What Does 1 Timothy 5:16 Mean?

(16) **If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them.**—This is not what, at first sight, it appears to be—a mere repetition of the injunction of 1Timothy 5:4; 1Timothy 5:8. *There* the duties enjoined were what may be termed filial; the love, respect, and kindness to the aged was especially pressed on the younger, on the children and grandchildren of the desolate, on the master of the house or family to which the aged widow belonged. Here the reference belongs exclusively to the younger widows, who (see Note above) were, no doubt, very numerous in a great Asian Church like Ephesus; for the future of these women, often still young and totally unprovided for, St. Paul was very anxious. Until a new home was found for such, of course the Church cared for them, but this heavy burden on the Church’s alms must be lightened as much as possible. It was the plain duty of relatives to care for these in their hour of destitution and sorrow. The Church would have many a one, still comparatively speaking young, utterly dependent on its scanty funds—friendless as well as homeless. It has been asked: How is it that, considering the prominence here given to the questions (*a*) of the support of Christian widows, (*b*) of the rules respecting presbyteral widows, who evidently occupied a position of dignity and importance in the Church of the first days, no other mention of this class in the community (with the exception of Acts 6:1; Acts 9:39) appears in the whole New Testament. This has been pressed as one of the arguments pointing to a much later date for the writing of the Epistle; but the question is, after all, readily and conclusively answered. With the exception of the short Epistle to Titus, the subject of the *internal* organisation of a church is nowhere handled. There is no room or place for such a mention in any of the more exclusively doctrinal or apologetic Epistles. In the broad field of ecclesiastical history occupied by the Acts, the two casual allusions above referred to, in the Churches of Jerusalem and Lydda, tell us of the existence of and the care for these widows in the communities of Christians, even in the earliest years of the Church’s existence.