<p>1:3 <i>But in his own time manifested His word in the message- </i>The message / word is simply that God wishes to give us eternal life. We are playing a part in God's eternal purpose; the idea of giving us eternal life began 'before infinity', God asserted this plan within Himself; and He waited all this time to use us to go take that message to people who could accept it and thus come to eternity. This is why any genuine attempt to spread that message has His eternal power and strengthening and enablement behind it. It could also be said that the manifestation of that word of eternal life / salvation was in the person of the Lord Jesus.</p><p><i>The message with which I was entrusted-</i> In a sense God requires not help from man; and yet in another sense He has delegated His work to us, and limits His achievements according to what we are willing to do. C.S. Lewis in <i>The World&rsquo;s Last Night </i>observes: &ldquo;He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye. Creation seems to be delegation through and through. I suppose this is because He is a giver&rdquo;. As any employer soon learns, delegation is a risk. We have been &ldquo;entrusted with the Gospel&rdquo; (Tit. 1:3 RV); and therefore the world God so wants to love, the world God is appealing to, may never see Him; for He makes His appeal through us, as Paul told the Corinthians. The same word is found in 1 Tim. 1:11 (see notes there). The Gospel has been entrusted to us; in a sense, the progress of God&rsquo;s work depends upon us. He could save who He wishes as He wishes, but it seems He prefers to work through the mechanism of preachers sharing His word with others. See on 2:11.</p><p><i>According to the commandment of God our Saviour- </i>A reference to the great commission? Or to the specific calling given to Paul at this conversion? Recall how Paul does at times begin his letters with an appeal to the fact he has been specifically commissioned as a preacher (Gal. 1:1-12; 1 Cor. 1:1; Rom. 1:1-4; 1 Tim. 1:11; 2 Tim. 1:11). He has just written that the message was entrusted to him personally. But this is not to say that we have not also been commissioned to share the same message.</p>