1 Timothy 2:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Timothy 2:1

Comments

Very often this second chapter is described as rules for the church and the rules for the conduct of church services when people of God are gathered. But that is rather to impose a narrow sense on the passage. The passage doesn't indicate that there is now a very specific and specialised instruction on how to conduct worship in church. It clearly includes that, but it is general first of all. Not only does it throw light on how services should be conducted, but there are general commandments as well. Again, it is sometimes said that there is no specific command or instruction in the New Testament to intercede for lost souls. That is not correct. We are to love our enemies and pray for them, and how can we more lovingly pray for them than to pray for their salvation. But here too is an exhortation which is very direct and very clear. ‘I exhort [urge] therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men.’ It is a primary consideration. The word ‘therefore' connects this exhortation to the previous chapter. Prays is to be made so that pure teaching may be preserved, and this so that love may come from a pure heart, a regenerate heart. It is all about conversion, the need to minister to the gospel so that people are converted. The prevailing thought in chapter 1 is the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and the need for people to be converted to God and changed and brought into a living relationship with Him. So when you come to chapter 2 and you read, ‘I exhort therefore’, Paul is urging something that will further the cause of the gospel. It is a duty that we should pray for all men, we should pray for leaders and all who are in eminence, ‘authority’ is our translation here, not only for kings but all the way down through the social order. We should be in prayer for all who exercise any kind of authority so that a certain kind of certain conditions may prevail that help the gospel.This is a matter of authority. It comes to us through the inspired Apostle Paul. ‘I exhort’ – it is the ‘draw near for counsel’ word. It can be used for reproof, for encouragement, for instruction, for warning, but the idea is someone is called into counsel with you and you urge them in a very direct and personal way. Here ‘urging’ is probably the major tone. The Apostle is inspired of God to authoritatively urge us into a certain duty or activity. First of all he does not say, ‘train the people to win the lost’, because winning the lost is going to be a separate consideration in the passage, and it has been in mind in the previous chapter. Exhort, inspire the people? No, that is not first. First is to come to prayer, to register our complete dependence upon the Lord, to acknowledge that all conversion is from him. All the power for drawing sinners to the Saviour is that of the Holy Spirit. We are dependent utterly upon God. We don’t therefore say, as some have said of George Whitefield, ‘When will God send such another? What a difference it would make!’ That is not right. George Whitefield was nothing without the power of the Holy Spirit. Come to prayer first; prayer is everything. As we register our dependence upon him and as we look to him and depend upon him, so he works. Four different classes of prayer are to be offered for all men. Here it is: the exhortation to intercede for others. Just as Christ intercedes for his people, and just for the Holy Spirit in is shown as interceding for Christ's people, there is also to be prayer for others.‘For all men’ – the ‘all’s in this chapter clearly refer to all kinds or groups or classes, all ethnic groups. Paul has in mind Gentiles as well as Jews when he says ‘all men’. The converted Jews are at Ephesus, and Timothy is at Ephesus, and Paul writes to Timothy there. There's a large party of converted Jews. They've been brought up to believe that God's favour is only to the nation of Israel, and the pagans, the Gentiles, they are outside God's blessings. Of course, that's completely mistaken. Now the Gentiles are being brought in, in the gospel age, in large numbers, and many Jews were deeply offended, and much of the persecution which was meted out to the early church was because of the evangelization of the Gentiles. So it is people of every nationality, rich and poor, intelligent and unlearned, everyone, all kinds of conditions. Even for tyrants: you are going to be praying for Nero shortly.

