1 Timothy 4:16 He says “take care of yourself and of your teaching; hold on to that, because by doing so you will save yourself and your listeners”. He would sum up the impact of this verse as “the extraordinary seriousness of the pastoral ministry.” I hope that one of the effects of this message is to make you earnest and diligent in your prayers.
This verse contains three commandments and two promises. for the young shepherd. The first commandment is that he take care of himself. The second is that he pay attention to his teaching.
The third commandment is that you hold fast to these two duties; that is, continue to take care of yourself and continue to attend to his teaching, without ever thinking that the days of personal vigilance are over or that the moment of doctrinal growth has already passed.
The first promise is that by doing this he will save himself and the second is that by doing this he will save his listeners. Let’s see what is the meaning of all these fragments and what lessons we can extract from there.
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Is salvation at stake?
So how can we express the teaching of this verse in a sentence? I would put it this way: a pastor’s unwavering moral vigilance over his life and theological vigilance over his doctrine are God’s appointed means of grace for his own salvation and the salvation of his people.
You can see that the central theme of this verse is “the extraordinary seriousness of the pastoral ministry“. The eternal salvation of a pastor and his people is at stake for the veracity of his teaching, because salvation comes by believing, but by believing in what is right; the sacrifice of Christ. If a pastor is careless (walks in debauchery) or neglect his teaching, most likely he will not be right, because we remember that God cannot be mocked.
Does this mean that salvation is not by grace?
No, this does not contradict the great truth of salvation by grace through faith taught in Ephesians 2:8-9:
“By grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works to anyone.
Man is not to boast, we have been and will be saved at the last day by grace through faith, and it will be a free and unmerited gift of God from beginning to end. 1 Timothy 4:16 does not contradict that. Rather it is a confirmation of the next verse; Ephesians 2:10:
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
When a pastor attends to himself and his teachings and walks in the good works prepared for him by God, he shows that he is the work of God and a new creature in Christ. But when a pastoral leader relaxes in his behavior and abandons the doctrine, shows that it is not the work of God, it is not a new creature in Christand their faith was vain like that of Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Timothy 1:20) and else (2 Timothy 4:10), and all the wolves in shepherd’s clothing that Paul and Jesus warn about in Acts 20:30 Y Matthew 7:15.
1 Timothy 4:16 does not teach salvation by works. Here there is no thought of gaining anything from God. What the verse teaches is that pastors who are saved by grace through faith must give evidence of that divine work in their lives through unremitting attention to personal holiness and doctrinal fidelity. He teaches that the pastoral ministry is the proving ground for eternity. Will we be faithful when the teacher comes? Or, as Jesus says in Luke 12:46shall we be cut to pieces and destroyed with the infidels?
Does this mean then that a pastor must live in constant uncertainty about his eternal destiny?
No. But why not, if the result is really conditioned on the fidelity of your ministry? The answer is given by Paul himself in 2 Timothy 1:12:
“I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded (I am sure!) that he can keep what has been entrusted to me until that day.”
Paul’s security is not based on removing faithfulness as a condition for salvation, so personal holiness and doctrinal faithfulness do not matter. Rather, his safety rests on God’s power and grace to keep him faithful to the end.
Now let’s take the two halves of this text one at a time and focus on some specific examples. The first part says “Take care of yourself, be tireless in the moral vigilance of your own personal life.” The second half talks about paying attention to the teaching and being unwavering in theological vigilance over doctrine.
“Take care of yourself.” Meaning
Under the first heading, we could focus on many things: our prayer life, our professional aspirations, our attitudes, our fears, our emotional stability, among other things. But instead, I focus briefly on the threats to your holiness and ministry that come from your own body.
You know the general teaching of Hebrews 12:14; we must seek a holiness without which we will not see the Lord. But what is the form of that holiness as regards the body? Your body has three very strong appetites: the appetite for food and drink, the appetite for sleep, and the appetite for sex.
Each of them is God’s creation and it is good in its proper proportion. But sin has entered the world and has made the body its base of operations to a great extent, so that the appetites of the body are now fickle.
