Why Do Many Disregard the Implications of 1 Timothy 5:8?

Though this verse is found in the middle of counsel in relation to support of widows, it gives a principle regarding financial support of family members who cannot support themselves and have no lawful source of adequate income- especially those of one’s own house. 1 Timothy 5:8 sets forth a responsibility derived from the principles of God’s moral law. This verse is obviously not rebuking those who do their best to fulfill their responsibility in this regard yet still can only provide little. It is rather rebuking those who willfully neglect such responsibility and those who just flee from it altogether.

What if the one refusing to provide for their own responded to an altar call and/or said the sinner’s prayer at some point? Many who do so are told that all their past, present, and future sins are unconditionally forgiven. But were they told the truth?

As Titus 1:16 directly demonstrates, we can deny Christ by our deeds. This includes not fulfilling Biblically mandated responsibilities. Jesus contended with people in the Gospel accounts who were following a corrupt Jewish tradition and claiming their money was devoted to God in order to avoid giving it to help their needy parents. Double-minded people can attempt to spiritualize anything, but God is not mocked. Those who deny Jesus Christ are objects of God’s wrath. They are not under His grace and they cannot be saved in their present spiritual state.

2 Timothy 2:11-13: “It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.”

The Lord will not deny Himself. He will therefore deny those who deny Him. He will be faithful to His threats to those who do not meet the conditions to be partakers of His Gospel promises.

Jesus said in Matthew 10:32-33: “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”

What had been said in Matthew 10:28 proves that Jesus connects the destruction of soul and body in hell with being denied by Jesus before His Father in heaven.

The verdict expressed in 1 Timothy 5:8 proves that the prevalent concepts of faith and grace are false. 1 Timothy 5:8 is proof that we must be subject to the commandments of God and use them as a guide to walking in a living faith in Jesus Christ. Those who practice sin are God’s enemies.

Some will say that anyone whom the rebuke in 1 Timothy 5:8 justly applies to was surely never a real Christian at all. Yet they are dead wrong.

Christian church members who had really been born-again in Christ are not excluded from the warning in 1 Timothy 5:8. The warning in its context is actually directly given concerning these. Though a person can respond to an altar call and/or say a sinner’s prayer without acceptable repentance from sin and faith in Christ, it is possible to fall away from Christ after a real conversion to Him as well.

In addition to 1 Timothy 5:8, we see over and over again, even right in 1 Timothy, that real Christians falling away from Christ to spiritual death is a reality which must be taken into account and guarded against.

1 Timothy 1:19: “Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck…”

Having a good conscience towards God is an essential element of exercising a living faith in Christ and not making spiritual shipwreck concerning one’s faith. Paul gave this warning to Timothy, a man he knew to be a genuinely born-again Christian. Like Acts 24:15-16, 1 Timothy 1:19 shows that maintaining a good conscience towards God is necessary to continue in faith in Christ. Since this is how God’s grace is accessed, then a born-again Christian maintaining a good conscience is necessary to continue in grace. It is no wonder that Paul exhorted genuine converts to Christ to “continue in the grace of God” in Acts 13:43.

1 Timothy 4:16: “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.”

We see here that those who have believed in Jesus Christ yet need to be saved. They have not finished their Christian course on the narrow way to life yet nor are they guaranteed to. They can fall away. This verse takes that as a given.

1 Timothy 6:9-10: “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil (or, all sorts of evil): which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

Some have gone away from authentic faith in Christ through the love of money.

Note how Timothy is yet instructed to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on eternal life (1 Timothy 6:11-12).

One of the men who has been most influential in promoting corrupt concepts of faith and grace is Cyrus Scofield. The Scofield Reference Bible spread the theology of Dispensationalism rapidly in the first half of the 20th century. Dispensationalism teaches the removal of the force of God’s moral law from Christianity. It separates faith in Jesus from the need to use His moral law as a guide to faith. It is no surprise then that Scofield is a well known blatant example of one who 1 Timothy 5:8 rebukes. It is no wonder that a man who has been so influential in persuading people that the Christian is released from obligation to be subject to God’s moral law abandoned his first wife and permanently cut off support of the couple’s two minor daughters. The Scofield Reference Bible conveniently makes no comment at all on 1 Timothy 5:8. That is no wonder since the verse (among multitudes of others) both destroys the theology he promoted and severely rebukes Scofield personally.