1 Timothy 1:9

9. Not made for Literally, does not lie for, does not exist for. The term lies does not express a penal effect upon the just man, though the severe strain of the following verses indicates that such is the implication. Legal penalty is not for the good, but for the criminal.

A righteous man As the subtle teacher of the fables and genealogies claimed to be. The law did not exist for the purpose of making him wise in his own conceit. Law, here, means not the absolute rule of right, for that exists for, and is binding on, all beings; but it means the vocal or written expression of that rule; the commandment in words. For beings who do absolutely and continually right, no such verbal commandment would be needed. It would be intrinsically good, but relatively superfluous. In practical daily morals this truth has been recognized among the best pagan writers. From many passages in Wetstein we select the following: Antiphon says, “The man doing no wrong needs no law.” “Aristippus, being asked what was the superiority of the philosophers, replied, in the fact that if the laws were abrogated we should live the same.” AElian says, “Solon did not legislate for lions, when he enacted that it was obligatory to support one’s parents.” See our note on Matthew 11:30. But Paul’s righteous man is the gospel ideal; the made righteous, not by nature, but by grace purifying and exalting nature. To him Christ, by faith embraced, is the substitute for law, being a living law, and the Spirit is the quickener to a conformity with Christ. As the man sinks below Christ, he sinks into law, and feels its enslaving and condemning power until he rises again into Christ.

The objects of law are now first described in three severe antitheses. The lawless are those who ignore law, and act as if it had no existence; the disobedient recognise law and consciously rebel against it. The ungodly neither recognize nor reverence God, and think and live as if no God existed; sinners know God, yet consciously disregard his authority as God, and transgress his commandments. Unholy are those whose hearts and lives possess no inward purity or conformity to the divine ideal; the profane are those who regard nothing and nobody as sacred or holy.

The above three antitheses specify qualities of character; the following epithets characterize classes of evil men according to their evil actions. The apostle’s mind evidently runs along the prohibitions of the second table of the decalogue, from the fifth to the ninth commandment, selecting what he deems the most flagrant transgressions of each. The transgressors against the fifth commandment are parricides and matricides; and against the sixth are manslayers.