1 Timothy 1:18

1 Timothy 1:18. Here, in writing or dictating, there must have been a pause. After the ecstasy of praise is over, the writer returns to the ‘charge' or ‘commandment' from which he had diverged, and which he now solemnly committed to Timothy as a trust for the use of which he was responsible (2 Timothy 1:15).

According to the prophecies that went before on thee. The words point to some unrecorded event in the life of Timothy. At Lystra, probably on St. Paul's second visit, from the lips of Silas or other prophets, had come the intimation that he was called to the work of an evangelist (comp. Acts 13:2), and this had been followed by the laying on of the hands of the apostle and of the elders of the Church (1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6).

By them mightest war a good warfare. Better ‘the good warfare' (as in 2 Timothy 4:7, ‘ the good fight'), the campaign of truth against falsehood, of good against evil, and ‘in them,' as though he were to think of them, and of the spiritual gifts that followed on them, as weapons and resources.