Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Timothy 4:10

"For to this end we labor and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe." — 1 Timothy 4:10 (ASV)

For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach.—And for this end—to obtain this glorious promise, this highest blessedness here, that endless life with God hereafter, to win this glorious promise—we Christian missionaries and teachers care for no toil, however painful—and shrink from no shame, however agonizing.

Because we trust in the living God.—More accurately translated, because we have our hope in the living God. And this is why we toil and endure shame. We know that the promise made will be fulfilled, because the God on whom—as on a sure foundation—our hopes rest, is a living God. “Living,” in strong contrast to those dumb and lifeless idols enshrined in the well-known Ephesian temples.

Who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.—These words, like the assertion of 1 Timothy 2:4, have often been pressed into the service of that school of kindly, but mistaken, interpreters who ignore or explain away the plain doctrine of Holy Scripture, which tells us there are those whose destruction from the presence of the Lord will be everlasting, whose portion will be the “second death” (2 Thessalonians 1:9; Revelation 21:8).

These interpreters prefer to substitute for this terrible, but repeated declaration, their own perilous theories of universalism. Here the gracious words seem to affix a seal to the statement immediately preceding, which speaks of “the hope in the living God” as the source of all the labor and brave patience of the Lord’s true servants. The living God is also a loving God, the Savior of all, if they would receive Him, and, undoubtedly, the Redeemer of those who accept His love and are faithful to His holy cause.

It must be borne in mind that there were many Hebrews still in every Christian congregation, many in every church, who still clung with passionate zeal to the old, loved Hebrew thought that Messiah’s work of salvation was limited to the chosen race. This and similar sayings were specially meant to set aside forever these narrow and selfish conceptions of the Redeemer’s will; they were intended to show these exclusive children of Israel that Christ’s work would stretch over a greater and grander platform than Israel could ever fill; and they were designed to proclaim to all the churches how indeed it was a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel.

Still, with all these guarded considerations, which serve to warn us against entertaining any hopes of a universal redemption, such a saying as this seems to point to the blessed Atonement mystery as performing a work whose consequences reach far beyond the limits of human thought, or even of sober speculation.