Why is 1 Timothy 5:23 in the Bible?
Paul wrote the following to Timothy, his son in the faith:
1 Timothy 5:23 Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
Why is this verse in the Bible? How does God want Christians to profit from it?
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The text says nothing about Timothy abstaining, therefore that statement is just speculation and no one knows whether he did or not.
And his malady could have been indigestion. No one knows.
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
The text says nothing about Timothy abstaining, therefore that statement is just speculation and no one knows whether he did or not.
“Stop drinking water” seems a strong indication that he wasn’t drinking wine but only water (as most translations make clear). What else could it mean? There are necessary inferences that are part of exegesis.
If he was not abstaining, why did Paul have to tell him to drink a little wine for his stomach’s sake? Wouldn’t he have already been drinking wine? Surely Paul’s point was not along the lines of “I know you are drinking but for the wrong reason. You should do it for your stomach”? Or “You are drinking too much; you should only drink a little”? The only conclusion that makes sense of the text seems to be that Timothy was a total abstentionist.
We don’t know why because the text doesn’t tell us. We can possibly invoke 1 Tim 4 and asceticism as a suggestion or 1 Tim 3 and the qualifications. There seems no connection to elder accusations or ordinations.
So what would we preach out of this passage?
If we go with Ron’s approach that we must limit ourselves to what we know vs. what we think, we can only say that Timothy is commanded to drink wine for his health.
If we expand that into what “we think” a bit, we can say that the medicinal use of alcohol is permitted by Christians and the purity does not require us to avoid medicine that has alcohol. Of course we could expand the principle beyond that (such as other types of medicine), but that requires us to get into “I think.” I don’t have a real problem with that because I think it is a necessary part of preaching. It is what is in view in the OT when the text was translated to give the sense. There is an explanation that goes along with it. The old line is that the right preaching of the Word of God is the Word is true.
However, it is probably a long and uncomfortable stretch to say that this verse teaches that drinking wine is acceptable as a general practice. Or to address larger issues of asceticism.
Discussion