1 Timothy 1:5

1 Timothy 1:5. The end of the commandment. The statement would of course be true of the commandment, or law, of God, as in Romans 13:10. But the word so translated is not used elsewhere in the New Testament in that higher sense, and is used in 1 Timothy 1:3; 1 Timothy 1:18 of the ‘charge' or ‘instruction' which the apostle had given Timothy. It would seem better, therefore, so to take it here. The sum and substance so which all that ‘charge' converged was not ‘questioning' but love. Here as elsewhere ‘ love ‘ is preferable to ‘charity.'

Out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned. We have here, as it were, the genesis of love, the three elements out of which it springs (1) the heart, or seat of the affections, purified (by God, working through faith, Acts 15:9) from the selfish sensual life which shuts out love; (2) the ‘conscience,' which never knowingly allows the will to be swayed by that lower life, and so becomes a law unto itself; (3) the faith, which is not the hypocritical assent to a dogma, the unreal profession of a religion, but true trust in God as loving all men, and which therefore leads us in our turn to love all because He loves them.