Two half-brothers leave for the same war; only one comes home. When rescue divides one person from another, “Why me?” can feel unanswerable—and salvation can raise the same uneasy question. In 1 Timothy 1:15–16, Paul refuses to ground his rescue in merit, calling himself the worst of sinners and pointing instead to Christ’s purpose and patience.\n\nbreak.
\n\n## Study Questions\n\n\n\n_The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
\n\n\n\n1. Paul says he was “the worst of sinners” yet became an apostle. How does understanding our own sinfulness change the way we respond to God’s grace—compared to trying to earn salvation through good works?\n\n2. The Pharisees believed they were “good enough” to deserve God’s favor; Paul recognized his complete unworthiness. What are some modern ways we fall into the same Pharisee trap—assuming we’re doing well enough spiritually to have a claim on God?\n\n3. Paul became a “grateful servant” who wanted to tell everyone about the mercy he didn’t deserve. How does genuinely receiving salvation as a gift—rather than an achievement—change what you want to communicate to others about Jesus?\n\n4. According to 1 Timothy 1:15–16, Jesus didn’t come to reward the righteous but to display his patience in the worst of sinners. How does that reframe the question “Why would God save someone like me?”\n\n5. How can our ongoing failures and imperfections, rather than disqualifying us, actually point others toward God’s patience and redemptive power?\n\n\n\n## Transcript\n\n\n\nThis transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors._\n\n\n\nPurpose for our lives. Purpose for what people are trying to do around us. Purpose matters a lot, doesn’t it? It might not seem like it at first. It’s just this abstract thing. But then we start to think about, well, why are we doing this? Or how is this coming out the way it is? And we realize, no, this is actually a really big deal.\n\nHi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be with you tonight. And as we begin, I want to think about what purpose or lack thereof was behind the story of two young men who went to war in World War II. Their names were William and Heinz.\n\nNow, William and Heinz were half-brothers, and they both went to war. But only William came home from war. William went on to have a successful career running a business that used the skills that he developed while in the military. Heinz was captured, went to prison, and died at age 21. And we think about situations like that, and we often can’t really explain how they happen. And so it seems like, well, maybe it’s just luck. Maybe it just worked for one person and didn’t for the other.\n\nAnd sometimes I think that’s how we operate with our assumptions in life. We often can’t explain things. But what Scripture wants us to understand very clearly is that when it comes to salvation, that God has a very intentional purpose. It’s not arbitrary, like two soldiers going to war and one coming home, where we look at it and think, well, why this one and not the other?\n\nPaul, as he continues to reminisce about what has happened in his past, as he’s preparing Timothy for the charge that Timothy is going to carry on, wants Timothy to understand just how purposeful God’s salvation for us is. But not because of the things that we do. And I think what’s so important is that we understand that Jesus came for us to save us, and he came specifically to save imperfect people like us.\n\nSo when we’re trying to say, well, why should I receive salvation? What really matters is we understand Jesus’s purpose, not ours. His purpose is to save imperfect people. If you believe in Jesus tonight, it’s not because you’re lucky, it’s not because it’s random, it’s because Jesus has called you. And if you’re here tonight thinking, maybe I should believe in Jesus, that’s not luck either. God wants you here. He’s calling you to respond to that gift that he has for you. That’s what we’re going to be thinking about tonight.\n\nSo let’s go ahead and open in prayer, and then we’ll dive into the next section of 1 Timothy. Let’s pray.\n\nFather, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word, for the hope that we find in it. Lord, will you help us to be reassured by how you work, that we know that you are good and that you are gracious to us. That you are the one who calls us and protects us and wants us. It isn’t luck. It isn’t random. There’s a purpose, and that purpose is to save us. And there’s a purpose, and that purpose is your intent to redeem, to make us yours. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.\n\nSo Jesus came to save imperfect people like us. That’s his purpose. There’s a very intentional direction there. What does that mean? Well, imperfect implies that we’re sinners, and that is correct. Jesus came to save sinners.\n\nTake a look at 1 Timothy 1:15. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them.\n\nJesus came to save sinners. We understand that. We understand a lot more about how he works and why people like Paul get to come home, so to speak. Why is he given salvation? We hear people that come home from war, and family members don’t survive, or friends don’t survive, and they say, well, why me?\n\nWell, if Paul were thinking about what he had of value, he should have said the same thing. Why me? But he doesn’t have to ask that question, because he understands the point isn’t about him. There is no why him, what has he done to deserve this. It’s what has Jesus done to deserve what he gives us. And if anything, Paul can say, well, he came to save me because he loves me. There’s nothing you’re going to find in my life that would justify it.\n\nI think the profound problem we run into, and we talked about this a little bit last night, is that we do come into the world as those who think that Jesus is going to save the good enough. Right? We’re almost good enough to deserve this. But that’s not who he came to save.\n\nThe Pharisees were operating on that principle, right? Jesus came into the world to save them, the good, or at least the good enough. Maybe theologically they would have admitted, well, we don’t get everything right. That’s why we need to offer atonement sacrifices. But we get a lot right.