This is the answer. Healthy doctrine is according to the good news of the glory of the blessed God. His glory is good news. That's what the law is for- anything that is contrary to the glory of God. The Law is perfection and reflects God's perfection. We are imperfect. Our sinfulness is the bad news. We are the ones that fall short. We're the problem, but He is the answer.

The law shows us we fall short, and the good news points us towards the One who is perfect. The law and the gospel are in harmony with each other. If it's bad, it's against the law as well as against all sound doctrine (10). And sound doctrine is in accordance to the good news. See how they all tie together? The Gospel isn't suddenly unconcerned with evil. It's still very evil. We still need forgiveness. God still hates it when we sin, and wants us to take sin seriously. But praise God there is good news with our God! There is a blessed God who is glorious! He wants to deliver us from our wretched state.

Unhealthy doctrine comes from not holding to the purity of God's Word. God is perfect. His Word is healthy. It's perfect. If we love God, and we want to be just like Him, then we need to fill ourselves with good doctrine. If we reject any part of His Word, we are rejecting Him, and His character, and His glory. It's a personal assault on the only One who is truly holy. If we compromise His Word, it is corruption. It comes from the corruption that is within us. If we change a little something in His Word, we are making a little room for the wickedness of man to creep in. We are saying we don't need to be exactly the way God wants, that a little bit of our way is ok. But we need to put away ALL leaven. We have to be on guard to hold exactly to the Word of God.

False teachers (and us if we are not careful) don't see their depravity, and miss out on fearing God, and thus miss seeing the answer. In reality they are to do it on their own. They think they know what's going on. They think they are shining God's light. But they don't let God's Word have 100% way in their life. They don't apply it first to their own wickedness. They don't take the beam out of there own eye first before they help others. If we understand His Word, we understand that we are 100% of the problem, and He is 100% of the answer! Don't change His Word. There is no pure motive to change His Word. If we change His Word, it only shows that we are impure.

We need to understand this principle and wholeheartedly agree with it before we move on. Otherwise our motives are not pure. We are not really trusting in God. If we side step this fundamental truth in our life, than we are living a lie.

Why is Paul so excited about good doctrine? It's because he sees that it is in accordance to the glorious God he loves. Striving for good doctrine should be a love affair between God and us as we keep seeing who He is more clearly. God wants to share Himself with us, and enable us to reveal Him to the world. When we see this truth, it helps us be thankful to be entrusted with so much.

OVERVIEW :11-16 (10c-17 all go together), and what it is not saying about Paul being ignorant.

But I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly v.13. People understand this phrase to mean that Paul received mercy because he didn't know it was wrong. They believe he was let off the hook because his intentions weren't so bad. This serves to show the danger of not holding a verse to its context. Our context up to this point is so different, that we should have red flags going up about that interpretation. The context is that we are really bad people who need help, and God wants to help us. Without Christ, our heart is not pure, our conscience is not really freed up, and we're pretending to have faith, just trying to work it up inside when it's not real.

But the good news is that God is glorious! He saves wretched people. And Paul has been entrusted with this good news. And he's thankful (12). He thanks the Lord he's been entrusted with the gospel. That's a good attitude that we all need to have. What a privilege that God would entrust the good news to us! Who are we to be entrusted with such riches?

Who is responsible for this gospel being given to Paul (and to us)? 11- it was committed to [Paul's] trust (passive)- God gave it to him. 12- Jesus Christ did the enabling, He did the counting, and He put him into the ministry. Where is all the credit going? Obviously it belongs to the Lord.

Paul starts by saying the Lord did all this good stuff. That's one side of the equation: God is doing all the good stuff. And what is the other half of using the law lawfully (correctly)? We need to see who we really are. (That's what false teachers fail to do.) And here it's like Paul is saying, "let me tell you who He did all this for." Was it for some nice guy? No! Paul says (13) he was a blasphemer. He spoke slanderous, horrible things. He railed on people, speaking against the truth. He said whatever it took to destroy people, even though he had to lie to do it. And he was a persecutor. He hurt people. He was a mean dude. You didn't get in his way or he would hurt you. Injurious means insolent. He thought he was better than everybody else was. He is saying that he was as arrogant and haughty as they come. His world revolved around me, myself, and I. Everybody else was of a lower class, and if they got in his way, he was going to hurt them, because he thought they deserved it. He is telling us that he even enjoyed hurting others (Berry's #8 synonym, insolent).

Paul is not saying that he was such a good guy. He is saying the exact opposite. He is using the law lawfully. He is saying "let me tell you who the real me was. I was really messed up. But (strong contrast) God had mercy on me." He should have been punished. That's what he deserved. Mercy is not getting the bad we deserve.

Here's the tricky part. But let's hold to the flow of thought that Paul has set forth. Paul was acting in ignorance and in unbelief. Ignorance means to not know. It has the idea of ignoring. It is defined in Strong's as "not to know (through lack of information or intelligence); by implying to ignore (through disinclination)." Strong's is saying it is to not know because there is no desire to know. The word comes from two words: "not" + "to exercise the mind" (Strong's).

It's what kids fall into sometimes when they don't do what their mothers tell them to do. Mom says "I told you to do such and such" and the kid says he didn't hear her. A lot of those times the kid should say "Mom, I didn't know what you wanted me to do, because I ignored you. I didn't exercise my mind." That's what the word means.

