Honor and Care in the Church Family

1 Timothy 5:1-16

Turn with me to 1 Timothy 5:1-16 and let’s study God’s Word together. In 1979 there was a famous song released by the group Sister Sledge entitled “We are Family.” That’s the theme song for today’s message—We are Family! The church, this family of God, is a family.  

And Paul is giving some instructions in this passage on how Timothy should interact and take care of his family. Earlier in this book, in 1 Timothy 3:14-15, Paul said to Timothy, “I am writing these things to you [Timothy] so that… you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God (3:14-15).” In that statement, Paul refers to the church as the “household of God.” And what is intimated by that statement is that the church is like a family. Whatever healthy interactions and relationships that you expect of a biological, nuclear family, that should be present in the church family too.  

And all of you know this, when healthy interactions and relationships break down in a biological family, there’s dysfunction. That’s true for the church too. When healthy interactions and relationships break down in a church family, there is also dysfunction. One of the reasons that Paul sent Timothy to Ephesus was to cure the dysfunction that was troubling this church in Ephesus.  

And Timothy is laboring to restore the church as Paul is writing to him here. And now, in chapter 5, Paul gives him a few practical exhortations for how to interact with his church family as their pastor. Timothy’s not going into the church with a hacksaw or a guillotine to set things right. He’s not going in to burn the church to the ground, so he can build it back up again from scratch. No, he’s going in as an ambassador of loving leadership. He’s going in as a pastor/shepherd. He’s going in to steer this church family away from their destructive patterns to a place of health. 

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And as he does that, Paul gives him (and us) some helpful advice. So here’s your outline for today, church. Three points from this passage, and this first point is really simple. 

1) Treat church folk like family (5:1-2)

Now let’s consider a little more the context of this passage. In the previous passage, Paul gave Timothy a string of commands. He told Timothy to command and teach these things (4:11). He told Timothy to set an example for the believers (4:12). He told Timothy to keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching (4:16). And he told Timothy to persist in the teaching so that you will save both yourself and your hearers (4:16). That’s a lot of pressure for a young pastor. I can imagine Timothy is wound up pretty tight in Ephesus. 

Add to that the fact that you’ve got false teachers like Hymenaeus and Alexander (1:20; cf. 2 Tim 2:17-18) causing problems in the church. You’ve got gossip circulating in the church. You’ve got sexual immorality circulating. You’ve got creeps sneaking into households and capturing the attention of weak-willed women (2 Tim 3:6-7). I can imagine in a situation like this that Pastor Timothy might be tempted to blow his gasket trying to sort everything out. 

So now, Paul gives him a little fatherly advice at the beginning of chapter 5. “Don’t rebuke… but encourage.” “As you are pastoring and interacting within the church, Timothy, don’t rebuke… but encourage.” Look at verse 1 with me.

1 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

In other words, whatever love you bestow upon your relatives, bestow upon your church family. Whatever kinship exists between you and your biological brothers and sisters, that kinship should exist between you and your brothers and sisters in Christ. Whatever respect you show to your father and mother, you should show that same type of respect to older men and women in the church. 

Now I realize that we might have some in this room this morning who will says something like this, “Well Tony, my family doesn’t regard each other with much respect, so this might not be the best analogy for me.” Okay, that may be true for some in this room. But let me encourage you to think in terms of the way a family should regard one another. Think in terms of the way your family interacted with each other on the best of days. And also, you may be underestimating just how tight-knit and protective even the most dysfunctional families can be. For instance, I’ve seen siblings fight like enemies at home, but if those same siblings were threatened by someone outside the family, they will defend their sibling tooth and nail.  

Specifically in this passage, Paul communicates to Timothy how he, as a young man, should treat specific people in the church. And Paul breaks down the church into four demographic groups: 1) older men, 2) older women, 3) younger men, and 4) younger women. You might say, “What about middle-aged men, Pastor Tony?” Paul doesn’t address that. Just young men, young women, older men, and older women.

