1 Timothy 4:10 For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men… For therefore we [both] labor. To understand a man's history, we must understand his philosophy of life - that is, his motives and his reasons. For no life has unity without this. It may have spasmodic activities and instinctive virtues, but no completeness or consistency. Here is - I. THE ARGUMENT OF A TRUE FAITH - "THEREFORE." A man's thought does not always rule his life, even though conscience enforces truth as a duty. A man's conscience does not always rule his life. It is said that man is a will; and this is true, for it is ever the supreme power. Man is made up of three things - "I can," "I ought," "I will." Christ had become the Master of Paul's life; therefore he labored, because the gospel was a fact, not a fable (ver. 7) spun out of Jewish brains. Men like Strauss have tried to prove it a myth - something that grew up in the minds of men. Imagine the Jewish mind that had grown more ritual and legal, developing into the simplicity of Christianity! Imagine philosophy that had grown more and more proud and exclusive, developing a religion for the common people! The gospel was a faithful saying, and St. Paul did not alter and improve his doctrine and teachings; he preaches the same gospel in his earlier and later Epistles. He was a man of sober judgment and of intellectual power, and no mere rhapsodist. He says, "It is worthy of all acceptation" - by the scholar and the peasant, the Jew and the Gentile, the bond and the free. The Jew would find it fulfilled his Law, his symbols, his prophecy. The Gentile would find it answered to his instinct, his hidden desire, his deepest intuition. "Therefore" is the argument of a true faith. We are not the disciples of a new sentiment or a mere romantic embassy; for the new temple is built, like the temple of Jerusalem, upon a rock. II. THE TOIL OF A TRUE FAITH. "Therefore we labor," not simply "we teach" nor "formulate opinions." That might be done with ease, like philosophic teachers, in the garden and the porch. "We labor!" A word involving pain and tears, as well as toil. The tendencies of the times are against us. The corrupt taste of a degenerate age is against us. The cross is to the Jew a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness. We do not please men, like the rhetoricians. We do not amuse men, like the sophists, We labor in journeyings, in perils, in hunger, in stripes. Think of St. Paul's outcast condition, so far as his own countrymen were concerned. Think of his relation to the Roman power - suspected of sedition; and accusations of his fellow-countrymen, the Jews. At a time when Rome swarmed with spies, he was laboring in the face of certain danger and death. - W.M.S. Parallel Verses KJV: For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe. |
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