Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Timothy · About this commentary
Keep Yourself Pure
1 Timothy 5:21-25
21 I command you in the sight of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the chosen angels, that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing by partiality. · WEB
The most solemn charge in the letter is attached to impartiality, and the chapter ends by conceding that character is not always legible on time.
Verse 21 invokes God, Christ Jesus and the chosen angels — the heaviest oath in the letter — and what it secures is not doctrine but even-handedness: keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing by partiality. The procedures just given are worthless if applied selectively, and the letter treats that risk as grave enough for a triple witness.
Verse 22 gives three short commands, and the first governs the section: lay hands hastily on no one. Appointment is the point at which a congregation acquires its problems, and the letter has already required testing before service 1 Timothy 3:10. The second follows from it — a hasty appointment makes the appointer a participant in what follows.
Verse 23 is the letter's most personal sentence and appears to interrupt. A little wine, for the stomach and frequent ailments. It sits where it does because keep yourself pure immediately precedes it, and the letter is preventing an over-reading: purity was not a call to asceticism, in a letter already opposing prohibition as a doctrine 1 Timothy 4:3.
Verses 24 and 25 close the chapter with an honest admission. Some sins are conspicuous and precede a man to judgment; others follow after. Good works are the same — some obvious, and the rest cannot be hidden forever.
That is a realistic word to a man required to assess people. He will get some of it wrong, and the letter says the record eventually surfaces without him.
settled What this mark means