Read with Me
1 Timothy 5:3-8 (HCSB)
Support widows who are genuinely widows. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must learn to practice godliness toward their own family first and to repay their parents, for this pleases God. The real widow, left all alone, has put her hope in God and continues night and day in her petitions and prayers; however, she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command this also, so they won’t be blamed. But if anyone does not provide for his own, that is his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Listen with Me
Even though it might seem strange to people in the Church today, God never designed the Church to be a social services agency. Instead, the intended focus of the Church has always been to make disciples through evangelism and discipleship.
However, from the earliest days, some of the people in the Church have been needy, and it has been seen as desirable for the Church family, the brothers and sisters in Christ, to meet those needs. But meeting those needs not only required people with divine wisdom, and full of the Holy Spirit to oversee the assistance (Acts 6:1-4), but it also required a clear realization that the Church has limited resources.
For that reason, Paul’s instruction was that the Church should only supply food and other resources to the widows in the Church who truly had no other source for them. Those who had family, especially Christian family members, were to seek those things from them. And the Church was to do a good job of instructing the brothers and sisters about their obligation to provide for their own family members so that the Church as a whole was not burdened with the needs that they themselves had a moral obligation to meet.
These instructions applied tangentially to men, but the focus is on the women because in that time and culture women had very few opportunities available to them for income. Only a few legitimate trades were open to women, and as a woman got older, she was less able to do many of those trades. The societal structure was set up with women caring for the home and the children while the husband worked to supply the resources for the family.
Every able-bodied man was expected to work to provide for himself and his family, if he had one. And this expectation was present not only in society, but in the Church as well (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13). This was important not only so that the Church was not unnecessarily burdened by having to care for those men who were physically able to work and support themselves and their families, but also because being or becoming dependent is a blow to one’s self esteem, and should not be done unless absolutely necessary.
Paul takes one further step in verse 8 that seems harsh in the eyes of many modern believers, declaring that anyone who refuses to provide for his relatives, especially the members of his immediate family, not only wife and children, but also parents, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. This condemnation rests on two solid pillars. The first is commandment number five, the commandment to honor one’s father and mother (Exodus 20:12). The second is Jesus’ condemnation of the legalists who used an apparently godly excuse to avoid providing for their parents in their old age (Matthew 15:3-6). These foundational truths in both the Old and New Testaments move Paul’s condemnation of filial carelessness out of the realm of his own time and culture into the realm of timeless truths for the Church.
Pray with Me
Father, it’s sad to see how separated extended families have become, and how hard it is for people to see the obligations they have to provide for their parents these days. It’s easy to say, “Oh, they have Social Security” (even when the amount is too meager to meet all their needs), or “The Church will help them”, or “They can get food stamps”. But that sidestepping of responsibility, pushing it off onto social programs or the Church, is also a side stepping of Your clear commandments. That does seem harsh to many these days, but it likely seemed harsh to many in the Church in Paul’s day, too. Lord, You designed for us to live together in tight knit families, where all needs can be met without outside intervention, and we have allowed that design to be compromised to our own harm. Forgive us, Lord, and help us to seek to do better from here on. Amen.