1 Timothy 2

1 Timothy 2:1-15

Division 2. (1 Timothy 2:1-15.)Prayer. We now have, insisted on in the strongest way, the necessity of prayer. As already said, the house of God is necessarily, by the fact that this God is the God of all, “a house of prayer for all nations.” Prayer is the recognition of the creature place as such, -of the need of God; while at the same time it testifies, if it be true prayer, of the faith that counts upon Him. It is striking that it comes into so much prominence in this epistle. It is important that the very grace of Christianity, the positiveness of salvation and of the working of all things together for good to them that love God, should not be permitted practically to set aside the need of prayer. God is all-mighty, all-wise, all-good; spite of all opposition, He will accomplish His will, and His will is that which should be accomplished. God is the only one who in that sense is entitled to have a will.

But here there is the need, as is evident, of looking at things all around. Prayer is, no doubt, in one sense a necessity on our side, rather than on God’s.

We did not pray Christ down from heaven, but God sent Him for the lost. All through He is the First in this way, the One who works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. While that is true, it must not for a moment be used in contradiction to the truth that “the fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous man availeth much,” and that God would have us “always to pray and not to faint.” We must take this almightiness, this wisdom and love of God, to energize us, therefore, to prayer, and not to hinder us. It should act as plain encouragement, and in no other way. We are not in heaven, but only on our way to it, and prayer is just that which in the answers which we find to it keeps us in constant remembrance of the living God whom we need, and whose grace towards us becomes in this way so much more consciously such. For how much are we indebted to the needs which we thus have, and which it is plain God permits us to be reminded of in so many and often very painful ways! Love acts also in prayer, gives voice to its desires, as we see here; and thus we are permitted to have our place with God Himself, and our communion with Him who is the Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.

1. In the first place, in fact, we have the insistence here upon prayer, not for ourselves, but for others. The natural order, perhaps, with us would be first of all for ourselves, and then for others. The apostle reverses this: “I exhort, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men; for kings, and all that are in pre-eminence,” all those who stand out, evidently, from the mass as influential, in one way or another, for good or for evil, with regard to those amongst whom they move. It is true that there is a reference here to ourselves also, the result of the blessing of these, in our being able ourselves to lead a quiet and peaceable life in all piety and gravity; but we are not to think of that as if it were the whole of it; for we are immediately reminded that “this is good and acceptable before God our Saviour; who would have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Here, also, the quietness and peace in general is not, of course, and never could be, the great thought, but the work of the gospel amongst them; the life eternal is, of course, that which is the all-important consideration, and the trials and sorrows of this life are ever being used of God to awaken men to the reality of the life to come; but that the gospel should go forth in peace is the mercy sought. God “would have all men to be saved, and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Let us notice how these things are put together. There is no thought of people being saved without the knowledge of the truth. There is no thought, according to the fashion of the day, that a man simply crying in his need to God will be answered, and we need not trouble ourselves too much, therefore, about the gospel. God is surely ready to hear the cry, but His way of salvation is by the truth, and there is no other that Scripture recognizes; but the testimony now has the widest possible range. There is not only one God, as the Jew rightly contended, but one Mediator between God and men;" not between God and the Jew, and not with any distinction amongst men in this respect. “The Man Christ Jesus,” “the Son of Man,” as He continually called Himself, is the expression of God’s heart, not to a certain class amongst men merely, but to all.

He has given “Himself a ransom for all.” He has made a provision, from the good of which none are excepted except those who voluntarily set themselves apart from blessing. The times are come in which God having fully demonstrated man’s condition, He can speak out what is according to His own nature. Individually people have, no doubt, still to be tested, as through the ages men have been tested, and to be made to find their way to the place of those “without strength” and “ungodly,” where Christ has met men; but God has nevertheless demonstrated man’s condition as a whole, and He is not now hindered or limited in the testimony which He is giving. It is a testimony world-wide. To this the apostle was appointed “a herald” and “teacher of the nations in faith and truth.” This testimony then is to characterize the Church as a whole, -not that all are, as we may say, officially evangelists, but, nevertheless, evangelization is the privilege and duty of all who themselves have received the gospel. 2. He turns to prayer in general as that which is to characterize men everywhere. In the public place it is still the men who are to pray, lifting up pious hands. The apostle maintains throughout, in the most consistent manner, the doctrine that the woman’s place is not the public one. Nature teaches the same thing, however little we may listen to its voice. This, of course, no more cuts off the women from evangelizing, nor even from instructing in the truth which they have learned, than it cuts them off from prayer.

The apostle is thinking of the house of God as the “house of prayer for all nations,” and it is public prayer of which he is speaking. This is where the men as such find their place. Here there is no question, of course, of office; there is no one who is exempted really from the duty of praying in every place. The hands that they lift up must be indeed pious hands. No one who cannot lift up such has title to pray in public. Do not men, in fact, shrink often from public prayer really in consequence of the responsibility which it is felt to entail?

The people who do not pray are not obliged to have their hands so scrupulously clean! If we “lift them up,” they will be noticed; but what a safeguard there is in this, and how needful that everywhere Christians should be found in the place which God. has accorded them, with “pious hands” lifted up, “without wrath or disputation!” In like manner, also, he points out the moral character which the women necessarily, equally with the men, are to exemplify. They are to be adorned with fitting apparel. The seeking of adornment is natural to them, but let this then, says the apostle, be it, -in fact, the sweetest and most real adornment that can any where be found, -not the adornment of the outside, not costly or even so much external adornment, as the adornment of the spirit which is to be seen in them, and of the works which will speak for them; while at the same time the apparel is, no doubt, to be fitting, not slovenly, not such as would cause remark upon the other side, but suited to the quiet modesty which belongs to them. As to the place of the woman as a teacher, the apostle carries us back to the beginning of all. It is, indeed, the constant way with him to uphold, along with the peculiar place which God has given us as Christians, where it is no question of sex at all, the creation-place, which is not really interfered with by this. It is not for eternity, nor meant to be put as if of equal value with the place in Christ.

Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learned here which are wholesome to receive, and which cannot without danger be set aside. We shall find, in fact, as we go on, that one great feature of the apostasy, so soon to set in, will be the disregard of that which God instituted when He created man.

The woman then is not to teach -that is, in such a way clearly as to exercise authority over the man. That is not a question of the fall, although the apostle brings in the fall in order to illustrate his point. It inheres, however, in the very character of woman, who is the heart of humanity, as Adam is the head. But in the fall itself Adam was not deceived. It is not that that excuses Adam in the least. It would rather be the opposite of this, but it certainly illustrates the fact that with man intelligence is prominent. The woman ought to have been kept, no doubt, by a heart which realized what God was to them, and the love which He had manifested towards them in the Paradise prepared. She was not ill-guarded against the tempter, but she was guarded in a different way.

Alas, the temptation broke through both these guards, and head and heart were alike involved in the ruin that came in. Still, the woman’s way of being in the transgression was as one deceived, and the man was not deceived. It is not a difference with regard to the measure of the sin itself, but it is a difference which shows the man and the woman in the characteristic features of each. The apostle closes here with the comforting assurance that where the fall had brought the woman into suffering and sorrow, which was the needed reminder of that which no child of man is ever intended to forget, God nevertheless would assuredly come in to deliver those who continued “in faith and love and holiness, with sobriety.” The thought of a reference here to Christ as the child born seems to have no justification in the language nor in the context.