1 Timothy 4

God’s purpose to ransom the human race from the sin of Adam, the heritage of Adam’s children, and to bring it back to the ways of eternal life. These are the designs, loudly proclaimed, of the divine incarnation in Jesus, and the price of all the sufferings and agonies which he endured in its accomplishment. And how does this sublime fact exalt man’s dignity at the same time that it illustrates the value that all men have in the eyes of God! Guizot.

Christ is “God manifest.” He is the Word, God heard; the Light, God seen; the Life, God felt. Wolfe.—Oh, high, inconceivable mystery of godliness! God manifested in the flesh! Nothing in this world so strange and sweet as that conjuncture, God man. What a strong foundation of friendship and union betwixt the person of man and God, that their natures met in so close embraces in one person! L.

1. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the 2 faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; 3 having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to 4 abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them 5 which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be 6 refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and 7 prayer. If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good 8 minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, where- 9 unto thou hast attained. But refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself 10 rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto 11 all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a 12 faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. For therefore we both labour and suffer 13 reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of 14 those that believe. These things command and teach. Let no man despise thy youth; but 15 be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, 16 in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the 17 hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that 18 thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue 19 in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.

Be thou an example! Your example is every day and every hour at work, blessing or cursing in your family, among your associates, in your daily intercourse, among all that know you. It is working where you are and where you are not; it is multiplying itself, reproducing through others its own image; it is preaching from the pulpit of your life a sermon mightier than your mere words. Many an eye looks to you to know what you will do and how you will live, and the current of your life determines that of others. What a blessed treasure for you would be that of holy example! Your journey through the world would be a path of light. The treasure of a useful life would be stored up for you in heaven, and on your track to the spirit-world would follow those whom your example had attracted, and who would join you in the music of the new song. E. H. G.

Meditate on these things! The man of meditation makes the Scriptures his own, draws from them their treasures, and incorporates them into his religious life. Divine truth has a lodgment in his soul. It is linked in with his trains of thought, as he sits, or works, or walks. It fills him with thoughts while other men are filled with projects and restless desires. It supplies the wants both of his intellectual and his practical powers, and connects itself through his hopes and fears, desires and conscience, with all the conduct of life. The nature of divine truth is such that its fullness of meaning and of bearing upon life only reveals itself by degrees to a mind open for its reception. The thoughtful mind discovers this richness of the word; text after text opens and gathers power before the eye; truth after truth puts on new glory. Such being the effect of meditation, it must plainly tend to keep the believer closer to the doctrines of the Scriptures. When a believer studies the word with thoughtfulness, he becomes imbued with its spirit, its parts and truths assume their true relations to one another in his mind, and thus, without his being aware, there has a system of Biblical doctrine grown up within him. Such a believer, it may be, is unable to explain or to defend the truth, but in the main it is with him, and he is shielded against the plausibilities of error. T. D. W.

1-3. While the apostles wrote, the actual state and the visible tendencies of things showed too plainly what Church history would be; and, at the same time, prophetic intimations made the prospect still more dark. T. D. E.—The apostle predicts that there should soon appear such extravagances as we actually find afterward in the Gnostic and Manichean systems—the prohibition of marriage and of certain kinds of food (probably animal) which God had created to be eaten with thanksgiving. He describes such precepts as “doctrines of devils”; in other words, he attributes them to the suggestion of evil spirits, in antithesis with the suggestion of the Spirit of God mentioned in the beginning of the verse. P. S.

2. Persons living in hypocrisy as their natural element, speaking lies as their proper vocation, men who had no relish for the pure gospel, and assumed the profession of a regard to it only that they might the more advantageously propagate their views and practices. P. F.—Hypocrisy is a sin that dares it with God. It is a sin that saith God is ignorant, or that he delighteth in iniquity. It is a sin that flattereth, that dissembleth, that offereth to hold God, as it were, fair in hand about that which is neither purposed nor intended. It will make a man preach for a place and praise, rather than to glorify God and save souls; it will put a man upon talking that he may be commended; it will make a man show zeal in duties when his heart is as cold, as senseless, and as much without savor as a clod; it will make a man pretend to experience and sanctification when he has none, and to faith and sincerity when he knows not what they are. There are opposed to this sin simplicity, innocence, and godly sincerity. Believe that a hypocrite, with all the cunning that shrouds his hypocrisy, can go unseen no farther than the grave; nor can he longer flatter himself with thoughts of life. Bun.—Their conscience seared. As a clean conscience is its own reward, so an offended conscience is its own punishment. Conscience frequently offended soon becomes “seared”—mark, not destroyed; quick and raw enough underneath, ready to be probed and fretted by the worm that dieth not, and scorched by the fire that never goes out—but seared on the surface, of no use for present service; numbed, dark, useless. People with their consciences in this state often tell us they do not feel condemned for dispositions and practices which are evidently forbidden by the word of God, nor for things which they once would have trembled to do. They do not see that their consciences are seared. An.