With regard to older men, Paul tells Timothy, “Don’t rebuke them, but instead exhort them like a father.” The idea of disrespecting a father would be anathema in the first century world, especially in a Jewish context. And I need to say this: the word for “rebuke” here is a very strong word that is used only once in the NT. It’s the word ἐπιπλήσσω. It has the idea of an angry “verbal assault” on another person. A possible translation here in English is “excoriate” or “browbeat.” Paul is saying here, “Do not ‘browbeat’ an older man, Timothy, but instead encourage or ‘exhort’ him.” 

People typically don’t respond well to verbal assaults, especially older men. And we know from chapter 4, that Timothy is a young pastor. Paul said, “Let no one despise you for your youth [Timothy], but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (4:12). The best way to influence older men is through respectful exhortation. This exhortation can and should be tough at times, but not harsh or derogatory.  

And Paul gives similar instructions for the other three categories too. The controlling verbs, “do not rebuke but encourage,” are the same for each demographic. Do not rebuke… but encourage younger men as brothers. Do not rebuke… but encourage older women as mothers. “You wouldn’t demean or yell at your mother, Eunice, would you, Timothy?” “No, absolutely not.” “Then don’t do that to older women in the church. If you have to teach them or confront them about something, do it respectfully.” 

The reality is that browbeating doesn’t work for any of these groups. It doesn’t work for older men, younger men, older women, or younger women. It’s unproductive, and it causes relational disharmony. Dogs growl, cats hiss, and humans scream when they are irritable and aggressive. It’s a primitive form of communication. And it doesn’t work.  

Instead, Paul is encouraging Timothy to lead the church with an encouraging and respectful tone. This is a principle not only for pastors like Timothy, but for all members of the church. Treat the members of the church like members of your own family. Respect and love one another. Encourage one another, and don’t be harsh or demeaning with one another.

Now Paul adds one qualifier to the end of verse two as it relates to younger women in the church. And this is really important. As far as we know, Timothy wasn’t married. Maybe he got married in the course of his ministry? We don’t know. And when Paul mentions young women in the church he says, 

[treat] younger women as sisters [Do not rebuke… but encourage], in all purity.

Paul is saying here, “You will need to teach young women in the church, Timothy. You may even need to confront them on matters of sin and behavior. But do that with absolute purity in your conduct.” Paul knows the temptation that is possible for a young pastor in this situation.

The issue here is sexual misconduct. We’re not talking about “purity” in general. We’re talking about purity in the bedroom. There are young women in the church. There are widows in the church. And why would Timothy need an exhortation for purity? 

Well, I can imagine that Timothy, as a young, authoritative, single leader in the church, a junior apostle to the great Apostle Paul, would have been a desirable catch for the young single women and the widows in the church. And men of authority have been known to exploit their position for sexual advances on impressionable women. And Paul says, “Don’t you do that, young man!” “Treat them like your sister, Timothy.” “You wouldn’t take advantage of your sister, would you, Timothy?” Of course not. In fact, brothers look to protect the sexual purity of their sisters. That’s the attitude you should have. 

By the way, we can infer from a few different places in 1 and 2 Timothy that there was some serious sexual misconduct taking place within the church at Ephesus. If you remember from 1 Timothy 2 and the issue of modesty, Ephesus was the home to the Temple of Artemis. And Ephesus was a bastion of sexual sin and misconduct in the ancient world. And some of that had trickled into the church. And that’s why Paul commanded the women to be more modest (2:9-10). And he commanded elders and deacons to be monogamous and self-controlled (3:2, 12).  

In 2 Timothy, Paul spoke of some godless individuals who would “creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions” (3:6). So something inappropriate was going on at the church of Ephesus. And because of that, Paul tells Timothy to be above reproach. Treat the young women in the church as you would your own sister, with absolute purity.  

You know it disturbs me how in our own day sexual misconduct between young men and women is so often excused within the churches. It’s as if people believe that anything goes for a young person before he gets married. This passage is a great corrective to that thinking. You wouldn’t take advantage of your sister sexually, would you? So why would you take advantage of your sister (or brother) in Christ? Why would you hurt the family of God in the church that way?

You know I think a lot of problems in the church would be corrected if we adopted this view of the church as a family, the household of God. Treat members of the church like your own family. Love them. Respect them. Cherish them. Exhort them and encourage them. Don’t rebuke them angrily. We’re a family! Right? 

