1 Timothy: Love From a Pure Heart, a Good Conscience, and Sincere Faithნიმუში

Pure Heart

What is a pure heart? It is a heart that is clean or purified by fire. It is a heart that loves from the right motives for the right things. It is about loving God solely because He is God and deserves our love.

1 John 4:19 tells us God loved us first, and Romans 5:5 tells us that God poured His love into us. Here is what this means: God has given us His love. If you are ever wondering if God loves you, you can rest assured that if you love Him, then He loves you! We can only love Him because He put His love in us. How amazing is that! Because of God’s love in us, we love others with the right or a pure heart.

A Good Conscience

A good conscience is a good, pleasant, agreeable, joyful, or happy soul. A soul that is joyful and desires good for others. It knows it has goodness and joy and desires that goodness and joy for others. This makes it easy to go the second mile.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:41 that we should go the second mile with people. If you have a good conscience or a joyful soul, you can do this. You can do hard things for others. You can love like that because it is within you to do it. 2 Peter 1:3 tells us that everything we need to love God rightly is in us. If you are in Christ, you can love from a good conscience. Sorry, no excuses allowed. You can do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Will you - that is up to you.

A Sincere Faith

I like this phrase in Latin: bona et fide non ficta. It means real and not fake. We can love with real love, not a fake substitute. We can love with real, sincere love. That is huge. It is not something you are making up, manufacturing, or sustaining yourself.

My wife and I are both allergic to certain artificial sweeteners. If there is fake sugar in something, we will know really quickly. Our throats will get scratchy and itchy. After the first few sips of a soda, we will know, nope, that’s fake. People are usually allergic to fake love. Sure, at first, it’s fine, but eventually they will be able to tell. God’s love gives us the ability to love with real love, bona et fide non ficta sincerity.

Everything else we will read in this book is going to have as its goal love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Timothy 1:5). We will look at hard things because we want real love. We will look at some tough things because we want real love.