Application

‘Supplications’ translates a word, the root of which is the verb ‘to beg’. Supplication breathes humility. It breathes being on bended knees. It breathes an inferior crying out to a superior. The word breathes that to all of us in the English language, and that is in the Greek also. Supplications are, as the word is used in the Scripture, referring to entreaty for keenly felt needs. A supplication in this context is a very specific kind of prayer. It is a prayer for an identified and keenly felt need. The prayer meeting is operating well when there's much specific supplication. When there is specific supplication, we are telling the Lord we mean business. We have real needs, we have intelligently identified the stumbling blocks, the difficulties and we recognize that only God can remove them and we are specific. We bring – we are not ashamed to say it – our shopping list, our list of specific needs and they vary from week to week and we pray for persons and for needs. It has in it also a certain degree of pledging. You can imagine this with someone who is reduced to begging in the streets perhaps, dependent upon what's put into a plate in a very poor country. Not a phony beggar, but a real person who is perhaps handicapped in some way, and there's absolutely no provision in that land. Appealing eyes look at passers-by and that man begs as one who is utterly dependent. It has picked up this idea of a pledge so you can say to beg and to bind. Or using a different picture, it is like going in ancient times to a mighty sovereign. I desperately need some provision, some special dispensation, and as I implore him for it, so I bind myself to him. I will be your servant, I will do this, I will yield myself to beg and to bind. We pray for the lost as those who really desire to see salvation, and we are utterly dependent upon God and we will pledge ourselves even as we ask. I pray for that relation or that colleague or that difficult, awkward person. Lord, save that man, that woman, that young person, and I will be thine. If it is thy will that I will be the messenger, I will look for the opportunity to say the word. Oh, but I'm shy and I recoil. Well, it may be the will of God that you are the instrument used in answer to prayer. So you pledge even as you beg. Would you join a visitation team? Would you teach a class of youngsters? Would you deliver things around the doors? ‘Oh, no, I haven't time for that. That's not what I enjoy doing.’ Don't forget this word ‘supplication’. You pray as those who depend upon God, and you make your commitment and your pledge to do your part.

‘Prayers’ – now that is a much more general word. It reminds us that when we pray for souls, we have to pray all forms of prayer. You can't simply ask God for this or for that. Don't forget that no prayer is valid unless it comes with repentance, unless it comes with praise to God, unless it comes with affirmation of his revealed truth. You affirm his goodness and his mercy. You are addressing the living God. There are all these different forms of prayer. Prayer is general. So even as we are praying for souls and praying for the conversion of other people, we are praising him and thanking him for what he has done in the past. We thank him for what he has done for us, and it moves us all the more to call with feeling for the souls of others. We are not ashamed of praying also for the same things every time we pray and for the same things every time we gather in a prayer meeting. We do not have to be tempted by the devil to think because we are not being strikingly original, we are not praying meaningfully and genuinely. You actually hear people teaching that if you pray for a thing twice and three times and four times and you go on praying for it day by day you're telling the Lord you've got no faith. You should have prayed for it once and then forget all about it. But we find in the scripture the same things very often prayed for by the same people again and again. So we have need for specific prayer and continuing in prayer for those needs that are always with us, always registering our dependence upon God. There are specific needs that vary and there are continuing needs which we pray for all the time, and this is most likely the distinction which is drawn out here between prayers and supplications.

‘Intercessions’ – what a powerful word this is. It is spoken of the Holy Spirit in Romans 8, of Christ in Hebrews 7. The word means to put oneself in the place of somebody. You are praying very specifically, perhaps for an individual. You have got that person in mind. You stand before God on their behalf. You take their part. Here is this loved one or colleague or associate. They have no knowledge of God; they are rebels against him, so I take their part: ‘Lord, bless this man, bless this woman. I feel for them.’ I'm going to be his representative before God and speak for him and plead for him just as Christ did for me, just as the Holy Spirit does for me. I'm taking the part of someone: not acting their part, but speaking on their behalf, representing them before God. Intercessors will sometimes act on behalf of another individual for months and for years, and God at length hears. You are not trying to advance their worth or their goodness – ‘This man is worth saving for some reason or other’ – you are not being so foolish as that. Rather, it is: ‘Like me, he's an undeserving lost sinner, but have mercy on him, Lord. I feel for him.’ That's a far cry from what so often happens with us when we just say, ‘Save the lost’, and we are not even thinking about it, and we don't feel very much for them. We should take certain people as our responsibility and for a time to pray for them very earnestly, not lifelong, because there are many others, and sooner or later, you must turn your attention to other people, but that's the duty of the Christian believer.

‘And giving of thanks’ for every answer to prayer, for every blessing from on high. Thanksgiving is often omitted. Counting what God has done and thanking him becomes only an occasional activity. What a shame. There's nothing more faith building than remembering the things that God is currently doing and thanking him for them. It builds up your faith to ask for others.

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1 Timothy 2:1 Commentary and Bible Study