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Sunday 06/15/25
Title: Good Works & the Widow List
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Good Works & the Widow List
Well its Father’s day and while I almost never allow a date celebrated on the calendar to dictate what I teach, this one was pretty easy.
God created humans so that many aspects of His relationship with us were baked into our instincts for parenting.
As such, it is no wonder that there are so many similarities between what most fathers desire (and sometimes demand) from their children that God the Father commands of us.
First among which is to hold Him in affectionate reverence – which conveyed from a human perspective would be something like loving your father and respecting him.
Second to love and respect is trust and obedience. In fact these will ideally come naturally out of the former love and respect.
MUCH is said in scripture about Jesus’ love, respect and obedience to the Father and that such is the basis of the Father being glorified in us. The following verses are a mere sampling which illustrate these facts.
John 14:20-21, “(20) You will know at that time that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. (21) The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.”
John 15:8, “My Father is honored by this, that you bear much fruit and show that you are my disciples.”
Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”
We know therefore that honoring, loving, trusting and obeying the Father are primary on the list of things which please Him. Since this is true, rather than talk about our love for the Father let’s learn more how to actually demonstrate it in our obedience to pursue ‘good works’, which has been our topic of late.
I’ve been aiming at covering this for two weeks but our times together have taken us on side journeys which did not allow us to get this far. Today however, we are covering what ‘good works’ look like for the widow and by limited extension single women as well.
In the midst of this, as in all cases regarding ‘good works’, there are ample lessons for all of us regardless of gender or marital status!
Are you ready?
Are you psyched?
You should be! You claim to love the Father and want to please Him and this morning you are learning some practical, everyday ways to do just that!
Good works for the widow:
1 Timothy 2:8-14, “(8) Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument. (9) Also, the women are to dress themselves in modest clothing, with decency and good sense; not with elaborate hairstyles, gold, pearls, or expensive apparel, (10) but with ‘good works’, as is proper for women who affirm that they worship God.
(11) A woman should learn in silence with full submission.
(12) I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; instead, she is to be silent.
(13) For Adam was created first, then Eve. (14) And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.”
1 Timothy 5:3-16,
“(3) Honor widows who are truly in need.”
The words “truly in need” are actually the two words “truly widows” which Paul. by the Spirit is taking SOME time to define here.
So if “widow” here only meant a woman whose husband has died, that would need no further definition.
The entire point of this is the provision for those widows who are without support, bereft of all aid and who possess no means of personal support. We will see this as we move forward in this passage.
“Honoring” here carries the double meaning of literal respect as well as financial support. Though this Greek word can imply either sense, in this case both are intended.
“(4) But if a widow has children or grandchildren, they should first learn to fulfill their duty toward their own household and so repay their parents what is owed them.
For this is what pleases God.”
So this is a ‘good work’ for Christian children with their parents.
These words set forth several implications which are later picked back up by the apostle. The idea is the repaying of a debt. So if these older women gave little to their children and grandchildren in terms of mothering care, financial help and loving involvement there would be little to repay. So while it is true that simple respect for God as well as Christian love should compel a child or grandchild to give aid to their widows, the literal idea is to give back what was given to and invested into you.
“(5) But the widow who is truly in need, and completely on her own, has set her hope on God and continues in her pleas and prayers night and day.”
So this is one of the ‘good works’ for the Christian widow.
“Completely on her own” means she has no children or grandchildren and is left entirely on her own. Now this has to be adapted to a modern context. On the day this was written, they had no social security benefits and so “completely on their own” was a very literal truth and real possibility. It honestly meant that they had no other recourse and no other means of help available to them.
“(6) But the one who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.”
This can take several forms. One is simple irresponsibility. To misuse what they have. To misspend or overspend on non-essentials and so create their own deficit or make an existing one worse.
Complaining and harboring resentment against those they know or suppose owe them assistance. Their job is to “set her hope on God and continues in her pleas and prayers night and day.”
Older women today are advised by way of example to spend more and more money on trying to externally retain a superficial appearance of youth. They seek to draw attention to themselves. To superficially extend the longevity of their beauty in the eyes of others. Some even seek the attraction of younger men – mostly for self validation.
The words “lives in pleasure” is all one word and means “To live in luxury or pleasure”.
