Handed Over To Satan

Sounds pretty intense huh? That seems like the ultimate degree of giving up on someone. I know the Bible says that God gives people up to their own evil desires, etc. but that phrase of giving someone up to Satan seems somehow worse.

My pastor preached on verses 18-20 on 1 Timothy ch. 1 on Sunday, and the apostle Paul does exactly that: he hands some dudes over to Satan!

We don't know precisely what these guys were up to, but it had to have been something pretty huge that was endangering the purity and health of the church. In Corinthians, Paul addresses a situation where some guy in the church was having an affair with his own stepmother, and the church in essence didn't care!! He instructs them to remove the guy from among them. I wonder what kinds of things are going on in our church, that the apostle Paul would say "Woah!!! That is completely inappropriate and harmful, you need to remove those who are involved from among you!!" I would hope nothing of the sort. I know no church is perfect because it's comprised of sinful people, but man I hope our collective consciences are still in working order that we would be able to perceive and deal correctly with any of those types of issues that would arise!

But in the way that Scripture always points to God, the apostle Paul says that he hands them over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme! He's not giving up on them! He's not completely turning his back on them, and forgetting about them, he is trusting in God's sovereign plan to teach them in some other severe way the lessons that they were not learning in the safety and care of the church family. Needless to say, that can be a frightening method of learning.

As I said earlier, we don't know exactly what these dudes were doing, but the apostle tells us that because some reject faith and good conscience, they make shipwreck of their faith. That was the application of this passage to our lives; a warning to hold fast to our faith, and our conscience. Holding fast to faith means holding fast to doctrine, since it's what explains that which we have faith in. Holding fast to a good conscience means doing what we know is right. The conscience doesn't help us determine right and wrong, it urges and exhorts us to do what we know is right, and not doing that is sin.

So we keep a tight grip on the doctrines of our faith, and we preserve our good conscience by doing what God's Word instructs us is right. Paul calls it waging the good warfare, so prepare for battle.