After reinforcing that Timothy’s gift of
teaching God’s word was vital to the life of the church, Paul
describes how the Gospel affects relationships by age and gender (1
Tim. 4:11-16). While Timothy was younger than some in the church
and had the authority to correct older men, he was to do so with an
attitude of respect and care. Correction served with arrogance
rarely produces godly change. Timothy was to mentor younger men
like an older brother, treat older women like his own mother, and
relate to younger women like a sister. As the church is designed
like a family, pastors are to counsel and care like a father (John
1:12; Eph. 2:19). Probably being single in his mid-thirties,
Timothy had unique challenges as a pastor in a culture that valued
age and marriage. Being the most eligible bachelor in the church
and knowing sexual temptation, Paul tells him to act with ‘all
purity’ (Gr. pas hagneia, ‘in every way clean/chaste’) towards the
single women. Because women take verbal and touch cues and men take
visual and physical cues, believers are to relate and date like
brothers and sisters until marriage. As humans are ‘free
information’ beings, sexual availability signals come from
behavior, talk, and dress. God designed the marital covenant as the
dividing line between sexual expression and sexual restraint (Heb.
13:4).