Sin and social architecture

Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. For some have already strayed after Satan. If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows. 1 Tim 5:3–16

Paul offers practical guidance to Timothy on the handling of benevolence towards widows in the Ephesian church. This is not a problem we often consider. In many ways, this is a solved problem where and when we are. However, Paul’s pragmatic, faith-focused approach offers us wisdom for handling difficult problems as a church. First, we’ll walk through the text noticing some important and interesting bits along the way. Second, we’ll consider what Paul is doing in these instructions, why he’d doing that, and what it means for us.

Widows in the Ephesian church

Paul starts by setting some ground rules. At the outset he takes for granted that some women are widows and some are “truly widows”. This forces us to ask then “what’s a true widow?” and “how can we tell if someone is a true widow?“. The definition comes negatively and then positively. First the negation, a woman is not a true widow if she has children or grandchildren who can and should care for her as is pleasing to the Lord. Positively, Paul tells us that a true widow is one who is “left all alone”, here the word is a hapax legomena meaning “to leave alone or forsake”. It’s the verbal form from which we derive our prefix mono-. The true widow is the woman who has no familial recourse.

This verse also begins the turn towards the ethical qualifications of true widows. They are women who set their hope on God, continue in supplication and prayer, and are not self-indulgent. This is sort of preview for the more detailed list to come. Notice here at the end of this first section that the handling of widows is first and foremost aimed at the family. The natural order of things commends all families to care for each other. This is something I’ve noticed that sneaks into the way I discipline my kids and it’s not entirely on purpose either. Quite often I find myself telling Shawn he’s not allowed to yell “at his family” and that language feels natural to me. But I’m not intending on effectively telling him that he can scream at other people but not the ones he lives with. I suppose he could gain that lesson but I honestly think it’s generally a win. I want him to learn that there’s a special respect and care that he needs to provide his family.

details on the context

In the next section Paul provides much more detail on the way Timothy and the Ephesian church should care for widows.First, we see what might be confusing to us for its specific detail. “Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age.” Besides the obvious question of “why 60?” this gives us some important context especially when we consider it with the initial response of the church in Acts 6 to widows that occasioned the institution of the deaconate:

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. Acts 6:1

So when we look at these passages together we see:

  • There’s some daily distribution of resources presumably by the church
  • This was enough of an administrative task that the Apostles commanded the election of deacons
  • 25-30 years later the practice persists so that widows are enrolled onto a list to receive such a distribution

We should see Paul as commenting on an established practice of the church. He’s further informing what the church is already doing not commanding what is not yet happening.

so, why 60?

I don’t feel that this is an urgent question to be answered. I really think it’s likely a mundane answer. Sixty years old is around when a woman would be both unable to work and unlikely to be remarried. As we go on we’ll see Paul takes extra care to delineate the type of woman who should be eligible for church support and these other qualifications seem to support this simple explanation.

Continuing on with the age qualification we read that an eligible widow should have been “the wife of one husband” and have “a reputation for good works”. This is followed by a more detailed list:

  • brought up children
  • shown hospitality
  • washed the feet of the saints
  • cared for the afflicted
  • devote herself to every good work

We see in this description interesting parallels with the qualifications for elders from chapter 3. First, the “wife of one husband” is the same construction as “husband of one wife” but obviously reversed. So whatever conclusions we drew regarding that phrase in regards to eldership, to maintain interpretive consistency we must make those same conclusions about widows. Secondly, similar to the way Paul constructs the qualifications for eldership around the primary qualification of “above reproach”, the eligible widow is to “have a reputation for good works”, or “be seen to/witnessed to have good works”. Thirdly, recall how Paul introduces the elder qualifications. “He who desires to be an elder desires a noble task”, recall that is literally “he desires a good work”.

We can reasonably ask then why is there such a similarity? Possible answers include:

  • These are people who are supported by the church (we’ll see Paul’s thoughts on the support of elders in the remainder of this chapter)
  • This is virtue and vice list like we’ve seen several times in this epistle already
    • 1:8-10 a vice list in reference to those for whom the law is given
    • 2:8-12 virtue and vice lists for men and women concerning orderly worship
    • 3:1-7 virtues that characterize elders and vices they should be free from
    • 3:8-10, 12 characteristic virtues of deacons
    • 3:11 characteristic virtues of deacons’ wives/deaconesses
    • 4:6-16 we can also take the commands to Timothy in a general way as a virtue list for those who are ministers of the gospel

Matching the virtue list is a negative picture of an ineligible widow. The situation Paul is describing is the widow who is young enough to remarry yet is supported by the church. This support leads them to fill their time with idleness, gossip, and meddling.

excursus on busybodies

Fun fact: the word here translated as “busybodies” only appears elsewhere in Acts 19:19 where in Ephesus the Jewish itinerant exorcists who are sons of Sceva are using the name of Jesus in their exorcisms. Well one day they come across a spirit who responds to their use of the Lord’s name saying “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” Then the man possessed by a demon, as we would say, takes them out back of the woodshed to the point that by the end of it the sons of Sceva run away “naked and wounded”. So this becomes known throughout Ephesus such that by v. 19 “a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all.” Now this doesn’t mean that young widows are witches but that as Paul says there is danger in them becoming unduly active and influential in the familial lives of the rest of the church which is exactly what gossip accomplishes.

Paul finishes this section with a positive commands. Younger widows should “remarry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander”. Notice these commands fallback to the created order. We need to read this much less like Paul is putting these young widows in their place and much more like Paul is encouraging them to do the things that only they, among all God’s creations, are empowered to do. Marriage and motherhood here are honored. Again, this is the created order. When God made men and women he made them to be in intimate relationship with one another. It is a fact of being. The tendency is for our culture and even sometimes for us is to treat it like a preference. It’s more like breathing than it is like whether we like sugar in our coffee.

Also, we should note that Paul’s words here tell us what we all already know and can see being played out all the time: the managing of a household requires a father and a mother. This is not optional.

Paul’s concerns

First notice that the church’s response to the needs of its people changed it in fundamental ways such that two millennia later we govern our churches in light of that response. Whatever else we say, know that the way in which the church responds to the needs of its members defines and characterizes the church. In this light, the attention Paul pays to this issue is justified.

  • Efficient use of the church’s resources
  • The godliness of widows
  • The reputation of the church

How then is this applicable to us? The place that widows hold today is certainly not the same today. Very much like the practice of slavery Paul does not encourage believers to mend the broken state of the world but to live well within it. Widows were vulnerable precisely because of the architecture of society at the time. For all of our faults, humanity has become prosperous enough particularly here that this is not really a problem we encounter. But it would be foolish of us to consider that there are no vulnerable people at all.

So if widows no longer are at structural risk of their livelihood due to their place in society, who is and what do we do about it? This is not a question I have a perfect–maybe not even a good–answer to. Orphans are still vulnerable though not often in the same way. I would also think of unborn children here. They are without question the least cared for in modern society. This is not dissimilar to the attitude of Greco-Roman peoples but we’ve sanitized it and institutionionalized it.

Whatever our answer we must be convinced of this: our response as a church to the needs of our people is even still formative for the church and its people. I always like to think of the repeated statement of the New Testament that believers are “in Christ” as a very literal spacial metaphor. You are in Christ the same way you can be in a swimming pool. When you’re in the pool all your interactions with other people are mediated by the water. You reach out through the water to get to them and it can’t be any other way. And when you reach outside of the pool to someone on the outside, they get wet. When we are in Christ, everything we do exists within that relationship and extends that relationship. This precisely why the church came to be known for its care of weak and vulnerable. It is reflecting it’s savior.