Unbelief is not acting in faith. It's not trusting God. Paul is saying he didn't try to understand God. He didn't trust Him. If you were a godly parent, it would hurt you if one of your kids said he didn't want to listen to you. Not only that, but he didn't even trust you. If you kept pouring love into that relationship, that response would really hurt. This is what it feels like to God. Unbelief hurts Him. It's the reason millions of people go to Hell. Faith and unbelief are repeatedly contrasted in this chapter as one of the main differences between good teachers and those who are all messed up.

Paul meant small. But Saul represented a king who was head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. And Saul of Tarsus looked real sharp to all Israel. He was head and shoulders above the rest, so to speak. He had the finest schooling, being personally taught by Gamaliel. He helped rid Israel of the Christian "cult", by authority of the High Priest himself. He was it. Israel thought he was the man who knew what was going on. He was a man of faith. He was probably viewed as a living example of an OT hero. But Paul says, "no, I was an ignoramus who didn't trust God. I didn't know God. It was all a fake." God had mercy on him, not because he wasn't so bad, but because he was bad. Mercy is for those who deserve to be punished. And praise God He has mercy on sinful people, to which I can also testify. (My goal right now is to give an overview, to catch the big picture of the context. We'll come back to this controversial part in more detail afterwards, but hold your mind to what I'm saying here.)

We see that verse 14 (and beyond) supports this view of Paul's mercy. It's not like Paul just needed a little bit of grace, because he was half way there on his own. (This is what you would have to say if you took v 13 to say that God had mercy on Paul because he wasn't so bad.) The amount of grace that it took to save Paul was exceedingly abundant. And for all of us it is exceedingly abundant grace that saves us. It's grace that changes a heart full of hate, which is ignoring God, into a heart full of love. It changes unbelief into faith. It makes us new creatures, converting a wicked heart into one that will love God.

If there is any question that this is what Paul was saying, verse 15 settles the matter for me. Who did Jesus come to save? Sinners! And was Paul really a sinner? He makes it so clear that the answer is yes. He says we can agree on that. He was a chief sinner. He doesn't say he was THE chief sinner, as to say he was the worst sinner ever. But he saw himself, like we should all see ourselves, as a chief sinner. God, please have mercy on me.

If there is still any question about what Paul was saying, verse 16 really settles the matter. It tells us God's mercy on Saul was an example of God's longsuffering. Paul was an example of God's mercy because he was so obviously guilty.

This is the end of our initial overview. We'll go over each verse in more detail now.

These next verses show us 2 things. 1) Paul is so caught up in sharing this good news that it pours out of him like a psalm. He is excited! 2) We see Paul living out what he is preaching. He is using the gospel correctly. He realizes he needs help to be delivered from the wickedness within him.

11)
In this verse he ties off the previous verses, that the law is to show up our wickedness. Healthy doctrine is the good news of the glory of God. The answer is all wrapped up in the One who is Holy, Holy, Holy. Where does sin come from? It comes from within. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God… But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And where does every good thing come from? Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift … cometh down from the Father. James 1:13-17. Good things come from God, in who is no shadow of turning. We're the problem, but He is the answer! We need healthy doctrine, which lines up with God's glory.

I remember the Catholic teachings of penance I received growing up. We were taught of "saints" who repeatedly jumped in thorn bushes to be made more holy. That is a distorted picture. This verse pictures hope. Yes, we're real bad. But the answer is wrapped up in the fact that He is real good! Our works won't ever enable us to be righteous, but His grace will! Paul says the good news was entrusted to him. ("Committed to trust" is actually "believed" in the passive voice: "was entrusted with" in the Interlinear). He sees this knowledge, this good news, as a stewardship given to him, to pass on to as many other people as he can. He is gripped that God has given us the wonderful news of His glory to share with others.

Paul is writing as one evangelist to another. But if we think this stewardship is just for church leaders, than we are really missing it. It's true that there will be some differences in how this will works out in different people's lives. But we all need to realize that this message is entrusted to us. We don't go from lay person to church leader because of some mystical calling and a degree from Bible College. Yes, God's calling is very much in it. But as we will see in chap 3, leaders are chosen from our midst, from those people who are faithful. You don't become a missionary when you land on foreign soil. You become a missionary where you live, and then God can send you forth. Don't export something if it doesn't work at home. Timothy was "well reported of by the brethren" before Paul asked him to join him. We become faithful in much by first being faithful in a little.

What are we doing with the stewardship of the good news? Are we the steward who gains more for his lord, or the steward who buries what he has? God was very upset with the steward who buried what he had. It was hell fire for him.

We never become so spiritual that we don't need to be reminded of this stewardship. Timothy was an evangelist, a man who lived by this standard. And it still was good for him to be reminded. How much more I need to be reminded.

Praise God he gave this gospel to Paul. Outwardly, the biggest reason you and I (if you are also a Gentile) have had the gospel preached to us, is because of the Apostle Paul. He was the Apostle to the Gentiles. Much of our NT, especially the parts written to Gentiles, came from him. This man has reached the world with the gospel.

But this is our generation now. We have the torch now. We are the ones God has chosen to be the light of the world. What are we doing with it? Are we sitting in front of the TV, or so caught up in business, that no one sees our torch? God, please help me.