Livy"s description of a vaniloquus is "Maria terrasque inani sonitu verborum complevit" (lib. 35:48; comp. Jud_1:16)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 6. From which some having swerved. From love based…
6. From which some having swerved. From love based on these three principles. Unto vain jangling. Are engaging in idle disputes.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain 1 Timothy
1 Timothy
THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT
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1Ti 1:6.
The Apostle has just said that he left Timothy in Ephesus, in order to check some tendencies there which were giving anxiety. Certain teachers had appeared, the effect of whose activity was to create parties, to foster useless speculations, and to turn the minds of the Ephesian Christians away from the practical and moral side of Christianity. In opposition to these, the Apostle here lays down the broad principle that God has spoken, not in order to make acute theologians, or to provide materials for controversy, but in order to help us to love. The whole of these latest letters of the Apostle breathe the mellow wisdom of old age, which has learned to rate brilliant intellectualism, agility, incontroversial fence and the like, far lower than homely goodness. And so, says Paul, ‘the end of the commandment is love.’
Now he here states, not only the purpose of the divine revelation, but gives us a summary, but yet sufficient, outline of the method by which God works towards that purpose. The commandment is the beginning, love is the end or aim. And between these two there are inserted three things, a ‘pure heart,’ a ‘good conscience,’ ‘faith unfeigned.’ Now of these three the two former are closely connected, and the third is the cause, or condition, of both of them. It is, therefore, properly named last as being first in order, and therefore last reached in analysis. When you track a stream from its mouth to its source, the fountain-head is the last thing that you come to. And here we have, as in these great lakes in Central Africa--out of which finally the Nile issues--the stages of the flow. There are the twin lakes, a ‘good conscience’ and a ‘pure heart.’ These come from ‘unfeigned faith,’ which lies higher up in the hills of God; and they run down into the love which is the ‘end of the commandment.’ The faith lays hold on the commandment, and so the process is complete. Or, if you begin at the top, instead of at the bottom, God gives the word; faith grasps the word, and thereby nourishes a ‘pure heart’ and a ‘good conscience,’ and thereby produces a universal love. So, then, we have three steps to look at here.
I. First of all, what God speaks to us for.
‘The end of the commandment is love.’
Now, I take it that the word ‘commandment’ here means, not this or that specific precept, but the whole body of Christian revelation, considered as containing laws for life. And to begin with, and only to mention, it is something to get that point of view, that all which God says, be it promise, be it self-manifestation, be it threatening, or be it anything else, has a preceptive bearing, and is meant to influence life and conduct. I shall have a word or two more to say about that presently, but note, just as we go on, how remarkable it is, and how full of lessons, if we will ponder it, that one name for the Gospel on the lips of the man who had most to say about the contrast between Gospel and Law is ‘commandment.’ Try to feel the stringency of that aspect of evangelical truth and of Christian revelation.
Then I need not remind you how here the indefinite expression ‘love’ must be taken, as I think is generally the case in the New Testament, when the object on which the love rests is not defined, as including both of the twin commandments, of which the second, our Master says, is like unto the first, love to God and love to man. In the Christian idea these two are one. They are shoots from the one root. The only difference is that the one climbs and the other grows along the levels of earth. There is no gulf set in the New Testament teaching, and there ought to be none in the practice and life of a Christian man, between the love of God and the love of man. They are two aspects of one thing.
Then, if so, mark how, according to the Apostle’s teaching here, in this one thought of a dual-sided love, one turned upwards, one turned earthwards, there lies the whole perfection of a human soul. You want nothing more if you are ‘rooted and grounded in love.’ That will secure all goodness, all morality, all religion, everything that is beautiful, and everything that is noble. And all this is meant to be the result of God’s speech to us.
So, then, two very plain practical principles may be deduced and enforced from this first thought. First, the purpose of all revelation and the test of all religion is--character and conduct.
It is all very well to know about God, to have our minds filled with true thoughts about Him, His nature, and dealings with us. Orthodoxy is good, but orthodoxy is a means to an end. There should be nothing in a man’s creed which does not act upon his life. Or, if I may put it into technical words, all a man’s credenda should be his agenda ; and whatsoever he believes should come straight into his life to influence it, and to shape character. Here, then, is the warning against a mere notional orthodoxy, and against regarding Christian truth as being intended mainly to illuminate the understanding, or to be a subject of speculation and discussion. There are people in all generations, and there are plenty of them to-day, who seem to think that the great verities of the Gospel are mainly meant to provide material for controversy--
‘As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended’;
and that they have done all that can be expected when they have tried to apprehend the true bearing of this revelation, and to contend against misinterpretations. This is the curse of religious controversy, that it blinds men to the practical importance of the truths for which they are fighting. It is as if one were to take some fertile wheat-land, and sand it all over, and roll it down, and make it smooth for a gymnasium, where nothing would grow. So the temper which finds in Christian truth simply a ‘ministration of questions,’ as my text says, mars its purpose, and robs itself of all the power and nourishment that it might find there.
