TAKE CARE OF OTHERS, ESPECIALLY FAMILY

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

If any woman who is a believer has widows in her care, she should continue to help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.

1 Timothy 5:4,8,16

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Female widows had it hard in biblical times. Very hard.

They didn’t work because that was the husband’s responsibility and so when the husband died, there wasn’t any income for the widowed wife to live on. Constantly in need, these women were often pushed to the fringes of society to fend for themselves. Along with orphans, you will find the scriptures calling for care to be provided to them. Consider these words from James, the brother of Jesus:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress. James 1:27

God calls for us to care for those who are marginalized in society, those who find themselves in distress. In the Bible, those people were widowed wives and orphans. Today, we could count the homeless in that number.

So the scriptures clearly command us to care for wives that lose their husbands and in many cases today, we find widows struggling to make ends meet. The distress is just as present today as it was more than 2,000 years ago.

Of interest, we find the Apostle Paul touching on this topic in chapter 5 of his first letter to Timothy, the pastor of the Ephesian church at the time. Here’s what he wrote:

But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

If any woman who is a believer has widows in her care, she should continue to help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need. Vv. 4, 8, 16

Note here that the children and grandchildren of the widowed wife had an obligation to care for her. Through “caring for their own family”, the children and grandchildren would be putting “their religion into practice” and therefore please God with their loving kindness. After all, the widowed wife would have lavished her love on them, raising up their own children so that they too could raise up children of their own. Caring for the widowed mother/grandmother would be one big way that the children and grandchildren could repay them for what they had done.

What if that didn’t happen? What were the consequences of not being obedient to the word of God and failing to care for the widowed wives?

Paul tells us in verse 8 for anyone who doesn’t “provide for their relatives” or “their own household” would have shown they “denied the faith” and were “worse than an unbeliever”.

Ouch.

I don’t know about you but I never want the Lord to view me as being worse than an unbeliever. Ever.

The call here is to take care of others who are in need, and especially family. It’s a call that equally applies to us today as it did to Timothy and the brothers and sisters in Christ who resided in Ephesus.

We need to care for widowed wives in our families and ensure they are cared for. We’re to provide for our relatives overall, in and outside of our household, providing for their needs when able. And if we are caring for a widowed woman outside of our family, we aren’t to stop that care and shift the burden to the church unless we absolutely have to.

Jesus said that when we care for the least of these, it’s as if we had cared for Him. Through His life, He practiced what He preached so we could follow His lead. So as Christians, we really lack an excuse. We need to do as Jesus would have done and never present ourselves as too busy to care for the needs of others.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.