They are friends because they give us pleasure and urge us to cover some basic needs. But they are also enemies who try again and again to enslave us and lure us into sinful excesses. In general, Paul said in Romans 8:13:
“If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you kill the deeds of the body, you will live.”
In other words, if you take care of yourself you will save yourselfas Paul says (Galatians 6:8; Colossians 3:5).
About food and drink
Specifically, regarding food and drink, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:12-13“All things are lawful to me, but not all things are useful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be a slave to anything“. Food is in sight and necessary, but we must control its consumption. Be careful of yourself, for gluttony is a great enemy of the Christian ministry. Listen to the prophet Amos preach against the gluttonous indifference of his day (6:4-6):
“Woe to those who lie down on ivory beds, lie down on their beds and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the middle of the stable but are not saddened by the ruin of Joseph!”
A gluttonous shepherd is a glaring inconsistency to his people. Joseph’s ruin cries out for fasting and tears, and the shepherd eats double portions of him as if life were a feast. We must take care of ourselves and our appetite for food.
Concerning the dream
Next, let’s pay attention to our appetite for sleep. Proverbs makes the connection between food and sleep here:
“The drunkard and the gluttonous will be impoverished, and drowsiness will clothe the man in rags” (Proverbs 23:21). “A little sleep, a little folding your hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like an armed man” (Proverbs 6: 10-11).
Sleep is good and absolutely necessary. But let’s find the amount we need to function fully for God and not take more. Why? Because Paul said in Ephesians 5:15:
“Look well, then, how you walk, not as a fool, but as a wise man, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
Time is precious because the stakes are high in an evil age. Beware of yourself, beware of wasting precious hours in fruitless idleness and excessive sleep.
I remember the story of a German New Testament professor who was asked why he got up so early and worked so hard. He answered: “Ich spare den Schlaf fuer die ewige Ruhe!” (“I’m reserving sleep for eternal rest“).
Of course, this can be abused to kill yourself with heart failure or become a first class curmudgeon. But perhaps the time has come to sound Paul’s trumpet again in 2 Corinthians 11:27:
“With work and fatigue, with hunger and thirst, during many sleepless nights”
Concerning sex
Next, let’s pay attention to our sexual appetite. This has been a great destroyer of the ministry in 1987, hasn’t it? Oh, the vigilance we need on this appetite. Pay attention to the words of Jesus:
“I tell you that everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown away. to the hell”.
So, see what is at stake in controlling this appetite: your life in Christ. That is why Paul said: Take care of yourself, because that is how you will be saved. I wrote to one of my most respected advisors recently and asked what he would say if someone walked into his office and admitted to living in ongoing sexual sin and said, “I can’t leave it tonight“.
He responded and said this: I would say “How long will it take you to decide that you don’t want to live under the torch of God’s almighty wrath?” “No change is easy, but it requires commitment, and especially, it demands will.” You can see why Paul said of his own ministry in 1 Corinthians 9:26-27:
“I do not run aimlessly, I do not box like one who punches the air; but I shake my body and submit it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
Therefore, take care of yourself in the ministry and, in particular, have an unwavering moral vigilance over the appetites of your body, because in doing so you will save yourself.
pay attention to your teaching
Finally, we briefly look at the second half of the text, which we must pay attention to in our teaching. Very simply, I think this commandment sends us to our desks and hard study work, mainly to study the scriptures while we invoke the Spirit to open our eyes.
Along with the Scriptures, I recommend that you study the history of the doctrine and its effects on the life of the church. The question is how can we protect us from leading our people astray and have his blood on our hands, as Paul says in Acts 20. The Bible is the one of all our doctrinal buildings, and the history of the church is the best control of a mishandling of the plumb bob itself.
final thoughts
In conclusion, take care of yourself; he lives as a Christian, a follower of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Don’t get lax and careless. The way we live can make or mar our testimony. Someone once said: “I can’t hear what you’re saying, because your actions speak too loud.“.
So this advice of Paul applies to all the Christian people, but especially to the ministers of the Gospel. “Actions speak louder than words.” If our words are not supported by our lives, then our work and witness will fail.
You need to learn:
I hope this is enough to make you understand, dear reader, the extraordinary seriousness of the pastoral ministry. I wish with all my heart that this…