1 Timothy 2:1-7

Hey,
everybody. Thanks for being with us on Tuesday as we move into 1 Timothy 2,
the second chapter here as we continue.
There’s some organizational stuff that’s happening that might be helpful.
The passage we’ll look at today,
which will probably be 1 through 7,
assuming we get that far,
is kind of Paul addressing society at large.
In other words, it has big overtones for the church.
And then that will shrink.
And in 8 through the rest of the chapter,
he’ll look at essentially the household.
And then he will shrink further
and/or at least shift to the church as we move into chapter 3.
And so there is a kind of tier
system or a set of tiers that happen in this.
And so I just want to be aware of that as we jump
in here.
So let me read through this,
and then we’ll do some discussion.
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers,
intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for everyone,
for kings and all who are in high positions,
so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life
in all godliness and dignity.
This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
Stop there, Michael.
So you may know this and you may have experienced this yourself.
There is a kind of
tension at times between faith and the world,
particularly the political structures of the world.
Remember that the scripture comes from a place in which the Jews and then by extension the gentiles
lived under the rule of the Romans.
At first,
most of the pressure on the church came from the Jewish
community, but that did shift.
And probably by the time this is written,
the church is beginning
to see the first movements of oppression and of abuse and of persecution by the larger government.
And so the relationship between church and state has a kind of checkered history.
And
when they do, they generally take the form that this one has today,
kind of try to stay off the radar,
try to be a good citizen,
but mostly keep your focus on Christ and don’t worry too much about
your position in the world.
So it’s interesting that Paul first saying prayers,
intercessions, thanksgiving, be made for everyone.
He then moves to say for kings and those in high positions.
But
the end is interesting so that
we may lead a quiet and peaceful life.
In other words,
we pray for those who govern us that they may govern well because when they govern well,
there is a benefit for everyone,
including, and maybe especially in Paul’s eyes,
people of faith.
Yeah, Clint,
this is a
really sort of elementary conversation in some ways.
And because of that,
I think we may be quick to read by the substantial implication.
And I think it’s very contemporary.
First of all,
following this whole section,
you might remember in our previous conversations,
Paul has addressed the need for living on the right side of the faith, right?
We just talked about having a shipwrecked faith,
those people who’ve given up morals.
Now we have this sort of
shift away from encouraging Timothy to fight the good fight.
And now we have that beginning to be defined.
And in this case,
that looks like supplication,
prayer,
intercession,
and thanksgiving.
And this is a beautiful kind of summary of Christian prayer.
I think a very broad understanding
of Christian prayer.
Sometimes we make prayer a little bit more of a ritual to think maybe we do
at a certain time of day or we have a certain pattern that we follow.
But here there’s this
idea that one of the roles of a person of faith is to be lifting up conversation to the one and true
God.
And that is a beautiful kind of call to Christian life and discipleship,
a kind of thing
that we just make a pattern in our life.
And there’s lots of good reasons for that.
Though I think verse two here is where I wanted to get to.
This idea of the kings and the high positions,
it is very clearly for the sake of,
I mean, he literally says so that we can lead a quiet and peaceable life.
There is a kind of gift that comes in being off the radar to use your language, maybe put differently.
There’s another kind of gift when you’re not in a position of public
acclaim or public view.
You are able to live freely in a community,
to be a person who’s known
and that I think from the vantage of Paul,
this traveling apostle who goes around and seeks to
encourage and lift up the church,
tries to encourage leaders as they seek to help people claim their faith.
I think there’s something particularly compelling about,
hey, let’s not be the squeaky wheel.
Let’s not be the ones in the community always causing trouble.
Let’s not be the
ones who get sought out for this or for that to whatever extent we can.
Let’s try to be those kind
of people that can live whole life giving community centered kind of lives because Paul,
I think knows that fundamentally that’s the best path for the church.
That’s the best place to grow.
And as we know from the experience of the early church, Clint,
that often wasn’t the case.
There were often situations in which Christians were even sought out for their faith.
So when Paul says this,
I’m not even certain that he has in mind that this is something that this one church
is capable of achieving.
There are sometimes things that will make a peaceable life for a Christian impossible.
And when those things happen,
we still continue to lift up those
prayers and supplications that God would bring that for the sake of the church.
Yeah, I think this is interesting in that it makes sense experientially that when one lives
in a place of stability and a time of stability,
it gives them more to bring to the faith life,
to the church life.
If
things are in upheaval,
if there’s food, if there’s food shortage,
if there’s famine, if there’s war,
those kinds of things that create chaos and are sometimes
under the purview of leaders,
those things get in the way.
They make life harder.
They make faith harder.
They make church and community harder.
And so there’s a wonderful challenge in this.
Pray for your leaders and those who are in high positions.
I don’t think I’m telling
any secrets.
We just live in a really divided time.
And I think one of the challenges this
brings us to Christians,
wherever we might find ourselves in the political spectrum,
is are we praying earnestly for those that we might not have voted for,
that we might vote against, that we might not agree with?
