Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Timothy 4:7

"but refuse profane and old wives` fables. And exercise thyself unto godliness:" — 1 Timothy 4:7 (ASV)

But refuse profane and old wives’ fables.—Here Timothy, who was previously (see 1 Timothy 4:1–6) warned against a false asceticism, against putting an unnatural interpretation on the words of Christ, and against sympathising with a teaching that would make men and women unfit for practical everyday life, is now urged to guard himself against the temptation to give himself up to the favourite and apparently enticing study of the sayings of the famous Jewish Rabbis. In this study, every book, almost every word—in many cases the letters of the Hebrew Scriptures—were subjected to a keen but profitless investigation.

In such study, the spirit of the holy writers was too often lost, and only a dry and barren formalism—commands respecting the tithing of mint, anise, and cumin—remained, while the weightier matters of the law—judgment, justice, and truth—were carefully sifted out.

Around the grand old Jewish history, all kinds of mythical legends grew up, until for a Jewish student of the Rabbinical schools, the separation of the true from the false became in many cases impossible—through all this elaborate and careful but almost profitless study. The minister of Christ was to avoid these strange and unusual interpretations, this vast fantastic collection of legends, partly true and partly false. He was to regard them as merely profane and old wives’ fables, as being perfectly useless and even harmful in their bearing on practical everyday life.

And exercise thyself rather unto godliness.—Instead of these weary profitless efforts—the painful, useless asceticism on the one hand, and the endless and barren Rabbinic studies of the Law on the other—Timothy, as a good minister of Jesus Christ, was to bestow all his pains and labour to promote an active, healthy, practical piety among the congregation of believers, as we have seen in 1 Timothy 4:6, in the words, “ever training thyself.”

To lead such a life required ceaseless pains and efforts, for true godliness is always a progressive state. Surely exercising himself unto godliness would be a task hard enough to satisfy the most ardent, the most enthusiastic soul! The “godliness,” or “piety,” here alluded to, as the end toward which Timothy was to direct all his efforts, was that practical piety which influences for good, which leavens with a holy leaven all classes of society, all life, of the slave as well as of the patrician.