1 Timothy 1:19

Ver. 19. Here follows an instruction as to the more essential qualifications for prevailing in such a spiritual warfare: having (or holding, ἔχων) faith and a good conscience; possessing these moral elements as indispensable prerequisites, or accompaniments of the work. Faith fitly goes first; for it is this which provides the Christian combatant with his only valid standing-ground for the conflict, and supplies him with the weapons which alone can enable him to repel the assaults of the adversary, and counterwork his devices. But a good conscience is here faith's necessary handmaid; for the contest is in the strictest sense a moral one, and a depravation of the conscience is a virtual abandonment of the struggle: it is yielding to the adversary an entrenchment in the citadel. A single flaw even in the conscience is fatal to the believer's security, and his heartiness in the work; nor can it be permitted to exist without gnawing like a worm at the root of faith itself. The man who would do battle for the truth of God must be responsive in his inmost soul to the claims of divine truth, and render it clear as day that he identifies himself with its interests is ready, in a manner, to live and die in its behalf. The two, therefore, must go together as inseparable companions: the good conscience can no more be dispensed with than the living faith; and much must ever depend on the healthful, harmonious, and concurrent action of the two for the result that is attained in the Christian warfare.

Sacred history presents too many instances of the disastrous effects of holding these qualifications apart the faith without a good conscience, as, in Old Testament times, Balaam, Saul; in New, Judas, Demas. And here the apostle points to several in the region of Timothy's labours, though he only specifies two by name: which some having thrust away (ἀπωσάμενοι), concerning faith made shipwreck. The relative (ἥν) can only refer to the second of the two qualifications previously mentioned, the good conscience; and the manner of dealing with it affirmed of certain parties, can only be understood of violent overbearing suppression: they resolutely stifled its monitions, or drove from them whatever it suggested in the way of moral suasion to restrain them in the course they were pursuing. They thus, in the first instance, proved false to the convictions of their better nature; and this, by a natural process of reaction, led them to make shipwreck of faith itself. For faith, having failed to influence their practice, turned as a matter of course into a speculation: their views of divine truth became dim and wavering; they began first to undervalue, then to disrelish what should have been prized as their necessary food, until at last faith lost its hold altogether of the foundations, and as an anchorless vessel drifted among the rocks of scepticism. A melancholy history, of which no age of the church has been without its memorable examples!