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Now we exhort you, brethren: some think the apostle now turns his speech to their teachers, whom he here calls brethren in a more peculiar sense, and because the duties here enjoined do more properly belong to the ministry. But others more truly judge he continues his discourse to the whole church, and the several members of it. The same duties are to be performed by both, though under a different obligation: as in the civil state all are to seek the good of the commonwealth, though the magistrates and the governors are more specially obliged by office.
Warn them that are unruly; or admonish, as the same word is rendered in the former verse, here meant of brotherly, there of ministerial, admonition; wherein great prudence is to be used, as to time, place, persons, manner: and the unruly are such as keep not their place, alluding to soldiers that keep not their rank and station, and they are called in the margin disorderly, and that:
1. In civil respects, when men live without a calling, or, being in it, neglect it, or intrude into other men’s business, and perform not the duties of their civil relations.
2. In natural respects, when men follow not the light of nature, and fulfil not the law of natural relations.
3. In spiritual respects, when men neglect or transgress the rules and order of their walking in their church state, either with respect to their teachers or one another. Admonition belongs to such, and is the first step of church censure when regularly performed.
Comfort the feeble-minded; oligofucouv, or the pusillanimous, men of little souls, as the word imports, such as dare not venture upon hazardous duties, or faint under the fears or feeling of afflictions, or are dejected under the sense of sin, and their own unworthiness, or fears of God’s wrath, and assaulted by temptations which endanger their falling.
Support the weak; antecesye an allusion to such as lift at one end of the burden, to help to bear it, answering to the word sunantilambanetai, Rom_8:26: The Spirit helpeth our infirmities: and the weak are either the weak in knowledge, weak in faith, that understand not their own liberty in the gospel, Rom_14:1 1Co_8:9; and hereupon cannot practise as others do; their conscience is weak, 1Co_8:12; and so were in bondage to some ceremonial rites, when those that were strong stood fast in their liberty. These are to be supported, dealt tenderly with, and not to be despised, or rigorously used. Or, weak in grace, new converts, babes in Christ, tender plants, not well rooted in the gospel.
Be patient toward all men: this duty is universal; the former concerned only the saints. The word signifies longanimity, or long-suffering, and is often attributed to God, Exo_34:6 Rom_9:22. It consisteth in the deferring or moderating of anger, to wait without anger when men delay us, and to suffer without undue anger when they deal injuriously with us, whether they be good men or evil, believers or infidels, the strong or the weak, ministers or people.