3. The prohibition of marriage and of the use of certain kinds of food, by which more especially animal food must be understood, was among the commoner forms of that ascetic tendency which had already taken root in the East, and, the apostle foresaw, was presently going to win for itself a place within the pale of the Christian Church. The Therapeutæ of Egypt, and the Essenes in the south of Palestine, were examples of the tendency in question; since, not only at the gospel era, but for generations before it, they had in considerable numnumbers been systematically carrying out their ascetic principles in the manner indicated by the apostle. P. F.—The New Testament recognizes in marriage the normal relation in which the human character fully develops itself and answers its great end—a relation instituted by God and sanctified by Christ. The depreciation of conjugal life by an asceticism which can not rise above its physical and natural basis to the view of its higher moral and religious significance, contradicts the spirit of the gospel, and is in reality of heathen origin. Here the apostle numbers it among the doctrines of the evil spirits which rule the world of idolatry, that they forbid marriage, as some Gnostic sects and the Manicheans did—looking on the body, which was created by God and designed for the organ of the Holy Ghost, as a part of the intrinsically evil matter, and consequently regarding all contact with it as sinful. P. S.

5. The apostle had plainly, in the preceding verse, referred to the divine testimony recorded in the history of creation respecting the goodness of all that God had created and made, coupled also with the express and authoritative permission granted to man there, and still more fully at Gen. 9: 3, 4, freely to use whatever was fit for food in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The word of God in those passages for ever sanctified all for man’s use; and if man on his part, taking God’s word for his warrant, gratefully acknowledges God’s hand in the gifts bestowed, and entreats his blessing on them, the sanctification is complete both ways—objectively by the word of God, subjectively by prayer. P. F.—A man may take food with the view of tasting, and thereby bringing home to his heart a more lively sense of, the bounty of our heavenly Father, who daily spreads a table for all his creatures, and by each meal that he provides answers the Christian’s prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He may also take it with the view of making his body a fitter and more efficient instrument of the divine service, a view which would effectually preclude all intemperate use of God’s gifts, and make a man’s real need the law of his appetite. We may say of the whole compass of earthly blessings what here he says of food. It is not mere enjoyment of the creature, but trust in the creature to satisfy all the deep cravings of the soul, which excludes God and Christ from the heart. Nay; a moderate and chastened enjoyment of the creature actually contributes to our sanctification, inasmuch as it acts as a stimulant to gratitude. E. M. G.—Do not undervalue the gifts of God—wealth, and all that wealth can buy; pleasures that come to the soul through the eye, the ear, the taste; the delights of social life, refined by culture, learning, beauty, grace, and sweetened by the charms of friendship and love. It is cant and sin to affect to despise the delights of social and domestic life, as if God were not to be enjoyed in the blessings with which he crowns our days. These are his mercies, and are to be received with gratitude. But they are not enough, and they are only the efflorescence of the source itself of infinite good. They are God’s, but they are not God. He is in himself wealth, pleasure, love; and to long for them alone and not to pant after him, is to be satisfied with the flower when the fruit is to be had, to drink the morning dew when the fountain of living water is at your feet. Prime.

