1 Timothy 5

Thy profiting may appear. Whatever enriches the thoughts of men, or refines and exalts these, or puts a higher energy upon them, while leaving the principle of faith undisturbed, makes them just so much better ministers of Christianity; the more appropriate and powerful agents in achieving its advance. The splendid genius of the apostle to the Gentiles, cultivated by Greek training, and disciplined by the masculine regimen of the Pharisean schools, to whom travel was a teacher, and many cities the halls of his university—this is the great example of the fact, from the primitive time, for all after ages. And every illustrious champion of the truth, who has preached Paul’s doctrine, with his spirit reproduced, till the nations paused at his feet to hear it, and listening centuries clasped hands around his pulpit, has shown the same. R. S. S.

16. Take heed to thyself.** That soul will doubtless be very wary in its walk that takes daily account of itself and renders up that account unto God. It will not live by guess, but naturally examine each step beforehand, because it is resolved to examine all after; will consider well what it should do, because it means to ask over again what it hath done; and not only to answer itself but to make a faithful report of all unto God; to lay all before him continually upon trial made; to tell him what is in any measure well done as his own work, and bless him for that, and tell him, too, all the slips and miscarriages of the day as our own; complaining of ourselves in his presence, and still entreating free pardon, and more wisdom to walk more holily and exactly; and gaining, even by our failings, more humility and more watchfulness. L.

The one reason for being zealous for Christian doctrine, which so far surpasses all others that beside it they become as nothing, is that here given by Paul to Timothy: “For in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.” Saving, first, ourselves; then those that hear us: the sublime can go no further! Here we have set before our hearts, soliciting us onward, motives which we acknowledge have already moved the very heart of the Godhead. To save! as an instrument it is true; but oh, how infinitely glorious, even as an instrument, to save! and that not only ourselves but others! While, on the one hand, guarding “the doctrine” is the only means of retaining saving power in the Church, on the other, no guard upon the doctrine will ever be effectual unless we can raise up a succession of saved men. Arthur.

1. REBUKE not an elder, but entreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren; 2 the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity. Honour widows that 3 are widows indeed. But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew 4 piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God. 5 Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplica- 6 tions and prayers night and day. But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. 7 And these things give in charge, that they may be blameless. But if any provide not for his 8 own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

9. Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old, having been the wife 10 of one man. Well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she 11 have diligently followed every good work. But the younger widows refuse: for when they 12 have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will marry; having damnation, because 13 they have cast off their first faith. And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which 14 they ought not. I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the 15 house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. For some are already 16 turned aside after Satan. If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them re- lieve them, and let not the church be charged; that it may relieve them that are widows 17 indeed. Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they 18 who labour in the word and doctrine. For the Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward. Against an 19 elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke 20 before all, that others also may fear. I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, 22 doing nothing by partiality. Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other 23 men’s sins: keep thyself pure. Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stom- 24 ach’s sake and thine often infirmities. Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before 25 to judgment; and some men they follow after. Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.

Show piety at home. The home came from heaven. Modeled on the Father’s house and the many mansions, and meant the one to be a training-place for the other, the home is one of the gifts of the Lord Jesus—a special creation of Christianity. It is to Jesus Christ we owe the truth, the tenderness, the purity, the warm affection, the holy aspiration, which go together in that endearing word; for it is he who has made obedience so beautiful and affection so holy, it is he who has brought the Father’s house so near, and who has taught us that love is of God. Keep the home near heaven. Let it face toward the Father’s house. Not only let the day begin and end with God, with mercies acknowledged and forgivenesses sought, but let it be seen and felt that God is your chiefest joy, his will in all you do the absolute and sufficient reason. Life is a passover which must be eaten with bitter herbs, and if you have faith in God he will never be nearer than when grief is near; nor is aught so assuring, so hallowing, as the comfort his presence imparts in the moment of panic, in the long days of sickness, in the dark days of sorrow; and the saintliest characters, the sweetest, meekest spirits, are those who have had some signal experience of the Saviour’s sympathy. Hamilton.

