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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
5:3-16 Honoring Widows. Providing for widows was an important role for the church from its earliest days (see Acts 6). The primary concern in this passage is to identify which widows should be provided for by the church. There are two key indicators: not having other family (1 Tim. 5:4-8, 16); and godliness (vv. 5, 9-15). Along the way, the duty of caring for one's family and the propriety of younger widows remarrying are emphasized. Some have suggested that an order of widows as an office in the church is in view here, but this is unlikely since the stated issue is provision for those in need.
5:4 Make some return indicates financial support.
5:8 worse than an unbeliever. Provision for one's own family is a spiritual issue of utmost importance. Failure to live out the gospel in this way is tantamount to a denial of the faith.
5:9-10 Paul begins to explain what qualifications a widow must meet in order to warrant financial support from the church. Having been the wife of one husband (Gk. henos andros gynē) is the feminine form of a phrase in the requirements for overseers and deacons (see note on 3:2-3). Some interpreters think the point here, as in ch. 3, is marital faithfulness. Others think that, while Paul is not discouraging a second marriage after the death of one's husband (cf. 5:14; 1 Cor. 7:39), simply as a practical matter he wants to focus the church's help on widows who have the fewest relatives to support them. good works. The list of qualifications provides a picture of a godly older woman, something for younger women to aspire to.
5:11-12 desire to marry . . . incur condemnation. These verses may at first appear to condemn remarriage; however, v. 14 encourages it (cf. 1 Cor. 7:39b), so another, more specific concern must be in view here. The issue is either that these widows who are being supported by the church have pledged to remain unmarried (so that to remarry would be to renounce this pledge) or that these younger widows might be tempted by their desires to marry unbelievers, thus turning away from the faith. Since these concerns are in some way prompted by the fact that "some have already strayed after Satan" (1 Tim. 5:15), a grave issue must be in view. With remarriage to an unbeliever, the concern was that the wife would take the religion of her husband (as was usual in that culture).
5:14 No occasion for slander continues the theme of concern about the impact of believers' actions on the perceptions of unbelievers (2:2; 3:7; 5:7, 14; 6:1; see also Titus 3:1-2).
5:16 relatives. The church is to render assistance only if the family is unable to do so.
