'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners.'--1 TIM. i. 15.
Condensation is a difficult art. There are few things drier and more
unsatisfactory than small books on great subjects, abbreviated
statements of large systems. Error lurks in summaries, and yet here the
whole fulness of God's communication to men is gathered into a sentence;
tiny as a diamond, and flashing like it. My text is the one precious
drop of essence, distilled from gardens full of fragrant flowers. There
is an old legend of a magic tent, which could be expanded to shelter an
army, and contracted to cover a single man. That great Gospel which
fills the Bible and overflows on the shelves of crowded libraries is
here, without harm to its power, folded up into one saying, which the
simplest can understand sufficiently to partake of the salvation which
it offers.
There are five of these 'faithful sayings' in the letters of Paul,
usually called 'the pastoral epistles.' It seems to have been a manner
with him, at that time of his life, to underscore anything which he felt
to be especially important by attaching to it this label. They are all,
with one exception, references to the largest truths of the Gospel. I
turn to this one, the first of them now, for the sake of gathering some
lessons from it.