1 Timothy 4:8 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For bodily exercise profiteth little:— The apostle, 1 Timothy 4:7 had said, Exercise thyself, as applied to a Christian life; and therefore he here uses the word exercise, as applied to bodily labour; and by calling it bodily exercise, he leads our thoughts either to the labours of the Essenes, according to the rules and institutions of their sect, or to the agonistic games, of which Mr. West has given so entertaining and useful an account in the Dissertation prefixed to his Pindar. Possibly the exercise preparatoryto these games might here be more particularly alluded to.By the practice of godliness, Timothy was to prepare himself for the life to come; just as the combatants, by repeated bodily exercise, prepared for obtaining the victory in those games. Godliness, under the New Testament dispensation, has no particular promise of health, or reputation, or wealth, or any other individual worldly blessing, though in its natural consequences it bears a most friendly aspect upon all; but it has the promise of comfort and happiness in general:—and that declaration of Christ, that the good man shall receive an hundred fold, even in the midst of persecution, if such should be his lot, Mark 10:30 might alone be sufficient to vindicate the apostle in his assertion. The law, however, certainly contains promises of temporal blessings to godliness; so that the assertion of the apostle is strictly true, when referred both to the Old and New Testament.