1 Timothy 5:10

1 Timothy 5:10. Well reported of. Including, as in the parallel of 1 Timothy 3:7, the testimony of those outside the Church.

If she have brought up children. The Greek word seems purposely chosen to leave it open whether the children thus brought up were her own or those, orphans or destitute, of whom she had taken charge-Looking to the nature of the next condition, it would seem as if something more than the instinctive duties of motherhood were contemplated. It hardly seems probable that the apostle meant to contrast the performance of those duties with the general neglect that prevailed among the women of the Empire, still less with such crimes as abandonment or abortion.

If the have lodged strangers. The isolated position of a small Christian community in an Asiatic town, the utter loneliness of a Christian traveller arriving in such a town, gave a prominence to the exercise of hospitality which made it incumbent on poor as well as rich (Hebrews 13:2; 3 John 1:5). We need not picture to ourselves a woman of the upper class as exercising the virtue after a stately fashion. The humblest cottage might give scope for its highest form.

If she have washed the saints' feet. As in John 13:14, the typical instance of extremest humility in ministration, analogous to the test of kissing a leper's flesh which Francis of Assisi imposed on his disciples.