Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor the things they affirm.
All Commentaries on 1 Timothy 1:7 Go To 1 Timothy 1
John Chrysostom
AD 407
Desiring to be teachers of the law.
Here we see another cause of evil, the love of power. Wherefore Christ said, Be not called Rabbi Matthew 23:8; and the Apostle again, For neither do they keep the law, but that they may glory in your flesh. Galatians 6:13 They desire preëminence, he means, and on that account disregard truth.
Understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.
Here he censures them, because they know not the end and aim of the Law, nor the period for which it was to have authority. But if it was from ignorance, why is it called a sin? Because it was incurred not only from their desiring to be teachers of the law, but from their not retaining love. Nay, and their very ignorance arose from these causes. For when the soul abandons itself to carnal things, the clearness of its vision is dimmed, and falling from love it drops into contentiousness, and the eye of the mind is blinded. For he that is possessed by any desire for these temporal things, intoxicated, as he is, with passion, cannot be an impartial judge of truth.
Not knowing whereof they affirm.
For it is probable that they spoke of the law, and enlarged on its purifications and other bodily rites. The Apostle then forbearing to censure these, as either nothing, or at best a shadow and figure of spiritual things, proceeds in a more engaging way to praise the law, calling the Decalogue here the law, and by means of it discarding the rest. For if even these precepts punish transgressors, and become useless to us, much more the others.
