Paul Told Timothy to Take Something for His Stomach

A woman told me the worst thirty seconds of her day happen at a kitchen cupboard.

Not a hospital. Not an appointment. A cupboard, at about seven in the morning, where the thing she takes every day is kept.

She said it is not the taking. The taking takes four seconds. It is what arrives with it, which is a small daily statement about her body and about the rest of her life, delivered by a shelf, before she has spoken to anybody.

And she said the thing she has never told anybody, which is that somewhere in there is a suspicion that a better Christian would not need it.

I want to answer that carefully and quickly, because I have heard it more than once and it does real harm. Nothing on this page tells anybody to change what they take or to stop seeing anybody. That is between a person and their doctor and it is not this article's business, and any message that got in the way of that would be doing damage in the name of God.

What I can do is show you how completely unembarrassed Scripture is about a body that needs help.

The line sits in the middle of a serious letter

Here it is, and where it sits is half the point.

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities. (1 Timothy 5:23, King James Version)

The verses around it are about elders, about accusations, about ordination. It is a serious letter about how to run a church.

And in the middle of that, Paul stops and tells a young pastor to take something for his stomach.

He does not spiritualize it. He does not say pray about it. He does not tell him to examine himself, or to check whether there is unconfessed sin, or to consider what God might be teaching him through it. He gives him the practical advice of that era and moves on to the next subject.

Thine often infirmities. Often. This is not one bad week. Timothy has an ongoing physical problem, and Paul, who healed people, tells him to take something for it and does not treat that as a compromise.

You are not compromising anything by taking what your body needs. 1 Timothy 5:23 gives practical advice for an ongoing physical problem with no apology attached, and it is the Spirit of God, Romans 8:26 helping our infirmities, who uses the same family of words for what He does in a person.

The man traveling with Paul was a doctor

There is a detail at the end of Colossians that people read past constantly.

Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you. (Colossians 4:14)

The beloved physician. Paul's traveling companion, who wrote a gospel and the book of Acts, is described by his profession, warmly, without a hint of tension.

The New Testament does not set medicine against God anywhere. It has a doctor in the writing party and mentions it as an ordinary fact.

And there is a passage where Paul describes a man nearly dying and getting better, and he does not attribute it to a formula:

For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. (Philippians 2:27)

Paul is glad. He calls it mercy. And he says out loud that he would have been devastated, which is not the sentence of a man who thought illness was a simple matter of faith.

You are not standing between two competing systems, and Scripture has a physician in the traveling party. Colossians 4:14 calls Luke the beloved physician without one word of tension. It is His Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:9 naming gifts of healing among His gifts, who works without ever being set against ordinary care.

What the cupboard is actually saying

Here is what I think that thirty seconds is really about, and it is not medicine.

It is a daily, physical, unavoidable reminder that a body is not what it was and is not going to be. Most people with a long condition find some way to not think about it for stretches of a day. A cupboard at seven in the morning removes that option.

So the sentence arriving is not about the pill. It is a small grief with a schedule.

And Scripture has a verse for exactly that, which is not about medicine at all:

For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. (Psalm 103:14)

He knoweth our frame. He is not startled by a body with a requirement. He built the material, He knows its tolerances, and the daily reminder is telling you something He has never needed telling.

You are known down to the material and He is not surprised by a requirement. Psalm 103:14 says he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. It is the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:16 bearing witness with our spirit, who tells a person what they are when a shelf is telling them something else.

Grace is measured against the thing rather than against the version without it

And the promise that holds here is the one Paul got when his own request was declined.

My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Sufficient for thee. For you, as you actually are, with the requirement in place. Not for a hypothetical version of you without it.

That is the correction to the suspicion at the cupboard. The suspicion assumes that grace is aimed at a better version who does not need the shelf. Paul's sentence aims it at the man with the thorn still in.

And notice, because this matters and I will not skip it: Paul asked for it to go. Three times. Asking is not doubt and it never was, and if anybody has told you that praying about your body is a failure of faith, they were wrong and Scripture is against them.

You are the one the sufficiency was measured for, requirement included. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says my grace is sufficient for thee with the thorn still in place, and it is the same Spirit, Ephesians 3:16 strengthening with might in the inner man, who is named for a strengthening that a prescription was never asked to do.

And if the cupboard has started to carry more than a small grief, say it out loud to a person: your doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. A daily reminder can wear a groove in somebody, and telling the person who prescribes it is a good and ordinary thing to do.