Should You Hand Me Over to Satan?

The other night we stumbled upon (and over) 1 Timothy 1:19-20, in which Paul instructs Timothy to fight the good fight,

• "keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme." (1 Timothy 1:19-20)

This passage raised a few eyebrows, mine included. We discussed it for a while, but I realized I needed to come back and study it closer. The questions that come to mind:

• Who were Hymenaeus and Alexander?
• What does it mean to suffer shipwreck in regard to our faith?
• What blasphemy caused Paul to react so strongly?
• What does it mean to hand someone over to Satan?

Please don’t conclude from the title of this post that I find humor in the subject, or that I take lightly the notion of being handed over to Satan. Whatever it means, it is not something I wish to come within a million miles of. However, you may more accurately derive that, at the beginning of this small study, I do not have a clear idea of what it does mean. If you don’t have time to think this through with me, feel free to skip to the conclusion. However, feedback will be most helpful if you’ve read through this article.


Who were Hymenaeus and Alexander?

Hymenaeus appears not only here, but also in Paul’s second letter to Timothy:

• "But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, men who have gone astray from the truth saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some." (2 Timothy 2:16-18)

This man’s impact on the Ephesian Church spanned both of Paul’s letters to Timothy – a period of 1-4 years.

The name “Alexander” shows up in several places, however there is no clear link between these persons, and so we must acknowledge relative ignorance beyond what we see here in 1 Timothy; namely that he was associated with Hymanaeus and that he too blasphemed.
Paul’s letters to Timothy had a great deal to say about elders, and it is not unreasonable to assume that these men were elders in the Church at one time.

What does it mean to suffer shipwreck in regard to the faith?

These two men had rejected faith and a good conscience and subsequently suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. The key to this shipwreck was their rejection of faith and conscience. The New Living Translation reads, “For some people have deliberately violated their consciences…" Moral self-awareness is a gift from God, serving as watchman over our thoughts and actions, ringing the alarm bell when the walls are breached. This constant prompting is intended to convince us of our crimes before it is too late to do anything about them. “Look to yourself! You are breaking some law! Wrong, it’s wrong!” On some matters the conscience can be informed - and misinformed - with instruction, but its core is an intuitive part of the human package, provided by God as a bellwether of truth. However, it can be silenced. Whether by a gradual increase of ignorance over a long period of time, or by sudden, blatant violations, the awareness of truth can be suppressed in unrighteousness. Given time the conscience is silenced, replaced with a perverted, treacherous sentry that welcomes breaches, and calls evil good, and good evil. So it was with Hymanaeus and Alexander who had rejected what was right and true; but to reject truth means they had some knowledge of it in the first place. That is the damning reality of the human state: we know enough to repent and turn to God, and yet we refuse. Our minds create a surrogate wisdom, and our hearts become unable to tolerate truth. It has been said that the most acute anguish of hell will be the relentless “I told you so!” of our conscience, and that we will no longer be able to suppress it.

The fact that these two men rejected faith tells us that they had it within their grasp at some point. As we will see from the remainder of the verse, it is likely that these men were formerly members of the Church in Ephesus. They had heard the Word preached, received it with joy, had likely made a profession of faith, enjoyed the sweet fellowship of the saints, and born witness to the work of Holy Spirit all around them. However, not all seed is sown in good soil, and some who initially appear to be of the body of Christ are later revealed as otherwise by their sins.

Hymanaeus and Alexander’s experience with the Christian faith had come to a disastrous end. They had gone astray from the true course, intent on their own setting, and had smashed themselves against the rocks of unbelief and deceit. We landlubbers would be more likely to say “trainwreck” than “shipwreck,” however, in a shipwreck the ship is not only damaged but sunk; lost. Whatever they knew of the faith they had twisted into something else, losing any inkling of true faith.

(Some references for the above: Romans 1:18-32; Hebrews 6:4-6; Mark 4:13-20; 1 Timothy 5:24, 1 Timothy 6:3-10)

What blasphemy caused Paul to react so strongly?

“So that they will be taught not to blaspheme.” In the general sense, to blaspheme somebody is “to speak against them in such a way as to harm or injure their reputation” (Louw & Nida.) In other scriptures, the Greek word blasphemeo is rendered, “spoken against,” “dishonored,” “malign,” and “hurling abuse.”