\n\nWhat did Jesus say of the Pharisees? He said in Matthew 23:15, “You make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” He doesn’t say, look at those incredible Pharisees. They’re doing such a great job. They’re reaching that good enough point. And so they’re the ones that are going to come home. The ones that get left in the war of sin are going to be the people that aren’t as good as the Pharisees. No, he says, woe to them.\n\nJesus came with the purpose to save people who actually are imperfect. And of course they were too, but they wanted to insist otherwise. What did the Pharisees miss? They missed their own sin. They missed their own lack of credentials to receive God’s salvation. They didn’t understand God’s real purpose to take people who were broken and simply wanted him. They thought that God’s purpose was to see people get enough of the law correct that they could earn their own way.\n\nBut what does Paul say? Quit looking for the reason why I should have salvation, why I should be an apostle. Because if you’re looking for what I was first in, let me tell you what I was really first in. I was first in sin. After all, what had he done? He persecuted the church. He was a murderer. He had actually done the exact opposite of what he should do. He looked for people who said they followed Jesus and sought to see them die. How could he possibly deserve anything?\n\nThe only thing he’d achieved was to be a really, really bad sinner. Think about our two soldiers I mentioned earlier. Both of them faced all kinds of challenges in war as those fighting in a brutal war will. William himself, he made it home, but he received a Purple Heart because he was injured on the battlefield.\n\nBut there’s something else I didn’t tell you about William. William wanted to serve so badly, he was an immigrant to the United States. And in the midst of a brutal war, immigrants weren’t always entirely trusted. Are they coming for good purposes or bad? And so he had to actually reach out to the authorities and ask for special permission to become a soldier. But he wanted to fight for his country. And so he fought for his country. He was injured and received a Purple Heart for his country. He joined the Medical Corps. And undoubtedly, brave soldiers lived because of the work that he did.\n\nHe did that partially because he wanted to, right? There’s that part, we want to find that human part of what we do. But again, even there, it was dependent on someone else giving it to him. Because while he wanted to serve, he couldn’t have just because he wanted to. He had to get permission to. However, once he was given that permission, when he was in, he was in. Now he was one of those brave men and women who fight for our freedom.\n\nHe was an American, an American soldier. He was going to go fight and try to stop the evil that was happening and try to rescue people, right? As a medic, he was going to rescue people who were injured and help them to survive. Once he was in, he was in. That’s what Paul can say, too. Could he make himself worthy to be part of the church, to be in the church? No, he couldn’t. The simple fact is no one can. That was the problem for the Pharisees. They thought they could. A lot of times we think we can.\n\nIt’s like showing up without the proper documentation, without the proper status and saying, I want to do this thing, even if it’s a good thing, right? It’s good if you want to be a Christian and you want to do what God’s law says. But if you don’t actually follow Jesus, if you don’t know him, it doesn’t matter if you try to do the rest. Just like if William had shown up at the draft board and said, I want to serve, but he wasn’t actually eligible.\n\nIt’s a gift. He was given a gift and it ended up being a gift that profoundly affected his life. Because as I mentioned at the beginning, William was allowed then to take that knowledge, right? He served and he gained something that then he used for the rest of his life. He supported his family with what he learned in the military.\n\nPaul was given this calling that he’d been able to carry through his life. Now he’s passing that call on to Timothy. And he was given that not because he was such a great Pharisee, but because he’d come to the point through God’s grace of understanding how awful he was. And yet that he was loved. God wasn’t going to reject him because of that.\n\nWhy does this matter that we understand this? Because when we believe that we’re going to earn our way, two things are at risk. And one of them is going to happen. Either one, we’re going to trust in ourselves and we’re not really receiving what Jesus is doing for us. We’re not really trusting in him. He isn’t really functioning as our Lord and Savior. Or we’re going to become convinced that we can’t really do it and give up.\n\nBut what Paul realized, what he got to experience was that Jesus not only saves sinners, he’s glorified by the saving he gives to sinners, by the transformation that happens in sinners. He shows his glory in the very sinners whom he calls. 1 Timothy 1:16 says, “But for this very reason I was shown mercy, so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his perfect patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life.”\n\nJesus shows his glory in sinners. And Paul says, I was so awful. What did that bring to the table? Only that God could show all the more how merciful he is. I still didn’t deserve it. I was let in on a special dispensation that I was allowed in because I don’t deserve it. But here’s the truth, all of us are. All of us are. You receive salvation because God chooses to give it to you.\n\nWhat a beautiful thing. It might hurt our ego a little bit, right? Because we’re not really doing it. We can’t say, I was so smart that I believed. I was so good that I was given this. I was so this. I was so that. Any of those things. The only thing Paul can point to, I was really, really, really awful. But God loved me.\n\nSunday School Express, we talked last night about the ungrateful servant. And as Jim and I were going through that parable, what do we see? The ungrateful servant, what’s the problem? He doesn’t realize what he’s been given, and so he’s not passing it on to others.