4. To show piety at home points back to the fifth commandment, in which the honoring of parents is placed in immediate connection with the reverence and homage due to God, and the things which most nearly concern his glory; that in youthful bosoms is the germ of fealty to God, and so its becoming exercise is reckoned a department of piety. The homes in which such reverential feelings are cherished and such acts of loving-kindness are reciprocated are the best nurseries of the Church—churches themselves, indeed, in embryo, because the homes of Christian tenderness, holy affection, self-denying love, and fruitfulness in well-doing. P. F.—A man’s duties, his love, his kindness, his patience, his faith, his hope, his every grace, which united constitute the perfect man, should, the moment they leave his own soul, meet first with his wife and bless her, and meet with his children and bless them. The good Christian is a good Christian especially in the closet and about the hearth. The poor Christian, the almost Christian, appears best out of doors, abroad. The reason is, true religion is a burning light, a constantly operating force. Upon those nearest to it, and with it, it must shine and act most frequently, constantly, and salutarily. R. T.

6. Dead while she liveth. If you wish to know what hollowness and heartlessness are, you must seek for them in the world of light, elegant, superficial fashion, where frivolity has turned the heart into a rock-bed of selfishness. Say what men will of the heartlessness of trade, it is nothing compared with the heartlessness of fashion. Say what they will of the atheism of science, it is nothing to the atheism of that round of pleasure in which the heart lives—dead while it lives. F. W. R.—This life without a true present is in reality death. What the world calls enjoying life is enjoying death. Worse than pain and care, more exhausting than suffering and anxiety, is this empty and dreary existence, in which the soul has no bread, no water, no sunshine, no love; in which the immortal and God-breathed spirit knows only time-life. A. S.—I have always been regarded as exceptionally favored by fortune, and I do not wish to complain or find fault with the course of my life. But, after all, it is nothing but labor and toil; and I may truly say that during my seventy-five years I have not had four weeks of real comfort. It is the never-ceasing rolling of a stone, which must always be lifted anew. Goethe.

God is the soul of our soul and the life of our life; and Christ must dwell in our heart by faith, and be the heart of our heart, to enable us to say with Paul, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” The ungodly man is a living corpse; the worm of sinful desire consumes his conscience; he is an abomination in the eyes of the Saviour, and offensive to God and the holy angels. Gotthold.—Even now we are alive unto God or dead unto God; and to be dead unto God or to be alive to him are things perceptibly different. The coldness and loneliness of the world without God must be felt more and more as life wears on; in every change of our own state, in every separation from or loss of a friend, in every more sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every additional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels, the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more strongly. And that were indeed awful if, being dead to God and yet little feeling it because of the enjoyments of our worldly life, those enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us, and we should find then that to be dead to God was death indeed, a death from which there is no waking, and in which there is no sleeping for ever. T. A.

8. The declaration itself is quite general. It asserts in the most emphatic manner the obligations springing out of family relationships as grounded in the constitution of nature, and, so far from being annulled or relaxed by the gospel, only thereby rendered the more sacred and imperatively binding. The parent who refuses (if he is able) to support his children while from youth or infirmity they are dependent on his care and help, or the children who refuse to minister to the sustenance and comfort of aged parents, both alike act an unfeeling and unnatural part; they are not true to the moral instincts of their own nature, and fall beneath the standard which has been recognized and acted on by the better class of heathens. For one, therefore, bearing the Christian name to disregard such claims is utterly inexcusable; it is not simply dishonoring to Christ, it is to bring reproach on our common humanity. P. F.

11. But younger widows decline, namely, to put on the list of widows entitled to special guardianship and sustenance on the part of the Church. They might have remarried, as he presently states, without incurring any blame, yea, with his own approval and advice. But, as contemplated by him, the remarrying was the fruit of a growing insensibility to spiritual things, the result of a light, frivolous, sensual tone of mind, fretting under the yoke of Christ, and seeking to break loose from the restraints imposed by it upon the heart and conduct. So that nothing less than an utter shipwreck of the spiritual life was supposed to be involved in the new and backward direction taken by the parties in question. 12. First faith. Their simple faith in Christ and consecration to his service when they first assumed the Christian name. It is not the simple question of adherence to a state of widowhood, or of departure from it, but such a course of defection from the decorum and purity becoming the gospel of Christ as argued a virtual abandonment of the faith. 13. Other proofs are here given of their tendency in that direction, and such as would naturally grow by the comparative ease in which they might be enabled to live in consequence of the pecuniary support ministered to them by the Church.