Are we holding up
representatives?
Are we holding up administration?
Are we holding up world leaders in prayer?
Are we engaged in praying
for supplication and intercession and thanksgiving for kings and those in high position?
And
there’s a certain humility in bringing oneself to that task when you’re not on board with your
leader.
Now, Paul wrote this in a time where they probably couldn’t really imagine our system and
access to a vote and democracy.
That was outside of their hands.
But even more so,
I think, that offers us the responsibility to exercise that privilege with wisdom.
And we may or may not like whoever is in whatever office at the time,
but I think this is
a clear call to ask God to be doing good in them and through them because of the benefit it has
for society at large.
And the Bible is
often not particularly interested in those kind of questions.
The Bible has so much to say grace over in the lives of individual believers
that it doesn’t get real concern with society often.
And I think this is a rare and an important exception to this.
And I want to follow that up with this next phrase, Michael,
as we move into 4,
who desires everyone to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Again, as Paul is prone to do,
he drops a huge,
beautiful theological statement into the midst of this conversation.
We pray for them so that we can have a peaceable life.
This is right.
It’s acceptable to God.
And it is God’s desire for everyone to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.
And Paul implies that that happens more frequently and more readily
when there’s peace and stability.
And that happens more regularly when there are qualified, capable leaders.
Yeah. So, Clint,
we probably have a hard time getting here,
but certainly in this era, in the era of the early church,
there’s a lot of attention put into the deification of leaders.
I mean, that is certainly a move that happens in the Roman
system.
And, you know, it is striking here that Paul says, you know,
lift up in prayer
the kings for you.
May your prayer and intercessions be for the kings.
Note that that’s not
to the kings.
And of course,
you know,
as Christians, we are acclimated to this idea
that you don’t pray to a leader.
But in the midst of that culture and time,
that is worth saying,
right?
That we don’t ultimately have fealty or allegiance to whoever that leader is,
though we do have a responsibility to pray for them for the sake of others.
And there is even a subversive
note in that, Clint.
I mean, to be honest, this idea that God desires everyone to be saved
is a very challenging statement when the people you’re praying for have some responsibility for
the difficulty of your life.
We, once again, are also separated economically,
very much our Christian
practice we generally think of as informing how we behave in the marketplace.
But in the ancient world,
your religion often had direct impact on whether you could be in the marketplace.
So to give you an example,
if you were a butcher,
it was often the case that you needed to be part of the guild
of butchers.
And to be part of that guild would mean that you would have some fealty or connection
to the God of the butchers.
It was infused religiously,
which if you remember,
we actually have some of that language in the book of Corinthians when there’s some talk about,
you know, can we eat meat or not if it’s been sacrificed.
And so the early church had to navigate if I’m a
person who’s living in the marketplace,
living in this kind of life and lives within culture,
then what is my responsibility in the midst of that?
And I think it’s really striking
this idea that even when you are in a culture or maybe even if you have a leader who is making it
hard to live a peaceable life,
it is still God’s intention for all to be saved.
That is
classically Christian.
That is classically come from the fount of the grace of Jesus Christ,
the very one who’s pronouncing forgiveness upon those who look upon him as he’s crucified.
There’s something very practical and very contemporary in this because to your point,
Clint, we do live in a season that is divided.
We do live in a culture that quite frankly spends
almost all of its waking time watching its opponent to discover another weakness it compounds on.
And as Christians, we are called as our first order to pray,
to lift up with supplication,
to ask God for help and for care for even those people who might be on our list,
whatever kind of list that might be.
This very inverted kind of wisdom that comes to us through Jesus Christ
that God’s desire is for all to be saved and we forget that often and it’s good to be reminded.
Yeah, I think that’s a wonderful statement that Paul makes and the idea of connecting that to
the larger world and the culture and the stability in which or the lack of stability in which the
church lives is tied to that task and I think that’s a really interesting phrase.
So let me read a couple more verses here.
Paul kind of goes into some teaching here,
just some statement stuff.
“For there is one God,
also one mediator between God and humankind,
Jesus Christ himself, human, who gave himself a ransom for all.
This was attested at the right time.
For this I was
appointed a herald and an apostle,
telling the truth, I’m not lying,
a teacher of the Gentiles
in faith and truth.” So,
not terribly
controversial.
Paul is saying what the gospel
says to the church.
There’s one God, there’s one mediator.
This is the plan of God.
This is the saving that God wants people to come to.
The saved that God wants them to be is in Jesus Christ.
That doesn’t shock us at all from Paul.
We expect that.
And then we,
again, we find this in Paul often.
I’m a herald of this.
I was appointed an apostle.
That’s the truth.
I’m not lying.
“A teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.” And probably by the time this letter is read,
that’s not a shocking statement.
In fact,
probably many of these people,
including Timothy himself, lived as Gentile
for at least part of their life before coming into the church.