Now luxury is a relative term. One person’s luxury might be another person’s irritation. The idea is not what form luxury takes but a devotion and preoccupation with one’s own pleasures. To be self-indulgent and live for “self-gratification“.
In other words the one who lives in luxury focuses nearly all their interests inward rather than outward towards others.
“(7) Reinforce these commands, so that they will be beyond reproach.”
No onlooker could validate a claim against her character. Blameless. This is important for her own testimony of Christ as well as the way in which her life reflects upon the greater Christian community.
“(8) But if someone does not provide for his own, especially his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
Now this is often taken out of context and applied to a lazy husband and to be sure it certainly would be true regarding this as well. But what MANY Christians would not like to know and often fail to acknowledge is that ‘IN CONTEXT’, this is referring to caring for your adult family members once they are in need of help.
Now we learn that the local churches are to have a list of those who are truly widows – meaning those who meet these following requirements.
“(9) No widow should be put on the list unless she is at least sixty years old,”
This does NOT mean that any widow who is 60+ immediately qualifies, but only that she has to be AT LEAST that old.
“was the wife of one husband,” – after all this IS for widows, not just any woman.
Also it does not require that she never remarried in accordance with the scripture, but that she obviously had to have been married. Anna the prophetess would have qualified, though she had only been married for 7 years in her youth. This is discouraged by Paul in this letter for the majority of women since if they took a vow of abstinence, they might later renege on it or at very least, become a drain and annoyance on the community as we will see later in this passage. But Anna devoted herself to worship, fasting and prayer night and day for 84 years following her husband’s death so she would definitely qualify.
The following requirements seem somewhat fungible. I don’t know that it was the Spirit’s intent that if a married woman had no children she should be discarded. In that time and society, all women would have desired and sought to be mothers, so if a woman had not been it would not have been due to personal choice. Whereas today, that might very well be a different issue – especially in America where if one purposefully did not have children and yet at the end of her life has no Social Security built up, what had she done with her time throughout her life?
“(10) and has a reputation for ‘good works’:
as one who has raised children,
practiced hospitality,
washed the feet of the saints,
helped those in distress
– as one who has exhibited ALL KINDS OF ‘GOOD WORKS’.
So it is that I believe a woman like Anna would have qualified.
“(11) But do not accept younger widows on the list, because their passions may lead them away from Christ and they will desire to marry, (12) and so incur judgment for breaking their former pledge.
(13) And besides that, going around from house to house they learn to be lazy, and they are not only lazy, but also gossips and busybodies, talking about things they should not.
(14) So I want younger women to marry, raise children, and manage a household, in order to give the adversary no opportunity to vilify US.”
Notice that this comes up again as it did last week.
What each person does in the body of Christ, reflects on all of us! We have indeed become members of one another! So it is that we need to live aware not only of ourselves and our own interests but include the interests of others and how our actions and pursuits will reflect on the greater Christian community.
“(15) For some have already wandered away to follow satan.
(16) If a believing woman has widows in her family, let her help them. The church should not be burdened, so that it may help the widows who are truly in need.”
So in order for a woman to be considered in “the list” for widows to be aided by the church she has to have been kingdom minded, honored God in her life, lived selflessly and maintained good works!
The three primary reasons for this were that it honors God, it honors Jesus in her own life (as light and salt) & it reflects well back on the greater Christian community.
EXAMPLE:
Acts 9:36-43,
“(36) In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. She was always doing good works and acts of charity.
(37) In those days she became sick and died. After washing her, they placed her in a room upstairs. (38) Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples heard that Peter was there and sent two men to him who begged him, “Don’t delay in coming with us.”
(39) So Peter got up and went with them.
When he arrived, they led him to the room upstairs. And all the widows approached him, weeping and showing him the robes and clothes that Dorcas had made while she was with them.
(40) Then Peter sent them all out of the room. He knelt down, prayed, and turning toward the body said, “Tabitha, get up!”
She opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up.
(41) He gave her his hand and helped her stand up. Then he called the saints and widows and presented her alive.
(42) This became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. (43) And Peter stayed on many days in Joppa with Simon, a leather tanner.”
So those called as GIFTS in the body encourage lives like these and these lives are those who know where they belong in the body, what purpose they serve and what functions they provide.
These are good stewards of who God made them to be, where God placed them in the body and of the spiritual gifts invested in them by the Holy Spirit!
Blessings!
Tri