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Now Paul continues in the following verses with a kind of case study on how a church family should care for one of its most vulnerable family members, that is, the widows. And honestly, you can’t really understand the verses that follow without understanding something of the cultural world that Paul was writing to. And that culture is vastly different than our own. Widows in the first century world were especially vulnerable. Women typically didn’t work in that world, so if their husband died, they were often destitute. There was no such thing as social security or government assistance or life insurance in that world. So we need to be aware of that as we interpret and apply this passage of Scripture. Widows in the biblical world were often destitute.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t interpret and apply this passage. There are abiding principles that the Holy Spirit is conveying to us about how the church should care for its most vulnerable family members. So my plan in the following verses is to give you the full historical background for what Paul is addressing with the widows in Ephesus—let’s understand the original context as best we can. And then from there we will extrapolate two specific principles for how our own church family should care for the vulnerable members in our fellowship.  

Go ahead and write this down as a second point for our message today. Paul says first that we should “Treat church folk like family.” And as an outworking of that, we should…

2. Support the destitute members of your church family (5:3-8)

Paul says this:

3 Honor widows who are truly widows. 

Now the word “honor” is the Greek τιμάω. And it has the idea of financial support or benevolence built into it. But that financial support should not be divvied out willy-nilly to every woman without a husband in the church. In fact, much of the discussion that follows is meant to discern who are “truly” the widows worthy of church benevolence.

When Paul says, “Honor widows who are truly widows,” he doesn’t mean make sure their husbands are really dead! There weren’t widows pretending to be widows in Ephesus. No, when he says “truly widows” he means those widows who are truly in need, truly destitute, without family members to help them, and who live a life of piety and faithfulness to the church.

In verse 4, he says, 

4 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. 

One of the first disqualifiers for “widow benevolence” is viable support from family members. If there is a woman in the church who is widowed and in need, Timothy needs to first ask the immediate family of that widow to help with her material needs. Paul gives a reason for this later in verse 16 when he says, “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” (5:16). In other words, save the church benevolence finances for those who really need it. 

But another reason from verse 4 is as follows: It’s good for sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters to take care of their own! It’s good for them to give “some return” to their parents. Notice, they’ll never give a full return to their parents! Paul says that it’s a sign of godliness for children to take care of their parents. It’s pleasing in the sight of God. The fifth commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother” (Exod. 20:12, KJV) doesn’t end when a child turns 18.  

I read a few years ago that it costs approximately $250,000 to raise a child in the United States. That’s a lot a scratch! Parents, if you were looking for something to hold over the head of your children, there you go. And it’s not just money, right? It’s time and energy and enduring inconveniences. As many parents have noted, the days are long, and the years are short when you are a parent.  

And I’m not arguing here against parenting. Parents, have babies and raise them to fear God. That’s good. The future belongs to the fertile, so get after it. But what Paul is arguing here is that after the parenting job is done and the parents become the dependents, it’s good for children, and even grandchildren, to recompense them. 

And let me say this too. In our modern world, this may involve cooperation with the government and a long-term care facility and the like. But a child cannot abandon his parents to the system! Not a Christian anyway! Just like parents shouldn’t abandon their children to the system, kids can’t abandon their parents to the system either.

Now, as it relates to widows in the church, Paul says that a “true widow” (i.e. a widow that the church should financially support) is one who doesn’t have the option of financial support from her family. But there’s more that’s expected of a “true widow.”

Look at verse 5,

5 She who is truly a widow, left all alone [i.e. she’s got no family to help her… she’s destitute] has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, 6 but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. 

 So one disqualifier for benevolence is the possibility of help from the family. Here’s another disqualifier—impiety. If a widow’s life has been characterized by prayerlessness and faithlessness and wantonness, then that widow is disqualified from church benevolence.  

“Pastor Tony, you mean that church benevolence has strings attached to it?” Yes! You better believe it does! Benevolence in the church or alms for the poor should never be simply a handout with “no strings attached.” There should be expectations of the person who receives financial blessing from the church. 

The Greek word in verse 6 for “self-indulgent” indicates one who self-indulges “beyond the bounds of propriety” and lives “luxuriously [and] voluptuously.” God forbid that anyone would use the resources of the church to support their carnal lifestyle! That would be an embarrassment to the church and a waste of God’s resources.  