Now,
having said that,
that does sort of connect to this idea that God wants everyone to be saved.
Very interesting that in backing that statement up,
Paul points to those who the Jews thought were
sort of outside of the circle.
And Paul makes reference to God’s plan.
I’m a herald to bring
the Gentiles into the faith by truth.
And so a nice reminder of a very practical sense of what
it means that God wants to see everyone come to salvation in Jesus Christ.
And Paul is himself participating in that.
This is not maybe right within the flow of the conversation.
I just want to point out just one or two things here really quickly.
Verse 5 in particular.
Though this may seem to us to be basic,
fundamental Christian theology, I want to point out that it is because
of passages like this.
I mean, this is where we come to our now what we would call orthodox
understanding of Christianity, that Jesus Christ is a mediator,
this idea that he was fully human.
We flesh this out in what we call our Christology or our
understanding of who Christ was and why
that matters for the sake of the world.
And verse 6, this is really very powerful and much discussed
language that he gave himself a ransom for all.
There’s been a lot of theological talk about how
we are to understand,
you know, what did Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross,
what did it mean in its
action, and how are we to understand how God has done this great salvific work.
And it’s sections like this though,
small Clint,
it’s sections like this where we get a sense for even Paul and the
early church’s understanding of the core of the gospel.
Jesus is at the center literally.
He is fully human.
And then we have this idea that he gave up one thing to make
possible the salvation of another.
And I just think,
yes, it’s easy to read past this.
For us, this would be confirmation 101.
But I want to just point out,
this is why it’s confirmation 101.
This is where we see it in Scripture.
Clearly, the early church understood this.
And so this is why it’s been carried from
one generation to the next.
Yeah,
again, I think Paul here,
you know, he closes this section as
he begins to transition to a focus on the church itself.
It’s subtle, but Paul will understand that
it is the church that is the mechanism of that salvation.
It is the church that brings people to that truth,
hence why he is so protective of it,
why he is so insistent to Timothy that the
right things be done.
I think this is a very interesting passage.
You know, it’s unusual.
There’s a little bit of outside the norm of the tone of this passage in Scripture,
not that it speaks against Scripture.
It’s just not a theme that Scripture does a lot with.
In fact, often in
Paul, when Paul speaks of the world,
he speaks more of the opposition
between the world, the tension,
conflict even between the world and the faith.
And so here to say that there are moments when the faith should support the world in order
to grow the faith,
it’s a very interesting passage and I think it takes us to some
interesting conversations.
And I do think leaves us even with a very contemporary challenge
to make sure we are in prayer for those who are in positions to have authority and have some
influence and some impact on the way people live,
that they would do the right thing and that we
would support them in prayer whether or not we think they should be in their office.
Uh,
to add
to that, maybe, maybe a sort of final note for me here today,
you know, I think this text really leaves me with a really big question.
I would love to be able to
have Paul sit across the table and to ask him, you know,
what is it about this theological
formulation here that it has been written this way?
It makes you wonder,
doesn’t it?
Is this in some way a corrective to those false teachers,
right? Were they, were they, this is pure speculation.
I want to be clear about that.
But, you know, it brings the question for me.
Were they denying that Jesus Christ was fully human or would they have argued against the idea
that he offered himself for the sake of others?
Maybe they had overemphasized the law and they
thought the law itself would do that work.
We don’t know.
That’s been lost to the debate
that was happening when this letter was written.
But a section like this does spark my imagination in it.
It makes me wonder,
you know, what was Paul responding to that when he thought of that core of
the gospel, he would write in just a few short words that he chose these words.
And I wonder if it would have something to teach us about the controversy,
about the people behind the controversy.
And that would be an interesting thing someday to learn if we were ever able to learn it.
Yeah.
And I think along those lines,
Michael, very interesting that he makes it almost a
painstaking effort to say,
not only is there one God,
which probably most likely,
certainly anybody with Jewish background would have agreed wholeheartedly,
most likely even Gentile
Christians would have said yes.
But then there is also one mediator and you kind of wonder if there
were some people who were raising that question.
And anything that cuts against the grain of the
absolute authority and uniqueness of Jesus Christ,
I hope you know this,
it’s going to ruffle Paul’s
feathers and he’s going to go all in with both hands around its throat,
really.
I mean, he’s going to attack those ideas hard if he thinks they detract from the centrality of Christ.
So an interesting passage today,
maybe full
warning.
The next couple of days is going to
be a little bumpy.
We’ll do our best with them,
but there’s some language coming up that is
challenging and has raised lots of questions,
lots of conversations,
lots of arguments,
lots of confusion in the history of the church.
We won’t solve it,
but we will give you some
thoughts and try to talk through it together as we continue to move our way through this book.
The captain has illuminated the fasten your seatbelt sign.
Please do not move out about
the cabin as we continue on with our study.
It might be.
All right, thanks for being with us.
We’ll see you tomorrow.