12. Relieve them that are widows indeed. A return is here made to the principle of private beneficence with respect to young or widowed relatives, and that for the purpose of extending it somewhat beyond the line indicated in verses 4 and 8. In these earlier verses, the children and widows spoken of were relatives of the nearer kind; they belonged to the believer’s household, and had consequently the strongest claim on the means and resources of the house. But now a wider circle is embraced. There might be widows, the apostle suggests, who were not constituent members of a believer’s family, such as a sister, or step-daughter, or niece; and, in cases of that description, the home resources (if adequate) should, according to the apostle, be charged with the maintenance of the bereaved, so as to allow the benefactions of the Church to be applied to the support of those who were widows in the stronger sense, destitute in themselves, and without the sympathy of any near Christian relative to fall back upon. P. F.

17. Much controversy has revolved round these words. The question is whether this sentence sanctions lay-elders (so called) to rule and a clerical elder for preaching and teaching. It seems to us that to found on these words a separation of elders into two entirely different classes is to put more strain on the sentence than it will fairly bear. The distinctive function of all the elders in any congregation is to rule in truth and love, to superintend and supervise the flock. In the discharge of this duty, they are to teach and so “feed the flock” according to their opportunity and ability. But it is in harmony both with Scripture and with common sense, and it is found in practice most expedient, that one of the elders, by natural adaptation, by special training, and by spiritual endowment more fitted than others to teach, should be charged with the public instruction of the people, and occupy the Christian pulpit. D. F.—In an exegetical point of view, the closing portion of the note of Ellicott gives, so far, what must be regarded as the fair and natural import of the apostle’s language: “The concluding words certainly seem to imply two kinds of ruling presbyters—those who preached and taught, and those who did not; and, though it has been plausibly urged that the differentia lies in ’labor,’ and that the apostle does not so much distinguish between the functions as the execution of them, it yet seems more natural to suppose the existence, in the large community at Ephesus, of a clerical college of governing elders, some of whom might have the gift of teaching more eminently than others.” But it must in fairness be added that this teaching qualification appears here rather as a separable adjunct than an essential attribute of the presbyteral function—a gift which, in so far as possessed and faithfully exercised, would materially contribute to the efficiency of the office, and entitle him who so held it to special honor, yet not so as to disqualify those who wanted it from discharging, and even discharging with credit, its primary duties. Seeing it was a spiritual community which was here under consideration, a certain didactic power must be understood to have belonged to every one who could rightly take part in the government of its members; for it belonged to his office that he should at least be able to discern between carnal and spiritual in the characters of men, be capable of testing their knowledge in divine things, and by private fellowship and friendly admonition, if not otherwise, subserve the interests of truth and righteousness among them. So much must be supposed inseparable from the office of presbyter as held by every qualified person; but the gift of teaching in the more distinctive sense, or, in modern phrase, of preaching the gospel with intelligence to the edification of others, is not represented as indispensable. A man might as a presbyter govern, and even govern well, without it. And indeed, as Lightfoot remarks, having respect to the actual state of things in most of the early churches, “government was probably the first conception of the office”—hence, also, in this passage governing is the distinctive epithet coupled with presbyters; yet he justly adds that “the work of teaching must have fallen to the presbyters from the very first, and have assumed greater prominence as time went on.”

18. Or, as it might be expressed, Thou shalt not muzzle an ox when threshing. The form of expression points to the peculiar mode of threshing in the East, by driving oxen over heaps of corn lying on the barn-floor, and, either by their feet or by means of a hurdle drawn after them, bruising the mass so as to separate the grain from the straw and chaff. The passage respecting it is taken from Deut. 25:4, and is one of a series of directions enjoining kind and considerate behavior. It is the only one that has immediate respect to the lower animals; all the rest bear on the conduct that should be maintained toward one’s fellow-creatures, and especially toward those who might be in the unhappy position of bondmen; so that we can scarcely suppose this somewhat exceptional instruction could have been designed for the exclusive benefit of oxen. We may rather suppose it was intended, by carrying the injunction to cultivate a tender and beneficent disposition so low, to make it all the more sure that such a disposition should be exercised toward brethren of one’s own flesh, most especially toward those who were laying themselves out in self-denying labors for the public good. It is therefore a perfectly legitimate application which is made of the passage here, and in 1 Cor. 9:9, to the laborers in the Christian ministry. This prudential maxim, it should be added, is introduced, like the legal prescription before it, merely for the sake of the general principle embodied in it. P. F.

