Walking Worthy While You Wait to Become a Widow

According to the AARP, “Among married Americans, 58 percent of women age 75 and older experience widowhood, compared to 28 percent of men. An astonishing one-third of women become widows before they’re 60, and half before they are 65.”  If you are a married woman, there is a strong chance that you will one day be a widow.

In 1 Timothy 5, Paul instructs the church how the family and the church (if family is not present) should care for widows. If the widow was younger (cf. 1 Tim 5:18), she was expected to remarry, but if she was above 60 and without family, she was to be aided by her church family. Beyond this basic requirement, Paul lists some traits that must characterize the life of these widows.

While widowhood may be a sudden and unexpected change, the godly character of a woman who becomes a widow should not be. She should already have the reputation of godliness reflecting an incremental, progressive, and continual growth in character and good works. In other words, the godliness should first characterize a woman, so that when she does become a widow, she can meet the church’s requirements for care. One doesn’t suddenly have these characteristics just because she became a widow.

So, I’d actually like to address us younger women. We’ve probably told our own children or other young people something along these lines: “Your character is forming now for the kind of adult you will one day be.” The same is true of us as younger women. Our character is forming now for the kind of older woman (and possibly widow) we will be.

What are the character qualities God commands of widows that we should be honing right now in our lives?

1. She “has set her hope in God” (1 Tim 5:5). She is a believer characterized by hope in the God who cares for her. “The perfect tense of the verb elpizō (hope). . . indicates a continual state or condition. Her settled attitude is one of hope in God. That demonstrates the genuineness of her faith.”¹ Rather than being spiritually “dead” and “self-indulgent” (1 Tim 5:6), she lives for God. She imitates Sarah and other holy women who hoped in God (1 Pet 3:5-6).

2. “She continues in supplications and prayers night and day” (1 Tim 5:5). A continual attitude of prayer is a command for all believers (1 Thess 5:17; Eph 6:18). A lifetime of prayer and verbalizing one’s dependence on and hope in God builds a foundation for becoming a widow devoted to prayer, like Anna the prophetess (Luke 2:36-37).

3. She is a one-man woman, “the wife of one husband” (1 Tim 5:9). A godly widow is to have been faithful to her husband (or husbands, if she remarried when a younger widow, as Paul commands in 1 Tim 5:14). Married women of all ages need to be excellent wives in whom our husbands’ hearts can fully trust (Prov 31:10–11).

4. She has “a reputation for good works” (1 Tim 5:10). “These benevolent works do not constitute a list of requirements or duties. They are those actions the widow must already have performed and on which her reputation was based.”² Verse 10 elaborates on the good works that she has done prior to widowhood upon which her reputation is now based:

• She has brought up children.” Children are a gift and blessing from the Lord and should be viewed as such (Psa 127:3–5). Bringing up children is an act of love, and a woman can be taught by older, wiser women on how to do so better (Titus 2:4). She raises the kind of children who learn godliness and may end up repaying her own labors by caring for her in her old age (1 Tim 5:4).
• She “has shown hospitality.” Again, the widow should have shown the marks of any true Christian, as Paul tells the Romans: “Contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show hospitality” (Rom 12:13).
• She “has washed the feet of the saints.” A mother has certainly washed many dirty, little feet in her mothering career, and God-willing they will become saints. But the idea seems to convey more than the rote act of washing feet. A humble, servant’s heart is behind the actual act or similar acts. Jesus himself exemplified such a servant’s heart when he washed the feet of his disciples, and he did so as “an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (John 13:15).
• She “has cared for the afflicted.” The word cared is the same word that Paul uses in verse 16 to address “any believing woman [who] has relatives who are widows.” These younger women are to “care for them.” Perhaps a widow qualified for help from the church has herself cared for widows in her home or church. If not, she could care for anyone else in need.
• She “has devoted herself to every good work.” Once again, this characteristic should be true of every believer. Paul urged Titus to command his people “to be ready for every good work” (Titus 3:1) and later insisted on these things “so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works” (Titus 3:8). Earlier, in Titus 2 Paul gave instructions on specific good things that younger women were to learn and devote themselves to: “to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled” (Titus 2:4–5).

What kind of older women do we want to be? If we are looking to be older godly women—and possibly widows—then we must be working on our character now. We must walk worthy while we wait to be a widow.

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Holly Huffstutler serves with her husband David, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Rockford, IL. She blogs with him here. Holly is a homemaker, raising and schooling her four children.

Photo by Dominik Lange on Unsplash

1. John. F. MacArthur, Jr., 1 Timothy (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 200. [↩]
2. T. D. Lea and H. P. Griffin, 1, 2 Timothy, Titus (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1992), 150. [↩]