Do not rebuke an older
man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as
brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute
purity.
Give proper recognition to those widows who
are really in need. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should
learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own
family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to
God. The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God
and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who
lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. Give the people these
instructions, so that no one may be open to blame. Anyone who does not provide
for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the
faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
No widow may be put on the list of widows
unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, and is well known
for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing
the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to
all kinds of good deeds.
As for younger widows, do not put them on
such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to
Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because
they have broken their first pledge. Besides, they get into the habit of being
idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers,
but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to. So I
counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to
give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact already turned
away to follow Satan.
If any woman who is a believer has widows in
her care, she should continue to help them and not let the church be burdened with
them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.
The elders who direct the affairs of the
church well are worthy of double honour, especially those whose work is
preaching and teaching. For Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is
treading out the grain,” and “Workers deserve their wages.” Do not entertain an
accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. But
those elders who are sinning you are to reprove before everyone, so that the others
may take warning. I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the
elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing
out of favouritism.
Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands,
and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.
Stop drinking only water, and use a little
wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.
The sins of some are obvious, reaching the
place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the
same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not obvious cannot
remain hidden forever.
All who are under the yoke of slavery should
consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our
teaching may not be slandered. Those who have believing masters should not show
them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should
serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow
believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves.
1 Timothy 5:1-6:2
(TNIV)
Over the
next two Sundays at church we will be exploring a larger section of teaching
that spans all of chapter 5 and into the beginning of chapter 6. What Paul
shifts to here is instruction on how we are to live in the family of God. How
do we relate to each other and how do we treat each other – what are our
responsibilities and how do those differ from the way the world outside the
church practices relationships?
In this
section Paul gives us three examples of how we are to live differently as the
church. He talks about caring for widows, he talks about treating your leaders
with respect and he talks about the relationship between slaves and masters in
the church. On the surface it seems pretty straightforward but believe me as I’ve
worked on this over the last couple of weeks I can tell you that it isn’t.
Unlike
other problematic passages in this epistle (the
second half of chapter two and the first half of chapter three are good
examples) the challenge for a preacher here is not with exegesis. That is to
say that the problem is not with finding out what exactly Paul meant in the
original context when he wrote this – I have yet to read a commentary or listen
to a sermon that radically diverges from the consensus opinion on this text.
The exegesis here is pretty straight-forward – however an even bigger problem
emerges here for the pastor in a discipline that we call hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics
is the study of how we teach and apply the lessons and values of Scripture to a
culture that is often far removed from the culture and the world of the
original author and listeners. It’s looking at a scenario that may not even
exist anymore today because of the changes in society that have taken place
over the last couple thousand years. In hermeneutics the preacher is asking “What does the text have to say to us TODAY?”
Hermeneutics is a more subjective art
than exegesis is – even people with the same foundational understanding of what
the text is saying to the original audience can vary wildly on how to
appropriately apply those lessons today. It is no surprise then that I move
forward into this next section of our Epistle with not a little fear and
trepidation.
Of the
three examples that Paul gives us in this section only one of them is what I
would judge to have a direct correlation in today’s church and society – that
would be the back half of chapter five when Paul talks about leaders in the
church. There is not much in that example that doesn’t equate cleanly with our
situation today. The first and third examples, however, give us some
trouble. Slavery, for one, does not
exist in our western culture – at least not as a formalized institution like it
was in the days of the early church. Today we rightly consider slavery to be an
abomination – a terrible abuse of a person’s intrinsic human dignity and a
thoroughly unchristian way to treat people (despite the multitude of passages
in scripture that accommodate slavery – but that’s an explanation for another
day). Certainly we are not going to look at Paul’s example of slaves and
masters as being prescriptive for what God wants to teach us through this
passage in 2011 – so we need to build a hermeneutical bridge. In this case it’s
not that difficult; Slaves and Masters nicely equates to our modern
relationship of employees and employers. The question then becomes this: how do
your Christian family values influence your life in the work place? We build
that hermeneutical bridge and all of the sudden the teaching becomes very
relevant. We will look at that issue in two weeks – but this Sunday we have an
even bigger challenge: This week we have
to wrestle with widows.
This example
is more problematic. Because on the surface we can plainly see that we still
have widows among us today. There are widows in our church, and so it would
seem that there IS a direct correlation between the first century example and
our 21st century world – but even a cursory historical study would
reveal vast differences between the widows in the early church and the widows in
our church today.
In the
world of the early church women did not have a lot of power; they did not have
land owning rights, they were dependant on male family members to provide for
and protect them. There were (one needs to acknowledge) some examples of
business women in the New Testament (Lydia, the seller of purple cloth comes to
mind) but they were far from being the norm in their day. By and large the men
in the family generated the income and the women managed and ran the household.
So when a woman’s husband passed away she was at a great economic disadvantage
in her day. A widow who was not taken in or remarried or cared for in some way
was destined to be a homeless beggar – or worse. Widows – along with orphans –
were the most vulnerable people in first century society – and the church had a
mandate from Jesus himself (take a look at Matthew 25) to care for them.
This
however is a far cry from today’s world. Recent economic statistics from the US
reveal that there is more wealth held by women in that country than there is by
men. Modern protections like life-insurance, savings plans, retirement accounts,
old age security, inheritance laws and joint ownership of property within a
marriage – combined with women’s propensity to outlive their spouses have changed
it so that very often the widows of the New Testament bear very little
resemblance to the widows of today. This is a wonderful thing, but therein lays
the hermeneutical problem – who are today’s widows if not the widows?
Well
certainly there are widows in today’s western church that would still be as
vulnerable as the widows of Timothy’s church but they would be far from the
numerically significant people group that they were back then – and they would
not likely be the worst-off demographic in our churches. I have heard a number
of suggestions from other pastors as to who the modern equivalent would be –
from Single Mothers (and I would expand that to single parents period) to
people with significant medical problems (particularly in the USA where
sickness can bankrupt a person) to impoverished children to people in regions
that have been devastated by economic collapse and literally have zero
prospects of employment. The point they all are making (and that I would agree
with) is that the widows of today’s church look radically different than they
did in the first century, and consequently a responsible hermeneutic of this
text needs to acknowledge that the world has turned and times have changed.
So with all
of this in mind I’ve decided to take the following approach to this section of
text and the three examples contained within over the next two weeks:
The Framework of 1
Timothy 5:1-6:2
Big Idea – How we live in the family of
God
1. Caring for the members of the family
(5:1-16)
2. Cultivating and caring for godly
leaders (5:17-25)
3. Taking your home to work (6:1-2)
This week
we will look at the preamble and example number 1 and next week we will tackle
examples 2 and 3. I’d encourage you to spend some time meditating on this text yourself
and thinking along with me as to who are the most vulnerable people in our
society. Perhaps the Lord will lay on your heart a burden or conviction to
wrestle with widows yourself.
See you on
Sunday,
Chris
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