1:19a

holding on to faith and a good conscience: This phrase describes one way that Timothy needed to “fight” to proclaim the gospel. He was to use his faith in God and his good conscience.

In some languages, people cannot use a verb like hold on with an object that cannot be touched, like faith or a good conscience. In such languages it may be necessary to say something like:

continue to have faith and a good conscience

a good conscience: A person who has a good conscience does not feel guilty because he knows that he has done the right thing. In English this is often expressed as “a clear conscience.”

conscience: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as conscience refers to the part of a person that helps him know what is right and what is wrong to think or do. A conscience causes a person to feel ashamed or guilty if he does wrong. It also makes him feel good when he does what is right.

However, in many languages, there is not a word that means conscience. In some languages, there may be an idiom that can be used. In other languages, it may be necessary to translate the expression good conscience by an expression like:

doing what he knows is right

See the note on good conscience in 1:5c.

1:19b

Here, Paul contrasted what he was telling Timothy to do with what some people had actually done. Paul implied that Timothy should not be like the other people whom he was describing here. In some languages it may be necessary to use a connecting word to express this contrast.

which some have rejected: the Greek word ēn, which, is singular. This means that it probably refers to only a “good conscience.” The Revised Standard Version has made this clear by saying:

By rejecting conscience

some: Paul was probably referring to the people whom he had mentioned in 1:3c, people who were teaching wrong doctrines. What he said about them here is similar to what he said about them in 1:6a. That is, he had said that they had “strayed” from a “clear conscience” and a “sincere faith.”

have rejected: When Paul said that some people rejected a “good conscience,” he meant that they were no longer paying attention to what their conscience was telling them. So they were no longer doing what they knew was right.

1:19c

shipwrecked their faith: The Greek expression that the Berean Standard Bible translates as shipwrecked their faith is a metaphor. When a ship is shipwrecked, it gets damaged so badly that people can no longer use it. The ship is destroyed and useless. In this part of the verse, Paul used the word shipwrecked to refer to a person’s faith that would be destroyed. He was not referring to a literal ship. It is a person’s faith that is ruined.

If, in your area, ships and shipwrecks are unknown, it may not be possible to use a metaphor here. So you could do two things:

• Explain the metaphor in your translation. For example:

they destroy their ability to trust God, in the same way that a shipwreck destroys a ship

• Remove the metaphor and translate the meaning directly. For example, the Good News Translation says:

Some people…have made a ruin of their faith.

You should use whatever method communicates best in your language.

© 2003 by SIL International®

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.