Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Timothy 2

I exhort therefore.—Now Timothy was to begin to carry out his master Saint Paul’s great charge—the charge which instructed him to teach all men to put their entire, their perfect, trust in the Savior of sinners—by instructing the Church of Ephesus, in the first place, to pray constantly for all sorts and conditions of men. The detailed injunctions how the charge was to be carried out are introduced by the Greek particle oun, translated in our version as “therefore.” It may be paraphrased this way: “In pursuance of my great charge, I proceed with special details; in the first place, let prayers for all be offered by the congregation.”

Supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks.—Many attempts, some of them not very successful, have been made by grammarians and commentators to distinguish between these terms, each of which denotes prayer. On the whole, it may be assumed that the Greek word translated “supplications” signifies a request for particular benefits and is a special form of the more general word rendered “prayers.” The third expression in the English version translated “intercessions” suggests a closer and more intimate communion with God by the one praying. It speaks of drawing near to God, of entering into free, familiar speech with Him.

The Greek word suggests prayer in its most individual, urgent form. The fourth term, “giving of thanks,” expresses that which should never be absent from any of our devotions: gratitude for past mercies. Archbishop Trench remarks how this peculiar form of prayer will continue in heaven when, in the very nature of things, all other forms of prayer will have ceased in the complete fruition of the things prayed for, for then only will the redeemed know how much they owe to their Lord. The word eucharist is derived from the Greek word used in this place—eucharistia—for in the Holy Communion the Church embodies its highest act of thanksgiving for the highest benefits received.

For all men.—Professor Reynolds aptly comments on the difficulty of the task set for us here: “It is difficult for us always to love all men, to think of all men as equally dear to God, or to regard all men as equally capable of being blessed. Timothy, after reading this letter, probably walked along the marble colonnade of the great temple of Artemis, or heard the hum of some twenty thousand Asiatic Greeks crowded in the vast theatre to witness the gladiatorial fight, or encountered a procession of Bacchantes, or turned into the synagogue on the side of the Coresias and saw the averted looks, and felt the bitter hatred of some old friends.

We, with some knowledge of the modern world, have to look into the ‘hells’ upon earth; to survey the gold-fields and battle-fields; the African slave-hunts; the throngs and saloons of Pekin, Calcutta, and Paris; the monasteries of Tibet; and make prayers, petitions, intercessions, and thanksgivings, too, on behalf of all men. In the beginning of the Gospel, Timothy received this quiet injunction from the Apostle Paul. Now the once whispered word peals like the voice of many waters and mighty thunderings over the whole Church of God.”

For kings, and for all that are in authority.—Without any special reference to the Roman emperors, the expression simply directs that prayer should be offered in all Christian congregations for the supreme authorities of the Roman Empire, and especially of that particular province in which the church, where the prayer was offered, happened to be situated. Josephus especially mentions how a refusal on the part of the Jews to pray for Roman magistrates led to the great war with the empire which ended in their destruction as a separate nation.

A well-known passage in the Apology of Tertullian, written about a century and a quarter after St. Paul sent his first letter to Timothy, shows how well and carefully this charge of the great teacher, written to the Church in Ephesus, was kept in distant Carthage:—“We Christians . . . . do intercede for all the emperors that their lives may be prolonged, their government be secured to them, that their families may be preserved in safety, their senates faithful to them, their armies brave, their people honest, and that the whole empire may be at peace, and for whatever other things are desired by the people or the Caesar.”

Early in the second century, Polycarp of Smyrna bears similar testimony to this practice in the early Church of praying publicly for their heathen rulers:—“Pray for all the saints; pray, too, for all kings and powers and rulers, and for your persecutors, and those that hate you, and for your cruel enemies.”

That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life.—What now is the special object of this prayer for those in high authority and power? First, that through their wise rule the Christians might enjoy peace; and, second, that the temper of the people who prayed thus for the ruling powers might be so affected by the constant repetition of such prayers that all thoughts of revolt and resistance would be gradually stamped out.

St. Paul knew whom he was addressing. The Christian congregations of his age were largely made up of Jews. An intense longing to throw off the yoke of Rome pervaded the whole nation. The terrible events of the year 70 (only four or five years at most from the time of writing this Epistle) show how deep-seated was their hatred of the stranger. No Christian, however, was implicated in that fatal rebellion; so thoroughly had the teaching of St. Paul and his fellow Apostles done its work among the Jewish followers of the Crucified.

In all godliness and honesty.—The word rendered “honesty” is better translated gravity, or decorum. These words are only used by St. Paul in his Pastoral Epistles, where “godliness” occurs nine times, and “gravity” three times. The sphere, so to speak, in which St. Paul’s ideal Christian must walk during his quiet, unobtrusive pilgrimage, was reverence and decorum.

For this is good and acceptable.—That prayer be offered for all sorts and conditions of people is good and acceptable before God.

In the sight of God our Saviour.—Here, as in 1 Timothy 1:1, this title of “Saviour” is given to the Father, and is in this place singularly applicable, as it immediately precedes the famous statement of the next verse concerning the boundless mercy of the Eternal.

Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.—Here St. Paul gives some explanation of his exhortation, that “the congregation should pray for all men.” Our prayers after all—for those far off, as well as for those near—will be in strict harmony with the will of God. “Imitate God,” writes St. Chrysostom; “if He wills that all men should be saved, it is surely natural that prayer should be offered for all; if He willed that all should be saved, do you will it now; and if in earnest you will it, then pray.”

One or two points must always be kept in mind when this great statement of St. Paul's is used as a proof of “Universal Redemption.” We must remember the position it occupies in the argument, it being only introduced as a reason for the exhortation to pray for all. Then the words must be looked at very carefully. God's will is not to save (sôsai) all—if that had been His sovereign will He would have saved all; but His will is that all should be saved—all should come to the knowledge of the truth; not to the knowledge of the mere theoretical, but of the practical and saving truth as revealed in the gospel.

“In other words, through the sacrifice and the death of Christ all are rendered capable of salvation (salvabiles); that some are indisputably not saved, is not due to any outward circumscription or inefficacy of the divine will, but to man’s rejection of the special means of salvation which God has been pleased to appoint, and to which it is His divine will that man’s salvation should be limited. Redemption is universal, yet conditional—all may be saved, yet all will not be saved, because all will not conform to God's appointed condition.”—Bishop Ellicott.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.—“For.” This gives the reason why it is good and well-pleasing in the sight of God that Christians should pray for all—for there is one Savior, God the Father, who wills that all should be saved, and there is one Mediator, Christ Jesus, who has given Himself as ransom for all. Surely then, to us who call ourselves by the name of Christ, the fate of those who do not yet know Christ cannot be a matter of indifference. We must in our praise and prayer include these strangers whom the Father wills should come to Him, for whose sake the Son has given His life.

The man Christ Jesus.—St. Paul with special emphasis speaks of the “one Mediator between God and man” as “the man Christ Jesus,” no doubt wishing to bring into prominence the true humanity of the Lord. It is also a silent refutation of the docetic errors of some of the false teachers, whose doctrines Timothy was warned to guard against. These teachers would have persuaded people that the Christ Jesus who was nailed to the cross was not a man, but simply a phantom.

The human nature of Christ is also specifically mentioned because in this human state He performed His office as Mediator. In the statement of the next verse, we find another reason for St. Paul’s allusion here to the fact of the Mediator being a man.

The Messiah must have taken human nature upon Himself before He could have suffered the death that was the ransom for all. Again, the human nature of the Mediator is brought forward to show that the mediatorial office extended over the whole human race—a grand thought, expressed in the following words: who gave Himself a ransom for all.