1 Timothy 5:24

1 Timothy 5:24. Going before to judgment. After the advice given parenthetically, the latter returns to the subject of Church discipline. The ‘other men's sins' in which Timothy is not to be a partaker, are of two classes (1) flagrant, notorious, so conspicuous even before the trial, that they scarcely need witnesses, are, indeed, as the accusers who bring the criminal before the judge; (2) those which do not come out at first, but, as it were, creep on, and dog the man's steps, and at last overtake him. Receiving the words as applicable chiefly to the precept against hasty laying on of hands, they contain a warning against assuming fitness from the absence of open scandal. Even in such cases a careful inquiry was not to be neglected. It is obvious that the judgment spoken of is man's and not God's, temporal and not eternal in its results.