Two things have to be insisted upon in this much debated scripture. First, that the meaning of the word castaway must retain its proper force. It is ἀδοκίμος—signifying something that will not stand the test and is rejected; as, for example, in 2 Timothy 3:8: “Reprobate concerning the faith;” i.e., teen who, tried by the truth, are to be refused. Secondly, it is of equal importance to maintain that the apostle had no thought of the possibility of his being a castaway. What he says, in other words, is, that if he were only a preacher—a preacher whose life did not express in some measure the truth he proclaimed, one who was governed only by his own will and inclinations— he might then be a “reprobate.” Or, to borrow the language of another, “I am not merely a preacher, but a liver lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” And again, “If Paul himself had been preaching only, not living, he would have been a castaway. But he was not that; and he states how he was living, that he might not be.” What we have then in this passage is, that even a preacher of the gospel may be lost; that the evidence of his being a true Christian does not lie in his being a preacher, but in his walking as such; even as the same apostle writes to the Romans, “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” (Romans 8:13)
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