1 Timothy 4:10

1 Timothy 4:10. For therefore. The latter word suggests a logical inference more strongly than the Greek; better, ‘ to this end.'

Labour and suffer reproach. The first word involves ‘toil and trouble' as well as simple work. Commonly such toil led to praise and reward. The Christian too often had nothing for it but reviling and reproach (1 Peter 4:14), and this experience had embodied itself in the ‘saying' which had be-come proverbial (comp. Acts 14:22). The train of thought implied in the ‘for,' is that the patient endurance of the Christian was a practical proof that the religion which he professed had for him the twofold promise of which the previous verse had spoken.

We trust. Here (as in Romans 15:12) the Authorised Version misses the force of the Greek. Better, ‘ have hoped,' or ‘ fixed our hope.' And this hope is not in a dogma or an abstraction, but in a living God, who is the ‘Saviour,' in the lower sense of the word as ‘preserver,' no less than in the higher, thus including the ‘life that now is,' as well as ‘that which is to come.' As in 1 Timothy 2:4, the purpose of God for a salvation which shall include all is assumed as an unquestionable truth, but those only who believe taste that salvation in the fulness of its power.