20. Closely connected with its government is the discipline of the Church. The purity, peace, and order of the Church depend much on this institution of Christ being properly administered in all its legitimate objects. That he has made provision for these appears from the power with which he has invested office-bearers in the Church to receive qualified persons into communion; to exercise a watchful inspection; to take cognoscence of offenses against the laws of Christ’s house; to cite and examine offenders; to administer censure according to the nature and degree of the offense; and either to restore to or finally eject from the fellowship of the body as the person may appear to have profited or not by the censure administered. The authority of Christ in this, as in the other institutions of his house, is a merciful authority. It is a proof of his love, designed to promote the best interests of the offenders themselves, as well as of the body at large to which they belong, and, if rightly improved, a manifest and decided blessing. “If he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church; but, if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican. Them that sin rebuke before all, that others may fear. A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject.” W. S.

22. Paul had just been speaking of offenses, and of the importance of dealing with them in an impartial and faithful manner. It was in perfect keeping with this that an exhortation should be given Timothy to beware of making rash appointments to the ministerial office—to take pains beforehand to ascertain the godly life of the persons who should receive the appointment, lest he should be found stamping with his formal approval and raising to the government of the Church men who were themselves, perhaps, of doubtful character, or amenable to discipline. Hence it is added: neither participate in other men’s sins. He would virtually have done so, if he was remiss in his appointments to the higher offices in the Church, and did not carefully distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy. And further: keep THYSELF pure. The emphasis is on thyself, which is hence placed first in the original. Not only beware, by hasty ordinations or otherwise, of coming into improper alliance with the sins of others, but see that thine own conduct is free from any marked blemishes. P. F.

23. Imagine an impostor sitting down to forge an epistle in the name of Paul. Is it credible that it should come into his head to give such a direction as this; so remote from everything of doctrine or discipline, everything of public concern to the religion or the Church, or to any sect, order, or party in it, and from every purpose with which such an epistle could be written? It seems to me that nothing but reality—that is, the real valetudinary situation of a real person—could have suggested a thought of so domestic a nature. But, if the peculiarity of the advice be observable, the place in which it stands is more so. The train of thought seems to be broken to let it in. Now when does this happen? It happens when a man writes as he remembers; when he puts down an article that occurs the moment it occurs, lest he should afterward forget it. Paley.—Timothy had a great, and in many respects irksome, work to do, with the disadvantage of a delicate and often ailing frame; and, if care were not taken to place it under proper dietary treatment, he would inevitably become more or less incapacitated for duty. And, as regards the specific means recommended for this end, the taking of a little wine, the apostle is to be contemplated merely in the light of a friend, exhorting to the use of what was then understood to belong to the proper regimen for such infirmities as Timothy was laboring under. He necessarily wrote from the point of view common to him and his contemporaries, having regard to what was then believed to be best; and possibly, if we knew more fully the circumstances of the case, it might even still be deemed such. On every account, we ought to take the advice tendered by the apostle in its simplest and most obvious import. P. F.

24. Some sins are so plain, so glaring, that they carry the thoughts at once to the bar of God, and spectators are led irresistibly to speak of the fearful account that must be rendered; and such sins are as swift reporting messengers sent onward to the judgment. Other sins are not fully completed till after the author of them has gone to his grave; the results of them are not developed, the purposes of them not accomplished; but, as fast as they are, so fast the witnesses of them travel on after the author, to overtake him in the eternal world. The witnesses against some men, we have reason to believe, will thus be crowding into the eternal world to the end of time, the indictment against them not being filled up till the last result of their iniquity is developed. A man, for example, who writes an immoral but immortal book, may be tracked into eternity by a procession of lost souls from every generation, every one of them to be a witness against him at the judg-

ment, to show to him and to the universe the immeasurable dreadfulness of his iniquity. But the good works of good men are as immortal as the bad works of evil men. They, too, are swift messengers, but bright celestial ones, before the throne of God in judgment. They, too, come trooping into the eternal world as witnesses long after the authors of them have entered on their reward. And who can tell the blessedness of such men as Baxter, Bunyan,