7. Exercise thyself.** The more our gifts and graces are exercised, the more they are strengthened and increased. All acts strengthen habits. Not he who knows most, nor he who hears most, nor yet he who talks most, but he who exercises grace most, has most communion with God, has the clearest visions of God, and the sweetest discoveries and manifestations of his Lord and Master. Brooks.—The life of active service may be so conducted as to secure fresh supplies of grace. If in every part of his active work for God the Christian sets God before him; if he is very jealous of the purity of his motives and the rectitude of his intentions; if he is diligent in ejaculatory prayer; if, even in the little crosses and annoyances of the day, he regards the will of God who sends them, and takes them accordingly with sweetness and buoyancy of spirit; if he cultivates the habit of allowing the objects of nature, and passing events, to remind him of spiritual truth, and lead his mind upward; if, in short, he turns each incident of life into a spiritual exercise, and extracts from each a spiritual good—then he is cultivating the internal life, while he engages in the external; and while, on the one hand, he is expending the oil of grace, he is, on the other, laying in a fresh stock of it in his oil-vessels. E. M. G.

Unto godliness. Holiness was meant, our New Testament tells us, for every-day use. It is home-made and home-worn. Its exercise hardens the bone and strengthens the muscle in the body of character. Holiness is religion shining. It is the candle lighted, and not hid under a bushel, but lighting the house. It is religious principle put into motion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the feet, and with the hands, of love to man. It is faith gone to work. It is charity coined into actions. F. D. H.—Exercise thy patience, that thou mayest be able to bear ever more and more lovingly the weaknesses of others. Exercise thy faith, that the better thou mayest be able to overcome the world. Exercise thy love, that the easier thou mayest find self-denial. Exercise thy hope, that the oftener thou hast to pass through tribulation the easier it may be to do so. Exercise thyself in knowing God, that the better thou mayest understand his ways. Exercise thyself in humility, that thou mayest become more and more like Jesus, thy lowly Lord. Have no self-will, but exercise thyself in trusting to the guidance of God. Fear God—the longer, the more childlike. Trust God—the longer, the more confidingly. A. C.

8. Instead of “profiteth little,” read “profiteth for a little,” i. e., is of some use. The authorized version gives a sense implying the contrary: “profiteth little,” meaning, “is of no (or hardly any) use.” A.—He takes occasion to commend that higher kind of energetic striving which became the spiritual athletes of the gospel. The gymnastic training had a measure of good attending it; it was profitable within a certain limited sphere, since it contributed to the healthfulness and agility of the bodily frame, and brought its successful cultivator a present recompense of honor or reward. But the sincere and strenuous cultivation of vital godliness rises immensely above this; it carries in its train the highest good of which man is capable, and that not merely for time but throughout eternity. For such is the explanation the apostle himself gives, in the words that follow, of the all things unto which godliness is profitable. P. F.

While the holiness of man is the grand and ultimate end of God’s promises, there is no sensibility or interest of man to which they do not appeal, and aim to render subservient to that end. They create no interference, but insure a perfect coincidence between man’s temporal and eternal well-being. “Godliness” has the “promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” There is no interest of man in time which they disregard or fail to promote; no wants to which they do not furnish the adequate and the best supplies. There are no temptations, nor trials, nor afflictions, for which support and deliverance are not provided; no affections, no relations, no duties which pertain to man’s present state, to which their provisions do not fully extend, which they do not consult and regulate in a manner worthy of God. By precepts he regulates all, and by the promises engages to give grace and glory. N. W. T.

10. They felt that their grand interest, alike for time and eternity, lay in the service and blessing of God; and without disparaging anything naturally pleasant or advantageous which the course of divine providence might place within their reach, or shunning as unclean what God had given to be used, they still showed that they were prepared to undergo any sacrifice of fleshly ease or worldly honor that might be required by their devotion to the cause of Christ, assured that thereby they gained more than they lost—that they advanced their interest in what alone is of supreme and imperishable moment. P. F.

There is an inner and an outer circle of redemption, if we may say so, both having a common center in the cross. The larger describes the limits of a possible and provisional salvation; the smaller those of an actual and realized salvation. The whole world is comprehended in the one; only those who believe are included in the other: “God who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe.” A. J. G.

11. Charge these things, and teach;** the things, namely, which had been mentioned in the immediately preceding verses, and which concerned the whole Church of Christ—involving serious dangers to be guarded against, and lines of duty to be resolutely pursued. On Timothy’s part, therefore, there were both charges to be given respecting them, and principles as to truth and error to be taught.

