Paul Calls Himself the Chief and Then Explains Why That Helps You

A man said something to me in a hallway that I have never had a good answer for until I found the verse.

He said: mercy is for people who did not know. I knew.

And he was right about himself, which is what made it hard. He had not stumbled into anything. He had done it with his eyes open, over a period, having been told, having known exactly what it would do and to whom, and he had done it anyway.

He said the story of the prodigal did not reach him because that boy was young and stupid, and the thief on the cross did not reach him because that man was dying and out of options, and he was neither.

I know that argument from the inside, because I have made a version of it about myself. I did not fall into idolatry. I built the altars. Nobody tricked me. I read the road signs and I kept driving, for twenty years, and there is no version of my story where I can plead ignorance.

So the verse that reached him is the one that reached me, and it is Paul doing something very deliberate with his own record.

Read the tense he uses about himself

Here is the sentence.

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. (1 Timothy 1:15, King James Version)

Of whom I am chief. Present tense, written decades after his conversion, by a man in the middle of a life of extraordinary service.

He does not say was. He is not describing a former condition he has since outgrown. He keeps the rating current, and he is not doing it out of false modesty, because two verses earlier he lists what he actually did and uses hard words for it: blasphemer, persecutor, injurious.

And here is the part that answers the man in the hallway. Paul does say he obtained mercy because he did it ignorantly in unbelief, and a person could read that as a loophole he had and you do not.

Except that he does not stop there, and the next verse is the one that matters.

You are being handed a live case rather than a retired one, and Paul keeps his own rating in the present tense. 1 Timothy 1:15 says of whom I am chief long after the road to Damascus. It is the Spirit of God, Romans 8:16 bearing witness with our spirit, who makes a man's honesty about himself something other than despair.

The reason he gives for telling anybody

The next sentence explains why he has told the story at all, and it is the most generous thing in the letter.

Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting. (1 Timothy 1:16)

For a pattern. The word is a template, a specimen, a demonstration model. Paul is saying that the reason his case was handled the way it was handled is so that it could be shown to other people as an example of the standard treatment.

In me first. He is the trial run, the case put on display, deliberately.

Which means the argument that Paul had an excuse and you do not is answered by Paul himself. He does not present his case as an exception with special circumstances. He presents it as the pattern, and the whole point of a pattern is that it is what happens to everybody after.

You have been shown a pattern rather than an exception, and Paul says that is the reason his case exists. 1 Timothy 1:16 says for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe. It is His Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:13 by whom we are all baptized into one body, who puts a person inside the same arrangement rather than beside it.

Where sin abounded

There is a sentence in Romans that is dangerous if a person reads it carelessly and is exactly right for a man who knew what he was doing.

Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (Romans 5:20)

Much more abound. The Greek is stronger than the English: it is a word for overflowing past a limit, and it is set deliberately against the word used for the sin.

Paul is not saying the sin was small. He has just spent five chapters saying it was not. He is saying the two things are not the same size, and that whichever one you make bigger, the other one is bigger still.

And I want to be careful, because Paul himself is careful: the very next line asks whether that means a person should carry on sinning so grace can increase, and he answers with the strongest negative in his vocabulary. Nobody gets to use this as a permission slip.

But a man who is arguing that his sin is too well informed to be covered is arguing about size, and Romans 5:20 is a verse about size, and it settles that argument in one clause.

You are not arguing with a quantity that runs out, because grace is described as overflowing past whatever it is measured against. Romans 5:20 says where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, and it is the Holy Spirit, Titus 3:5 named in the washing of regeneration, who applies what that verse describes to an actual person.

The prayer from the cross was about people who knew

The man in the hallway thought Jesus praying they know not what they do was evidence that ignorance was the qualifier. It is worth looking at who He was praying for.

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)

The people in front of Him at that moment included men who had arranged the trial, bribed witnesses, and knowingly broken their own law to get a verdict. They knew a very great deal about what they were doing. The prayer is not a legal finding about their state of knowledge.

It is a prayer covering the whole scene, made by the one Person entitled to press charges, at the moment He had the most grounds He would ever have. And nobody in that crowd had asked for it.

That is the actual picture, and it is bigger than the loophole the man was looking for.

You are covered by a prayer that went up before anybody asked for it. Luke 23:34 has Jesus praying forgive them at the moment He had the most grounds to do otherwise. It is the same Spirit, Hebrews 9:14 saying He through the eternal Spirit offered Himself, who is named inside the offering that stands behind it.