No less to be guarded against is the other misconception which the clear grasp of our text would dismiss at once, that the great purpose for which God speaks to us men, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, is that we may, as we say, be ‘forgiven,’ and escape any of the temporal or eternal consequences of our wrongdoing. That is a purpose, no doubt, and men will never rise to the apprehension of the loftiest purposes, nor penetrate to a sympathetic perception of the inmost sweetness of the Gospel, unless they begin with its redemptive aspect, even in the narrowest sense of that word. But there are a miserable number of so-called and of real Christians in this world, and in our churches to-day, who have little conception that God has spoken to them for anything else than to deliver them from the fear of death, and from the incidence on them of future condemnation. He has spoken for this purpose, but the ultimate end of all is that we may be helped to love Him, and so to be like Him. The aim of the commandment is love, and if you ever are tempted to rest in intellectual apprehensions, or to pervert the truth of God into a mere arena on which you can display your skill of fence and your intellectual agility, or if ever you are tempted to think that all is done when the sweet message of forgiveness is sealed upon a man’s heart, remember the solemn and plain words of my text--the final purpose of all is that we may love God and man.
But then, on the other side, note that no less distinctly is the sole foundation of this love laid in God’s speech. My text, in its elevation of sentiment and character and conduct above doctrine, falls in with the prevailing tendencies of this day; but it provides the safeguards which these tendencies neglect. Notice that this favourite saying of the most advanced school of broad thinkers, who are always talking about the decay of dogma, and the unimportance of doctrine as compared with love, is here uttered by a man who was no sentimentalist, but to whom the Christian system was a most distinct and definite thing, bristling all over with the obnoxious doctrines which are by some of us so summarily dismissed as of no importance. My very text protests against the modern attempt to wrench away the sentiments and emotions produced in men, by the reception of Christian truth, from the truth which it recognises as the only basis on which they can be produced. It declares that the ‘commandment’ must come first, before love can follow; and the rest of the letter, although, as I say, it decisively places the end of revelation as being the moral and religious perfecting of men into assimilation with the divine love, no less decisively demands that for such a perfecting there shall be laid the foundation of the truth as it is revealed in Jesus Christ.
And that is what we want to-day in order to make breadth wholesome, and if only we will carry with us the two thoughts, the commandment and love, we shall not go far wrong. But what would you think of a man that said, ‘I do not want any foundations. I want a house to live in’? And pray how are you going to get your house without the foundations? Or would he be a wise man who said, ‘Oh, never mind about putting grapes into the vine vat, and producing fermentation; give me the wine!’ Yes! But you must have the fermentation first. The process is not the result, of course, but there is no result without the process. And according to New Testament teaching, which, I am bold to say, is verified by experience, there is no deep, all-swaying, sovereign, heart-uniting love to God which is not drawn from the acceptance of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.
II. And so I come, secondly, to note the purifying which is needed prior to such love.
Our text, as I said, divides the process into stages; or, if I may go back to a former illustration, into levels. And on the level immediately above the love, down into which the waters of the twin lakes glide, are a pure heart and a good conscience. These are the requisites for all real and operative love. Now they are closely connected, as it seems to me, more closely so than with either the stage which precedes or that which follows. They are, in fact, two twin thoughts, very closely identified, though not quite identical.
A pure heart is one that has been defecated and cleansed from the impurities which naturally attach to human affections. A ‘good conscience’ is one which is void of offence towards God and man, and registers the emotions of a pure heart. It is like a sheet of sensitive paper that, with a broken line, indicates how many hours of sunshine in the day there have been. We need not discuss the question as to which of these two great gifts and blessings which sweeten a whole life come first. In the initial stages of the Christian life I suppose the good conscience precedes the pure heart. For forgiveness which calms the conscience and purges it of the perilous stuff which has been injected into it by our corruptions--forgiveness comes before cleansing, and the conscience is calm before the heart is purified. But in the later stages of the Christian life the order seems to be reversed, and there cannot be in a man a conscience that is good unless there is a heart that is pure.