But Paul isn’t just saying that the widow should be free from self-indulgence. It’s not that she is neutral towards spiritual things. She instead is an active prayer warrior. So yes, we should support the destitute members of the church family. But that support needs to be reserved for the faithful and the spiritually minded. 

And Paul says in verse 7, 

7 Command these things as well, 

Command what things? Command that families take care of their own, and that widows who are supported need to be spiritually minded and faithful to the church. 

7 Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. 8 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. 

Now this is an interesting verse. Verse 8 has often been used to support the idea that a husband is the breadwinner of a home, and he should provide for his wife and children. Certainly I’m not opposed to the idea that a man should support his family. There’s good evidence biblically for that. But the immediate context of verse 8 isn’t really about that. It has more to do with children supporting their destitute family members. 

Now surely a man with a strong back and an able body should do both. In other words, he should provide for his children and also provide for the widowed mother or grandmother in his family. To do any less than that is viewed by Paul as a denial of the faith. In other words, nobody who has the Holy Spirit inside of him could be so cold and heartless towards a suffering member of their family. That would be worse than an unbeliever! Because even unbelievers at that time knew that they should take care of their family members. And he doesn’t want the church to bring disrepute on Christ or the gospel by their actions.

And here’s why Paul is so adamant about this. Just so you know, support for destitute widows is something that dates back to the OT. God frequently required that his people take care of widows and orphans in the community. And that mindset should be manifested in the church. And Jesus reinforced that. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees strongly for ignoring their aging parents and calling it “Corban” (Mark 7:9-13). He thought that their actions were hypocritical and shameful.  

And here’s why this was so important to Paul and Jesus and the OT. There were three factors that made the plight for widows especially difficult in the ancient world: 1) Men often died early because of war or other causes and so widows were numerous—way more numerous than they are in today’s world where men have a longer life-expectancy. 2) They didn’t have social security or retirement for the elderly in the ancient world. And 3) It was way more difficult for women to find work in that world than it is in America today. For this and other reasons widows were a major concern for the church. Jesus, even from the cross, was very sensitive to this 

issue, and that’s why he told the Apostle John to care for his mother, Mary, as his mother (John 19:26-27).

Now as we bridge Paul’s culture to our own, we need to be sensitive to the immediate context of the passage. As a church, if and when we have destitute widows in our church family then this passage needs to be applied. But even if we don’t have “widows” per se, or even if the issues of widowhood are mediated in our own culture due to social security and other cultural factors, there’s still an abiding principle for us here from 1 Timothy. The principle has to do with our identity as a family, the household of God.  

And the principle is this: Support and care for the destitute members of the church family. Part of that support may involve financial help. It may involve exhorting immediate or extended family to help one of their relatives who is in need. But in cases where members of the church are without family or are disenfranchised from their family due to their faith in Christ, the church is their only family! They’ve got nowhere else to go.  

One of the reasons that this is so important is because the reputation of the church is at stake. Paul says in verse 7, “Command these things as well, so that they [all the members of the church] may be without reproach.” “Without reproach” is the Greek ἀνεπίλημπτος. It’s the same word that was used of elders and deacons in chapter 3. They need to be “without reproach.” 

It was customary even in the pagan world, for relatives to take care of widows. It would be embarrassing for the church to have relatives who didn’t support destitute family members or have church folk who lacked compassion for the needy and vulnerable in their family. So Paul tells Timothy: “Support the vulnerable and destitute members of your church family.”

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But there’s more to it than that. Paul doesn’t advocate for unqualified support. He puts an expectation on these widows. Go ahead and write this down as #3 in your notes. 

3) Lead, but don’t enable, the destitute members of the church family (5:9-16)

So we’ve already seen some expectations that Paul put on widows in the previous verses. Now he adds some more. Look at verse 9.

9 Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, 

There is a bit of mystery here as to what being “enrolled” meant for the Ephesian church. As best we can tell, there was a list of widows who were enrolled as permanently supported by the church. This goes back to OT practice, but also to the first church in Jerusalem. You might remember that there were Jewish and Gentile widows that were receiving a daily distribution of food in Acts 6:1-6. The apostles appointed seven men who were responsible for the daily distribution of food for these widows.  