• " The next Sabbath nearly the whole city assembled to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began contradicting the things spoken by Paul, and were blaspheming." (Acts 13:44-45)

What blasphemy have Hymenaeus and Alexander committed? In his letters Paul refers to false teachings involving legalism, immorality, greed and so on. To misrepresent God's truth is to slander Him. This is why we must be so very careful in handling His Word, and quick to acknowledge our errors. In his second letter Paul states plainly that Hymenaeus had been teaching, “The resurrection has already taken place.” What does this mean?

This was a clever deception. Hymenaeus didn’t deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus. He didn’t even deny that there was a resurrection for believers. Rather, he claimed that this resurrection had already occurred. To naïve Christians, this seems innocuous enough – after all, Jesus said we must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven, and even Paul would say that we have already been “made alive in Christ.” However, this idea has a payload: if the believer’s resurrection is only a spiritual one, then there is no future physical resurrection waiting for us. This was an appealing thought to the Greek mind which sneered at the idea of physical resurrection (Acts 17:32), but it undermined peoples’ faith. As Paul says,

• "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied." (1 Corinthians 15:19)

Paul had labored relentlessly, risking his life in the preaching of the gospel and in the service of the believers in Ephesus. For someone else to devour the flock provoked Paul to holy anger. In his second letter (2 Tim 2:17) he refers to this teaching as “gangrene” – cancer would also suffice here as both maladies attack the blood and can lead to death. This speaks not only to the fatal consequences of the heresy, but also to the nature of its working; gangrene and cancer spread quickly and will consume the vital organs – if not the entire body – when left unchecked. So errors spread in the body of Christ, and so they multiply in their teachers as one error invariably leads to another. Even when treated effectively, permanent damage can be unavoidable.

God commands us to use discernment in identifying false teachers, provides us with the criteria by which we can evaluate such things, and gives us the steps needed to deal with them. All this is in His Word. Paul had caught this foul disease early on – his response had been to hand these men over to Satan.

What does it mean to hand someone over to Satan?

First of all, as I said earlier, whatever this means, it isn’t good. It is strong, shocking language and reflects the seriousness of the matter, and the exhaustion of Paul’s patience with these men. They had gone too far and now faced the terrifying reality of being handed over to Satan.

I will readily admit that I have never heard anyone say that they have handed a person over to Satan. Other than its mention in scripture, I have never even heard the phrase uttered, written or practiced. This term is therefore foreign to most of us, not having any place in our language or understanding. That being the case, scripture will be my only source for unlocking the meaning.

A few years earlier, Paul had to deal with an ugly situation in Corinth (1 Cor 5). A man was sleeping with his step-mother, and this behavior was being tolerated by the rest of the Church. Paul chastises the Church for this, decrying their lack of discernment, their abdication of responsibility, and their ultimate peril in allowing such wickedness to fester.

• "When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord." (1 Corinthians 5:4-5, NIV)

Here the context gives us a clear understanding of what Paul intends by this. “Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?” “Clean out the old leaven.” “Do not associate with immoral people [within the Church].” " I wrote to you [previously] not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one." “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.”

What action does Paul command? Put the man out of the Church.

The last quote, “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves” is a reference to many Old Testament passages (Deu 13:5, 17:7, 12, 21:21, 22:21) which are concerned with the purity of Israel. Similarly, Paul is concerned with this moral and doctrinal purity of the Church:

• "For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ." (2 Corinthians 11:2-3)

God demands holiness because He is holy. He is a holy God, and therefore His own must be holy. He is so pure that He cannot bear to look upon sin (Hab 1:13), and will not tolerate it in His Church. The man in Corinth and the false teachers in Ephesus were contaminating the local Churches, and the filth was spreading. Christ has a passion for holiness and will not tolerate blatant sin in His own body, detailing for us how to respond to such situations (Matt 18.) The ultimate consequence of unrepentant sin is disassociation; the offender is no longer to be considered part of the body. As Paul says, all fellowship with such a person is to cease.

