1 Timothy 1-handout

God’s Grace

(1 Timothy 1:12-17)

What does God’s grace mean to you? 

Living under God’s grace is in direct contrast with living under God’s law. 

The Law is to be used to bring people to Christ. 

I.                   Grace changes our perspective of service (vs. 12-14)

God’s grace empowers us to serve.   

1. Blasphemer-one who slanders God.  In Jewish teaching they were condemned to hell.
2. Persecutor-one who pursues as a hunter.
3. Injurious-one who in pride and insolence deliberately and contemptuously mistreats, wrongs, and hurts another person just to hurt and humiliate. 

In the Old Testament there was a distinction between ignorant sins and presumptuous sins.

Does God forgive us when we sin willfully? 

God’s grace was able to take a murderer like Paul and turn him into a minister.

II.                Grace changes our perspective of self (v. 15)

The word “save” means to rescue. 

Grace enables us to see our sinfulness. Those who live closest to God are usually the most keenly aware of their own faults.

Notice the progression in Paul’s life!  He went from the worst of:

1. The Apostles (1 Co. 15:9-10)
2. The Saints (Eph. 3:8)
3. The World (1 Ti. 1:15)

We are never doing bad enough to be out of the reach of God’s grace and we are never doing good enough to be out of the need of God’s grace.

III.             Grace changes our perspective of sinners (vs. 16-17)

No Christian should regard any sinner as a hopeless case.

Our lives are an outline or sketch of what God’s grace can do.

Does this mean that God can only use those who have been saved out of sinful lifestyle?

Simply put:  we are to respond to God’s grace by bringing Him honor and glory forever and ever (v. 17).