12. Thy youth.** The youth of Timothy must be understood relatively: though a person in the full vigor of manhood, he still was young for such a charge as had been devolved on him—much younger, in all probability, than some on whom he had to exercise disciplinary treatment. The natural disposition of Timothy, also, formed rather for helping and obeying than commanding, could scarcely fail to aggravate the danger; so that against this, as a weak point in his position, he was fitly called by the apostle to guard. Respect for the sacred interests intrusted to him required that he should be manly and firm. P. F.

12. An example.** In all cases in which formal instruction or advice is precluded, how invaluable that other mode of access to the minds of men—the silent, unobtrusive, inoffensive, yet most potent and persuasive teaching of the life! The counsel you may not speak you may yet embody in action. To the faults and sins you can not notice in words, you may hold up the mirror of a life bright with purity and goodness and grace. The mind which no force of rebuke could drive from sin may yet be insensibly drawn from it by the attractive power of holiness ever acting in its presence. Caird.

13. Give attention to reading.** The word itself should be read. It carries its own lights, evidences, defenses. The best answer to some of the doubts that arise about it is—to read it. Some never do thoroughly read the Bible; and, as a consequence, they do not perceive its continuities, its harmonies, its grandeur. “The Word of God” is a great building—an historical, moral structure, growing through the ages into a very temple—coherent, symmetrical, grand. A. R.—Read, not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Bacon.

14. The prophecy is to be viewed as the distinct enunciation of God’s will in respect to Timothy’s qualifications—his spiritual as well as natural qualifications for the evangelistic office; and the formal designation of him by the presbytery was the Church’s response to the declared mind of God, and appropriate action to carry it into effect. P. F.—The practice of ordination in the primitive Church supposes that it was instituted by Christ. The “laying on of hands,” we are required to consider a part of Christianity (Heb. 6: 2). Ordination consists in the transmission of ecclesiastical power by the solemn and appropriate form of the laying on of the hands of presbyters. The laying on of hands in ordination is distinctly recognized both by apostolical example and precept. Not that anything is actually conveyed by the mere imposition of hands from the persons engaged in the act to the person who is the object of it. It is the appropriate mode by which it hath pleased the Head of the Church to express the communication of official power to those by whom it is to be exercised. The act of ordination belongs to persons previously ordained. If it is significant of the conveyance of office-power, it can only be performed by those who possess such power. The power, it is true, is not derived from men, but from Christ, the fountain-head of all authority. But it is transmitted through men; and there seems to be an obvious propriety, if not necessity, that the medium of transmission should be such as to bring to view the thing transmitted. W. S.

15. Meditate.** It is good to read, mark, learn; but it is better to inwardly digest. It is good to read, better to think—better to think one hour than to read ten hours without thinking. Thinking is to reading what rain and sunshine are to the seed cast into the ground—the influence which maketh it bear and bring forth thirty-, forty-, or a hundred-fold. To read is to gather into the barn or storehouse of the mind; to think is to cast seed-corn into the ground to make it productive. To read is to collect information; to think is to evolve power. Cameron.—Interest in a subject depends very much on our knowledge of it; and so it is with the things of Christ. As long as the life and death of Christ are strange to us, how can we be interested about them? but read them, thinking of what they were, and what were their ends, and who can help being interested about them? Read them carefully, and read them often, and they will bring before our minds the very thoughts which we need, and which the world keeps continually from us, the thoughts which naturally feed our prayers; thoughts not of self, nor selfishness, nor pleasure, nor passion, nor folly, but of such things as are truly God’s—love, and self-denial, and purity, and wisdom. These thoughts come by reading the Scriptures; and strangely do they mingle at first with the common evil thoughts of our evil nature. But they soon find a home within us, and more good thoughts gather round them, and there comes a time when daily life with its various business, which once seemed to shut them out altogether, now ministers to their nourishment. Thoughtfulness, which is at the bottom of all religious knowledge, is one of the greatest softeners of the human mind, not in itself indeed the same as love, yet naturally preparing the way for love. And thoughtfulness, blessed be God for it, does not depend on learning, nor is the particular

portion of those who have read many books and have much leisure. Even in the busiest life, he who has no other book than his Bible may enjoy the blessedness of thought; of such thought as leads to the highest wisdom; thought upon life and death, sin and holiness, God’s promises and Christ’s love. T. A.