As I drive by Church buildings in my area I see advertisements such as, “The Church for Everyone,” and “You Belong Here.” It is true that God will save from among all peoples and races, but there is an attitude of all-inclusiveness which so pervades our thinking that we really struggle with the notion of putting someone out of a Church. After all, don’t they need to keep hearing the Word? How do you expect anyone to make a positive change when they are cut off from Christian fellowship? Sometimes we even fall back on the thinking that, “Well, nobody’s perfect… are you going to evict everyone?” Scripture agrees that Christians indeed sin, but that they also repent, strive to live holy lives before God, and show progress in doing so. When this is not the case, when someone continues in their sin – even when challenged – they are to be separated from the Church. If allowed to remain it is not merely their own souls that are at stake; they become a danger to the body as others follow the precedent. Contagious diseases infect and sicken those nearby.

However, such “handing over to Satan” should be done with great trepidation as well. Paul tells the Corinthians that they should have mourned the presence of sin in their midst. This mourning almost certainly extends to the sorrow they would feel both in coming to terms with the person’s apostasy, and at having to cut them off from their fellowship. Through admonition and confrontation – initially in private - we must strive to win over our brother. Love rules. However, it is not love to allow a false illusion that they are part of the body of Christ, thus blinding them to the reality of their impending destruction.

One question remains for me on this matter. Why does Paul say, “Hand them over to Satan” instead of simply, “Put them out of the Church.” It seems a bit extreme, and certainly isn’t as clear in its meaning. I think part of this is due to how we view Church today. When someone was denied fellowship in a New Testament-era Church, they couldn’t just go down the street to the Second Church of Ephesus. Perhaps there were different homes in which groups met, but there was one Christian community per city in those early days. If someone was put out of the Church everyone would know about it; there were social ramifications that we just aren’t accustomed to.

Additionally, in those days, to be a Christian was to be in a local Church. Today this concept is becoming lost as more and more people joined the “unchurched” Christian community. Such folks will claim that this community is really more like the Church Jesus intended than the institutional Church we see today. (There are simply too many biblical obstacles to this perspective. I touched on this here.) Consequently, being outside of the Church today does not carry the implications it did in Paul’s day. In fact, some consider themselves better – more independent and intelligent – for being so. From within their loosely formed communities many of them criticize individualism, yet they epitomize it in the context of the Church. They often look with pity on the poor souls that continue to inhabit the dusty confines of traditional Church, hoping that these too will someday be freed from the shackles of oppressive conformism, and liberated into real relationship with God. Such well-meaning intentions reflect a completely different mindset towards the Church than existed in Paul’s day. (If this reflects your view, please don’t blame it on the sorry state of the Church today… the NT Church was rife with problems as well, yet there was never any question as to its centrality in the Christian life.)

To New Testament believers the Church was an umbilical cord of Christian life. In a sense it was the very womb in which that life took place. While they lived in the world, believers were of the body, not of the world. The Church nourished and protected believers old and new. Elders existed to watch over souls, and were to be held accountable by God for doing so. Believers used their gifts to serve one another in love, helping, sharing, encouraging, strengthening and admonishing one another. The Word was taught here and baby Christians grew into mature men and women, each learning to love and honor Christ, changing into His image day by day. Even unbelievers reaped benefits of being in the Church community. To be put outside this was to be cut off from spiritual life and blessing, exposed to Satan and the world without the loving protection of elders and fellow believers. To a follower of Christ this was a horrific turn of events, and with this in mind it makes perfect sense for Paul to consider it as handing someone over to Satan.

Conclusion

To hand someone over to Satan is to carry out the final step of Church discipline prescribed by Jesus Himself; that is, expulsion from the local Church in everything from worship gatherings to ordinary meals. In reality this serves to disclose the rebellious heart of the individual and to remove any illusion anyone – especially the apostate - might have about their spiritual state. The Apostle John warns that, “The one who makes a practice of sinning is of the devil,” and conversely that, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.” The devil’s own do not belong in the body of Christ, and the body is to remove wickedness and wicked people from its fellowship in order that it might be pure and holy before God. In the instance of a believer being put out, there is also the individual benefit of being chastened and purified, albeit at the hands of Satan.

Hymenaeus and Alexander were put out of the Church because they rejected the faith and invented their own. Not content with that, they taught these false ideas to anyone that would listen and turned people away from truth. As a result of their continual sin they were removed from fellowship with the Church in Ephesus, released from the protective environment of the body of Christ, and handed over to Satan.