By John A. Huffman, Jr.
Paul makes three observations about our relational responsibilities.
First, one must assume personal responsibility for one's own life.
Paul talks about the widow who lives for pleasure instead of living a godly life. He encourages the widow to remarry, raise children, manage her household well and avoid idleness, gossip and self-indulgence.
Second, one must bear responsibility for destitute family members.
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This is not the responsibility of the church. The church has limited resources that would quickly evaporate if it became the primary social agency. He writes, "If a widow has children or grandchildren, they should first learn their religious duty to their own family and make some repayment to their parents; for this is pleasing in God's sight" (1 Timothy 5:4).
Imagine what it would be like to live every day in fear of what might happen to you. This is why the whole matter of social security is such a big issue today. At least there is some kind of a safety net in our society, minimal as it is, to help persons survive.
How sad is the person whose children express no interest in them, give no support emotionally, spiritually or financially. That is why Paul emphasizes the fact that the person who does not provide for one's own relatives has "denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
Plato, in The Laws, emphasized the debt that is owed to parents when he wrote: "Next comes the honor of loving parents, to whom, as is meet, we have to pay the first and greatest and oldest of debts, considering that all which a man has belongs to those who gave him birth and brought him up and that he must do all that he can to minister to them; first, in his property; second, in his person; and thirdly, in his soul; paying the debts due to them for their care and travail which they bestowed upon him of old in the days of his infancy, and which he is now able to pay back to them when they are old and in the extremity of their need."
E.K. Simpson summarizes it with these words: "A religious profession which falls below the standard of duty recognized by the world is a wretched fraud."
I think of how my dear father and mother took care of my mother's mother in her elderly years. She lived to be in her early nineties. Most of those years she was bright and vital, but dementia began to settle in. I still have warm memories of my father being so gentle and kind, going out of his way to care lovingly for his mother-in-law, who would often, in her forgetfulness, look at him with a puzzled look, asking, "Who are you? What's your name?"