Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Timothy · About this commentary
Train Yourself for Godliness
1 Timothy 4:6-10
6 If you instruct the brothers of these things, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine which you have followed. · WEB
The athletic image is used and then immediately ranked below the thing it illustrates.
Verse 6 turns from the error to the man who has to handle it, and the description of a good servant is unexpectedly passive: nourished on the words of the faith. Before Timothy feeds anyone he is being fed.
Verse 7 sets the alternative aside briskly — profane and old wives' tales — and gives the positive command with a word borrowed from the gymnasium: train yourself. It is the vocabulary of athletic discipline, and the object is godliness.
Verse 8 then does something a lesser writer would not. Having reached for the athletic image, it concedes the comparison's limits: bodily training has some value. The concession is real and not sarcastic. Godliness is greater not because the body does not matter but because of its range — value in all things, holding promise for the present life and the one to come.
That clause is the reason the ranking works. The letter is not contrasting physical with spiritual. It is contrasting a benefit bounded by one life with one that is not.
Verse 9 marks the third and last faithful saying in the letter 1 Timothy 1:15 1 Timothy 3:1, and verse 10 supplies the labor the saying justifies.
The last clause is the one worth weighing: God is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe. The letter has already said he desires all to be saved and that the ransom was for all 1 Timothy 2:4 1 Timothy 2:6. The qualifier narrows the effect without narrowing the provision.
settled What this mark means