Something similar was taking place in Ephesus, and Paul requires that the women be 60 years of age or older to receive this “daily distribution.” This doesn’t mean those women who were younger than 60 couldn’t receive periodic benevolence. I think they could. But only women 60 years and older could be enrolled in a permanent, ongoing financial relationship with the church. And the expectations of these women who were enrolled were even more stringent than what we read earlier.

9 Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, 

Literally this means “having been a ‘one-man woman.’” This is the counterpart to the “one-woman man” expectation of deacons and elders (3:2, 12). The expectation here is that these widows were monogamous, heterosexual, and faithful wives to their husbands. And it certainly doesn’t mean that she hasn’t been remarried once or twice, because Paul tells young women to remarry in the following verses. It simply means that she was faithful and committed to her previously deceased husband.

But that’s not all. 

10 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. 

This is a pretty exacting list for these widows. This is almost as exacting as the requirements for elders and deacons. And I think the implication here is that God doesn’t want the resources of the church distributed to just anyone. There are strings attached to this benevolence. 

I hear a lot of people who decry big government by saying that the church should be helping people in need, not the government. That statement really concerns me. I don’t totally disagree with that statement; there is a nugget of truth to it. But people need to realize that the church cannot distribute public aid as recklessly and haphazardly as our government does.  

For one thing, the church can’t afford to do that. But secondly our churches aren’t allowed biblically to just give money to anybody who has a need. And this issue concerning widows is a perfect test case. First of all, those widows need to be devoid of family help. Also they need to be prayerful, pious women. And then from verse 10, they need to have a track record of good works; for example bringing up children, showing hospitality, caring for the afflicted, etc. That list would disqualify a lot of widows. But it would also encourage younger women at every age to establish a track record of good works and faithfulness.  

And not only that; there’s more here. They need to have the church as their last resort for aid. Paul says if they are young and have the option to marry, they should marry and not be a burden to the church.   

11 But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry 12 and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. 13 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. 14 So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. 15 For some have already strayed after Satan. 

Verse 15 leads me to believe that this was a serious and pressing issue in the church. I feel sorry for Timothy here. This is a difficult issue he’s got to manage. Can you imagine young Timothy telling these widows, “Ladies, if you’re young, you need to get married, and if you are older, you need to be holy?” That is an unenviable task!

While I was on vacation this summer, I re-read a biography of Martin Luther. And I was reminded of a story involving a group of nuns who escaped a convent in response largely to Luther’s teaching. This group of twelve or so nuns came to Luther looking for help and rescue. Many of these nuns had been forcibly turned over to the church in their youth. Some were forced against their will to enter into the convent. And when they started hearing about the Reformation and what Luther was doing, they decided to make a break for it, and they absconded from the convent. And after escaping, they made a beeline for Wittenberg, where Luther was preaching. And when they got to him, they were penniless, destitute, and directionless. 

And Luther went right to work marrying them off to his Protestant priest friends. Since they weren’t Catholic anymore, there was no reason for them to stay single. So these former monks and priests married these escaped nuns. And scandalously they had children together!

But one of these nuns wasn’t married off right away. She stayed close by and helped Luther and the church. And at some point, this woman, named Katie, chided Luther for not practicing what he preached. He was a 41 year old former monk. He lived like a slob. And he had no intention of getting married. But Katie captured his imagination, and she captured his heart. And they got married. And they lived happily together, and they ended up having six kids together! This renegade monk husband and his runaway nun bride! 

So I’ll be honest, I love that story. And I’ve never really understood why the Catholic church has been so adamant about priests and monks forsaking marriage. It’s okay to be single. The Apostle Paul was single. But to require singleness is odd. And the first pope, according to their theology, the Apostle Peter, was married. 

But even stranger to me than men not marrying is women taking a vow of chastity, joining a monastery, and not ever marrying. Even young women do this! Even young girls have been historically forced into this! And I realize that some of the ideas for this are taken from this passage in 1 Timothy. There are women who are enrolled for Christian service in the Catholic church, the nuns. But what do you do with Paul’s instruction that younger women should marry and not be enrolled? And that the enrolled women should be older than 60?

