1 Timothy 5:3-16

Timothy's duties in regard to widows

Counsel on alms and charities for widows. The natural and obvious view of this passage studied in itself is to present the Church charitiesof this period as having reached an intermediate stage between the common purse or daily ministration of Acts 2:45; Acts 6:1, and the order of widows publicly appointed and maintained with specified duties of education, superintendence and the like, which seems to have arisen later, perhaps from a strained interpretation of this passage itself, and which was abolished by the 11th Canon of the Council of Laodicea. -The women who are called by the Greeks "presbyters," and by us "senior widows," "once-wives," and "churchmothers" ought not to have a position as an ordained body in the Church." Such a view is exactly parallel with that of the Church polityin these Epistles as -intermediate between the presbyterian episcopacy of the earlier apostolic period and the post-apostolic episcopacy."

If this is correct, we shall not distinguish, with Bp Ellicott, -the desolate and destitute widow" of 1 Timothy 5:3 from -the ecclesiastical or presbyteral widow" of 1 Timothy 5:9. More distinct and definite direction is given in 1 Timothy 5:10 for the selection of the widows who are described in general terms in 1 Timothy 5:5. A generation of Christian life has passed now since the loving undiscriminating -ministration" of the first days. The very numbers of -Christian widows" with varying character and circumstances, as well as the reasonableness of the thing itself, require the test of the past conduct, 1 Timothy 5:10, and the present life, 1 Timothy 5:5. -Charity organisation" is the pastor's duty.