Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid. — In his difficult post Timothy might fear lest, especially in his selection of men for the Lord’s service, true nobility of character might not unfrequently escape his notice and be overlooked, and that thus the best and truest might never be enrolled on the register of church officers. St. Paul bids him take courage in the thought that in many a case self-sacrifice, generosity, stern principle, will be sufficiently manifest to guide him in his choice of fit persons for the holy calling; and in those rarer cases where the higher and sweeter virtues are hidden, he may be sure that in God’s good season these too will become known to him, in ample time for him to call them also into his Master’s service.
EXCURSUS ON NOTES TO I. TIMOTHY.
ON A SUGGESTED INTERPRETATION OF CHAPTER 5:25.
IT has been suggested, with considerable ingenuity, that 1 Timothy 5:25 belongs to, and is an introduction of, a new division of the Epistle, where the Apostle gives Timothy instructions respecting certain teachings to be addressed to different ranks in the Christian society of Ephesus. The connection with 1 Timothy 5:24 then would be — as it is in the case of sins, so, too, it is in the case of good works. These latter are not always on the surface distinguishable. Some, of course, are manifest, but there is many a noble life the secrets of which will only come to light at the last day — “they cannot be hid” THEN. And this is too often the case with that unhappy class (the slaves), “those under the yoke,” of whom the Apostle was about to speak (1 Timothy 6:1-2). It is possible that St. Paul meant here to turn Timothy’s attention especially to those in slavery, that he might diligently search out the noblest and most devoted, and ordain (see 1 Timothy 5:22) them to perform sacred duties, so that each class — the slaves as well as the rich and well-born — should possess representatives among the ordained ministers. This is at least possible when we consider the vast number of slaves — not a few of them, too, possessing high culture — in the world known by St. Paul and Timothy.
In connection with, but not necessarily linked with, this thought is an interpretation of the general subject matter of the sixth chapter, which views the whole as instructions to the three broad divisions into which Christian society of the first century may be said to have been roughly divided: —
(1) SLAVES...
1 Timothy 5:25 to 1 Timothy 6:3. Instructions respecting slaves, who possessed nothing of their own.
1 Timothy 6:4-5. The allusion to the false teachers, whose teaching respecting slavery was very different from his.
(2) MIDDLE CLASS.
1 Timothy 6:6-16. St. Paul introduces the warning against covetousness and the wish to be rich, the special danger of the middle class — the free, but who were the reverse of wealthy — to which order Timothy belonged. Then followed
(3) THE RICH
1 Timothy 6:17-19. Special instructions to the rich and the highly horn.