1 Timothy 3:1

1 Timothy 3:1. A true saying. Better as before, ‘faithful,' so as to keep the identity of phrase before the English reader.

The office of a bishop, or overseer, was not likely, at the time when St. Paul wrote, to be an object of worldly ambition. The risk was the other way. Men were likely to draw back from the burden of responsibility, and to accept it only by constraint (1 Peter 5:2). Hence the stimulus of a new motive was needed, and was found in the half-proverbial maxim which named the office, with all its labour and risk, as a goodly and noble work for a man to aim at.