\n\nHere’s the opposite. Paul is the grateful servant. He realizes that he had a debt that could never be paid off. So what does he want to do for everyone else? He wants to tell them how he couldn’t pay it off. And so they, too, can have the benefit of worshiping the only one who can save us from sin. Of following him and displaying his redemption.\n\nWhat else can we really do? We can’t get it all right, but boy, can we point to Jesus and say, Yes, even now as you see that I am still a sinner. Jesus came to save sinners and look at what he does. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to save me. But he does because he’s loving. And his love is boundless.\n\nPaul says that’s why people should believe. They should look at what he could do for someone like me. All those people, they wouldn’t choose to save me. And then whenever they think, well, God wouldn’t want to choose to save me because I really know how I am. They can instead know this God of great glory, but also great grace, desires to serve and to save.\n\nI’ve been spending an awful lot of time on this story as we’ve been going through Paul’s story, paralleling with William’s story. You might be thinking, why is Tim so fascinated by William? There are a lot of young men that went off to war. And an awful lot, as I mentioned earlier, who went off to war and came back from the end of World War II with buddies and even family that didn’t come back. So, what makes him significant?\n\nWell, what makes him significant is the falling out he had with his uncle. You see, he struggled in life, unlike his half-brother. Things hadn’t worked out so well. He tried to get some help from his uncle. Things really didn’t go well. He didn’t like the way his uncle was leading the entity he was leading. And that changed everything.\n\nHe came over to the United States. And because of his feud with his uncle, he was actually able to write an essay that got published in Look Magazine about why I hate my uncle. And he described the things that he’d seen his uncle do that really, really bothered him. And it was by that, then, that he was able to reach out to the President of the United States and ask for permission to fight in the Army. He didn’t just go to the local recruiting office.\n\nYou see, this man, William, I haven’t told you his last name. His last name was William Hitler. And his uncle was Adolf Hitler. And he saw what his uncle was doing, and he was horrified. And he revealed the horrors. Then he came to the United States and said, I want to fight against what my uncle’s doing. But nonetheless, there was plenty of reason for people to be suspicious, right? In war, lots of people claim that they are affected by conscience and oppose the very things they’re actually supporting as a double agent. Wasn’t the case in William’s case. But there’s certainly plenty of cases where it’s true.\n\nSo it took someone actually having mercy on him and not saying, ah, we have the nephew, we’re going to throw him in prison. Maybe we’ll even try to use him as a hostage against his uncle and see what’s really going on. Someone saying, no, I see value in this person, even though most people wouldn’t. I’m going to allow him to actually use his gifts. And that’s what happened.\n\nWhat was the difference? It was what he decided to put his focus on. On freedom. To align himself with the allies against the axis. See, his half-brother didn’t. He liked his uncle. He decided to fight for his uncle. And as Germany started to collapse, he was captured by the Red Army, taken to prison. And died.\n\nEverything seemed to be going better for him. He was viewed as more important in society. He had more access to power. He had his uncle’s favor. But he chose to trust in his uncle and his uncle’s evil plan. Rather than turning to something better.\n\nWilliam had very little to offer. He never had much to offer. But he turned to those with freedom and asked for mercy.\n\nPaul’s saying that’s what all of us do. We all carry the ugly last name of sin. The ugliest last name. And all of us are deserving of God’s complete, not just suspicion because God knows everything, but complete and utter condemnation. God doesn’t have to wonder if we’re double agents. We are double agents.\n\nWhen he brings us into his kingdom, when he brings us into the church, you know what we do? We bring our sin with us into the church. Every single time.\n\nGod knows that and he has mercy on us. He’s not just hoping that we’ll turn out good. He knows we’re not going to turn out good. The only thing he asks is that we turn our eyes away from the kingdom of evil, the axis of evil, and instead turn our eyes towards the true freedom we find in Jesus.\n\nThe ultimate freedom. Our lineage gives us every reason to be rejected. But you see, it’s not our lineage. It’s not our last name that decides where we fall. It’s not our alleged righteous acts that decide where we fall.\n\nWhat decides where we are, what our status is, whether we live eternal life or we die in the prison of sin, is simply whether we turn to Jesus or if we stay in the kingdom that we start in. Where are we going to be? Because what does Jesus want? He wants us to look to him and then to be redeemed by him that others would look at us and not say, wow, look at these people who are so good, but rather look at these people whom God shows his incredible mercy and grace to. Look at those people who are grateful servants, not because they’re so great, but because they realize the incredible gift that God has given them.\n\nAre we going to do that? Do we realize where we fall short? Are we going to try to build up our own righteousness, which is inevitably going to tie us to looking towards the kingdom of evil, the axis of evil? Are we going to look to the freedom that we find only in Jesus? That’s the question. Where are we going to look?\n\nWould you pray with me, please?\n\nFather, thank you for this evening and thank you for your word. We pray that you’d help us each and every day to look to you and to look to you so fully that even when we fail, even when we do what’s unrighteous and displeasing to you, that people would see us looking to you, and because they see us looking to you, they would look to you, too. Not because of how great we are, but because of how great you are. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.\n\n\n\n
