---
title: 1 Timothy 4:10
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-timothy-4-10/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-timothy-4-10.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Timothy 4:10
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Timothy 4:10

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> To this end we labor and strive, because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of everyone, and especially of those who believe.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "This is why we are working hard and exerting ourselves, because we have rested our hope on a living God, who is a Savior of all sorts of men, especially of faithful ones."

## JW Usage

In the NWT's wording — "a Savior of all sorts of men" — the verse reads as saying God saves people from every kind of background, which fits the Watchtower's teaching that salvation is offered broadly but received only by those who meet the requirements. The working hard and exerting ourselves at the start of the verse is applied to the ministry.

## Protestant Usage

Take the two halves of the verse's claim seriously: God is the Saviour of all men, especially of believers. Paul is saying something about scope that then narrows, and both parts have to stand. The "especially" is the key. Whatever sense God is Saviour of all in, he is Saviour of believers in a fuller sense — which is why the verse cannot simply mean everyone is saved, and why it also cannot mean only believers are in view. Paul says something similar at 1 Timothy 2:4-6, where God wants all sorts of people to be saved and Christ gave himself as a ransom for all. What the verse rules out is a picture in which God's saving disposition is narrow from the start. He is described as Saviour of all men, and believers as the ones in whom that reaches its end. The pastoral use is better than the argumentative one. The living God in this verse is disposed toward people as Saviour before they have done anything. Compare Hosea 13:4, Romans 4:8, John 3:36.

## NWT Issue

The NWT reads "a Savior of all sorts of men." The Greek is soter panton anthropon — "Saviour of all men," with no word for "sorts." The KJV, ESV, NASB and NIV all render it "all people" or "all men." This is a recurring NWT pattern: "all sorts of men" also appears at John 12:32 where the Greek has simply "all," and similar qualifiers turn up elsewhere. The effect is to convert a statement about universal scope into one about variety of background — a narrower claim, and one that sits more comfortably with a system in which salvation is conditional on meeting requirements.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Permitted Issue Is Still a Decree](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/watchtower-determinism-author-of-evil.md) — When Watchtower theodicy reinvents the predestination it denies [Authority]