1 Timothy 1:11. According to the glorious gospel. Better, ‘ the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God.' The translation of the characterizing genitive, as though it were simply equivalent to an adjective, is for the most part misleading. St. Paul had used the phrase before, 2 Corinthians 4:4; there also with the meaning that the Gospel is a Gospel because it proclaims the glory, i.e. the power, and yet more the love, of God in Christ.

The blessed God. The adjective, elsewhere in the New Testament used of men only, is here and in 1 Timothy 6:15 applied to God.

Which was committed to my trust. Literally, in a construction peculiarly Pauline (1 Corinthians 9:17; Galatians 2:7 et al.), ‘with which I was entrusted.' The force of the ‘I,' which in the Greek is emphatic, is lost in the English Version, and with it the subtle links of thought that lead on to what follows. First contrasting the Gospel which he preached with the morbid imaginations of false teachers, his mind is led to dwell on the succession of events by which he came to have the honour of so high a trust, and in which he traced the working of that Divine mercy in which he saw, more than in all other attributes, the glory of God revealed.

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Old Testament