Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

138 First Timothy V. 20.
the selfish accusations which any one might bring against him.--
Thc pastor of our own day is certainly not the presbyter in the
apostolical sense ;
not taken from the church itself over which he is
called to preside, not approved by his previous life among the people,
not marked out for the office by them as having been found
worthy from the proof of his moral and Christian character, in general,
called to the office fiir less (and indeed generally too little) from
regard to his christianly moral qualities—he cannot lay unqualified
claim to the privilege implied in the rule laid down in our passage.
On the other hand, it is not to be denied, that the office being substantially
identical with that of the presbyter, there is still the same
possibility of unjust
accusations, and the same injuiy to the office,
the accused, and the accusers, will follow in the case of such charges
finding a ready hearing. These two things, then, must be taken
into account—on the one hand, the difference between that period
and the present, on the other, the substantial sameness of the office
—in order rightly to estimate the manner in which this rule laid
down by the apostle is to be applied in the present time. On napadtxeoOat
comp. similar compounds, Mark iv. 20 ; Acts xxii. 18. Id
the former passage there is an express difierence between ukoveiv and
TTapad^xtoOai (to enter into). 'E/crof el fuj used again by the apostle
only at 1 Cor. xiv. 5, xv. 2 ; on the fulness of this expression,
comp. Winer's Gr., § 65, 3, p. 533. On t-i, Winer's Gr., § 47, g.
p. 335.
Ver. 20 treats of what is to be done to those members of the
church who fall into sin. They are to be rebuked before all, that
others also may fear. The words, them that shi, are not, as is generally
done, and as Olshausen also does, to be referred
to the presbyter,
ver. 19, but are to be understood generally, of all members
of the church who sin. In the former case the change of number
would be unsuitable ; we should expect rather that the apostle
would say : but if he has sinned, or if he is convicted. And how
should the apostle, who in ver. 19 has expressed so higli an o])inion
of the presbyters, proceed fortlnvith to say in ver. 20 : them that
sin, etc. And, at all events, had there been any such antithetical
.5^
relation between vers. 19 and 20, the i)article Si: would have been
used ; comp. other passages connected in this way, as 1-8, 9-15 ;
vi. 1, seq.; while this particle is always wanting where there is evidently
a transition to something new, vers. 3, 9, 17, 19, 21, 22 ; vi.
1, 3, 17. Finally, as De Wette has already observed, ver. 22 is
against tin's inter])rotation (comp. infra). Them that sin, says the
apostle without any limitation ;
such, however, lies in the nature of
the thing ; comp. Matth. xvi^i. 15-17 (only the last mentioned case
comes here into consideration), 1 Cor. v. 9-13. As in the passage
last adduced, so also in the one before us, it is
not an immediate ex-