But however that may be--and it does not affect the general question before us--mark how distinctly Paul lays down here the principle that you will get no real love of God or man out of men whose hearts are foul, and whose consciences are either torpid or stinging them. I need not dwell upon that, for it is plain to anybody that will think for a moment that all sin separates between a man and God; and that from a heart all seething and bubbling, like the crater of a volcano, with foul liquids, and giving forth foul odours, there can come no love worth calling so to God, nor any benevolence worth calling so to man. Wherever there is sin, unrecognised, unconfessed, unpardoned, there there is a black barrier built up between a man’s heart and the yearning heart of God on the other side. And until that barrier is swept away, until the whole nature receives a new set, until it is delivered from the love of evil, and from its self-centred absorption, and until conscience has taken into grateful hands, if I might so say, the greatest of all gifts, the assurance of the divine forgiveness, I, for one, do not believe that deep, vital, and life-transforming love to God is possible. I know that it is very unfashionable, I know it is exceedingly narrow teaching, but it seems to me that it is Scriptural teaching; and it seems to me that if we will strip it of the exaggerations with which it has often been surrounded, and recognise that there may be a kind of instinctive and occasional recognition of a divine love, there may be a yearning after a clear light, and fuller knowledge of it, and yet all the while no real love to God, rooted in and lording over and moulding the life, we shall not find much in the history of the world, or in the experience of ourselves or of others, to contradict the affirmation that you need the cleansing of forgiveness, and the recognition of God’s love in Jesus Christ, before you can get love worth calling so in return to Him in men’s hearts.
Brethren, there is much to-day to shame Christian men in the singular fact which is becoming more obvious daily, of a divorce between human benevolence and godliness. It is a scandal that there should be so many men in the world who make no pretensions to any sympathy with your Christianity, and who set you an example of benevolence, self-sacrifice, enthusiasm for humanity, as it is called. I believe that the one basis upon which there can be solidly built benevolence to men is devotion to God, because of God’s great love to us in Jesus Christ. But I want to stir, if I might not say sting, you and myself into a recognition of our obligations to mankind, more stringent and compelling than we have ever felt it, by this phenomenon of modern life, that a divorce has been proclaimed between philanthropy and religion. The end of the commandment is love, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience.
III. Lastly, notice the condition of such purifying.
To recur to my former illustration, we have to go up country to a still higher level. What feeds the two reservoirs that feed the love? What makes the heart pure and the conscience good? Paul answers, ‘faith unfeigned’; not mere intellectual apprehension, not mere superficial or professed, but deep, genuine, and complete faith which has in it the element of reliance as well as the element of credence. Belief is not all that goes to make faith. Trust is not all that goes to make faith. Belief and trust are indissolubly wedded in the conception of it. Such a faith, which knows what it lays hold of--for it lays hold upon definite truth, and lays hold on what it knows, for it trusts in Him whom the truth reveals--such a faith makes the heart pure and the conscience good.
And how does it do so? By nothing in itself. There is no power in my faith to make me one bit better than I am. There is no power in it to still one accusation of conscience. It is only the condition on which the one power that purges and that calms enters into my heart and works there. The power of faith is the power of that which faith admits to operate in my life. If we open our hearts the fire will come in, and it will thaw the ice, and melt out the foulness from my heart. It is important for practice that we should clearly understand that the great things which the Bible says of faith it says of it only because it is the channel, the medium, the condition, by and on which the real power, which is Jesus Christ Himself, acts upon us. It is not the window, but the sunshine, that floods this building with light. It is not the opened hand, but the gift laid in it, that enriches the pauper. It is not the poor leaden pipe, but the water that flows through it, that fills the cistern, and cleanses it, whilst it fills. It is not your faith, but the Christ whom your faith brings into your heart and conscience, that purges the one, and makes the other void of offence towards God and man.
So, brethren, let us learn the secret of all nobility, of all power, of all righteousness of character and conduct. Put your foot on the lowest round of the ladder, and then aspire and climb, and you will reach the summit. Take the first step, and be true to it after you have taken it, and the last will surely come. He that can say, ‘We have known and believed the love that God hath to us,’ will also be able to say, ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’ ‘And this commandment have we of God, that he who loves God loves his brother also.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 1:6-11 Paul now elaborates on the false teachers and…
1:6-11 Paul now elaborates on the false teachers and turns their subject matter against them.
1:6 Some people is probably a put-down, demoting the false teachers to a general class of opponents of the Good News (cp. Rom 3:8; 1 Cor 4:18; 2 Cor 3:1; Gal 1:7). • They were professing believers who had missed the whole point of the Good News and had turned away.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.