1 Timothy 4:7

1 Timothy SPIRITUAL ATHLETICS 1 Timothy 4:7 . Timothy seems to have been not a very strong character: sensitive, easily discouraged, and perhaps with a constitutional tendency to indolence. At all events, it is very touching to notice how the old Apostle--a prisoner, soon to be a martyr--forgot all about his own anxieties and burdens, and, through both of his letters to his young helper, gives himself to the task of bracing him up. Thus he says to him, in my text, amongst other trumpet-tongued exhortations, ‘Exercise thyself unto godliness.’ If I were preaching to ministers, I should have a good deal to say about the necessity of this precept for them, and to remind them that it was first spoken, not to a private member of the Church, as an injunction for the Christian life in general, but as having a special bearing on the temptations and necessities of those who stand in official positions in the Church. For there is nothing that is more likely to sap a man’s devotion, and to eat out the earnestness and sincerity of a Christian life, than that he should be--as I, for instance, and every man in my position has to be--constantly occupied with presenting God’s Word to other people. We are apt to look upon it as, in some sense, our stock-in-trade, and to forget to apply it to ourselves. So it was with a very special bearing on the particular occupation and temptation of his correspondent that Paul said ‘Exercise thyself unto godliness’ before you begin to talk to other people.

But that would not be appropriate to my present audience. And I take this injunction as one of universal application. I. Notice, then, here expressed the ever-present and universal aim of the Christian life. Paul does not say ‘be godly’; but ‘exercise thyself unto’--with a view towards--’godliness.’ In other words, to him godliness is the great aim which every Christian man should set before him as the one supreme purpose of his life. Now I am not going to spend any time on mere verbal criticism, but I must point to the somewhat unusual word which the Apostle here employs for ‘godliness.’ It is all but exclusively confined to these last letters of the Apostle. It was evidently a word that had unfolded the depth and fulness and comprehensiveness of its meaning to him in the last stage of his religious experience. For it is only once employed in the Acts of the Apostles, and some two or three times in the doubtful second Epistle of St. Peter. And all the other instances of its use lie in these three letters--the one to Titus and two to Timothy; and eight of them are in this first one. The old Apostle keeps perpetually recurring to this one idea of ‘godliness.’ What does he mean by it?

{10} But refuse profane and old wives' fables, {11} and exercise thyself rather unto {g} godliness. (10) He contrasts again true doctrine not only with the false and apostate doctrine, but also with all vain and curious wiles. (11) It is not only necessary that the minister of the word be sound in doctrine, but also that his life is godly and religious. (g) In the true serving of God.