the7ones.comFellowship: 1 & 2 Timothy
“This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some having rejected, concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck, of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” — 1 Tim. 1:18-20
Amidst urging Timothy to “wage the good warfare,” Paul mentions a couple of men who have rejected faith and a good conscience. These men, Hymenaeus and Alexander, are identified by name in this letter. As a result of their rejection of faith a good conscience, they suffered a “shipwreck” of faith. Paul delivered them to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. Difficult as the passage may seem, Paul may have thought of the church as God’s domain, and therefore the world as Satan’s domain (2 Cor. 4:4). To deliver them to Satan would have meant to break fellowship with them and no longer receive them as brothers.
There is a little more information about Hymenaeus. Along with a man named Philetus, Paul refers to Hymenaeus as one whose message would spread like cancer (2 Tim. 2:17). He had “strayed from the truth,” specifically by saying that the resurrection had already passed (2 Tim. 2:18). While we cannot be sure this was the teaching that initially caused his fall, it definitely ranked him as a teacher who was destroying the faith of some (2 Tim. 2:18), and his own rejection of the faith in some way had caused him to be rejected by the apostle, and therefore the church.
Bottom line: Rejecting faith and a good conscience, and overthrowing the faith of others is cause to deliver someone over to Satan. Once again, the discipline is for the purpose of reforming the offender.
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