1 Timothy 5:23

Be no longer a drinker of water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and for thine often infirmities.

This little verse is a jewel. It reveals Timothy as a total abstainer from alcohol; but it is amazing what the commentators make of this. One asserts that since the drinking water was bad in those times, Paul is here admonishing Timothy to use wine instead of water. The restriction "little wine," of course refutes that notion. Others have thought that Paul here advised Timothy to "liquor himself up a bit" in order to improve his courage and ability to carry out Paul's orders!

It was the illness of Timothy that led to this instruction; and one cannot help wondering if perhaps the good physician Luke had a hand in this prescription.

Of extremely great value is the bearing this verse has on the authenticity of 1Timothy. Spence said:

Those who argue that this Epistle is an artificial composition of an age subsequent to that of Paul's ... have no little difficulty in accounting for such a command as this. It can in fact be explained only upon the supposition that the letter was, in truth, written by St. Paul to Timothy ... No ecclesiastical forger of the second or third century would have dreamed, or had he dreamed, would have dared to have included a verse like this.[29]

If, despite the hardship and the universal custom of wine-drinking, Timothy refrained from the use of it in order to be a good example, consenting to use it only upon a doctor's prescription, is there not in this sufficient motivation for "teetotalers" today? Indeed there is!