Now, let’s think about context. Once again the immediate context here is widows within the church of Ephesus. The specific situation that Paul was dealing with in Ephesus is different than anything that we might face in today’s world. Paul was dealing with the misuse of funds within the church for widows, and because of that he establishes some stiff rules for their financial support. 

Let’s work through these. First of all, we see from verses 11-16 that there were some women who were avoiding marriage and yet receiving financial provision from the church. You might remember that at the beginning of chapter 4, Paul warned that some false teachers in the church were forbidding marriage (4:3). It’s possible that some of these widows were falling prey to this teaching and were refusing to marry. But instead of working to support themselves or working on behalf of the church, they were idle and becoming a financial drain on the church. 

A second problem that had arisen within the church was women who were being drawn away from Christ by their passions. This is something of a cryptic statement in verses 11-12:

11 But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry 12 and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. 

Some have concluded from Paul’s statement that a widow would have to abide by a vow of celibacy in order to receive financial aid from the church. I’m not sure that’s the case. Was there a “nunnery” in the Ephesian church? Probably not!  

What I think we are dealing with here instead, is young women who have married unbelievers outside the church after receiving financial provision from the church. Paul may have had a specific woman in mind with this statement. And what he’s saying is that her actions are completely unacceptable. She has let her passions draw her away from Christ, and she has abandoned her faith or marginalized her faith for the sake of marriage to an unbeliever. That’s probably also why Paul says, “For some have already strayed after Satan” (5:15). Paul suggests that it is better for these women to marry inside the church (if that option is available to them), bear children, and manage their households. In other words, they should fulfill a meaningful and important responsibility within the church family.

Now a third problem we encounter in Ephesus is widows who were idly flitting about from house to house, gossiping and meddling in matters that they shouldn’t. This idleness and these bad habits were being financed by church benevolence, and this was unacceptable for Paul. So we’ve got some widows who won’t marry. We’ve got some widows marrying outside the church. And we’ve got some widows who are idle and busybodies. And Paul says, “It’s time to pull the plug on this entitlement program in the church. If widows are going to receive permanent financial support they need to be a certain age, they need to be chaste, and they need to be godly.”  

Paul says one final thing that is worthy of comment in verse 16. He puts the burden of family support on the “believing woman.” 

16 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.

In most cases it would be the man of the house that would be working to support a widowed family member, so it’s odd that Paul would put the onus on the believing woman in this passage. Maybe what he’s doing here is adding another level of protection against sexual impropriety by having the believing woman (i.e. the woman of the house) care for the women in need.  

Paul then gives a final statement for why he has been so fastidious about this whole matter. You might think to yourself, “Isn’t Paul being a little obsessive-compulsive about this whole matter?” Well the reason he is being so cautious about this matter is because he wants to steward the resources of the church effectively. 

Let the church not be burdened [by superfluous widow-benevolence], so that it may care for those who are truly widows.

And the applicational thrust of this passage for us is this. We may not have as big an issue of destitute widows in our modern day world. But where needs exist, and where we are able to meet them, we need to be discerning with how benevolence is distributed in the church. And that doesn’t just apply with widows. That applies in all areas where God’s finances are in play. We are called to steward those finances well. And we steward them in a way that honors God. And as the family of God, we lead, but we don’t enable, the destitute and vulnerable members of the church family. 

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Let me close with this. There was a really powerful moment in the life of Jesus when his family members, his mother and his brothers, came looking for him. This is before his death and resurrection. And the people said to Jesus, “Your mother and your brothers are looking for you.” And you know what Jesus said in response? This is really quite remarkable. Jesus said, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And then Jesus stretched out his hands to his disciples and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt 12:46-50).  

What was Jesus saying in that moment? He was saying that the bond that is formed by those within the church, the body of Christ, is a more lasting and permanent bond than any familial relationships.

You know some people like to say that “blood is thicker than water.” In other words, family bonds are greater than friendship bonds. But here’s my counter to that: “The blood of Jesus is thicker than any biological or genetic blood relationship.” And it’s Jesus’s blood that bonds the church together as family. We are family! Right, church? He died for us to save us and to bring us together.  

And for that reason, Paul tells us in this passage to do three things:  

Treat church folk like family (5:1-2)

Support the destitute members of the church family (5:3-8)

Lead, and don’t enable, the destitute members of the church family (5:9-16)