1 Timothy 2

1. I EXHORT therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of 2 thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead 3 a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in 4 the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the 5 knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, 6 the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. 7 Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie 8 not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. 9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefaced- 10 ness and sobriety; not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which 11 becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the women learn in silence 12 with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the 13 man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not de- 14 ceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall 15 be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

THE same Divine Being, who by the voice of his Scriptures demands our whole wealth of affections, has also, in the very same Scriptures, exhibited to us a personage, distinct from the simple and unmingled Godhead, who makes and is everywhere countenanced in making the very same demand. The highest conceivable attributes of supremacy are combined in this Being, so as to demand our absolute submission as a right. Our whole spiritual life and eternal fortunes are suspended upon him so as to demand it as our interest. Ties more potent, more holy still, bind us to the Mediator; and these ties (strange to say!) are found to compose the whole habit of religion! He redeemed us, and we love him; he offered us salvation, and we believe on him; he is to receive us into glory, and we hope in him; he is our strength and life, and we rejoice in him; he is proclaimed our “King,” our “Head,” the vine in which we are grafted, the foundation on which we are built, and we adore him! This “King on Zion” bears that within him which can stand the whole weight of our adoration; we need not dread in our hours of deepest devotion, in all the prostration of the heart before its Lord, that we are defrauding the God when we worship Him who is also “the man Christ Jesus.” W. A. B.

In the business of life, which you know is also the seed of eternity, and as such infinitely precious, three parties there are concerned, of whose existence it behooves us to be equally and intensely conscious; three, and in the real, deep struggle for life and death, three only; and these three are God, on the one hand, and your own individual souls on the other, and the one Mediator Jesus Christ, who alone can join the two into one. Lose sight of one of these three, and what becomes of us? Lose sight of God, and we lose sight also of the Mediator by necessity, for there is nothing left but our own single soul, and a mediator is not a mediator of one. Lose sight of the one Mediator, and we lose sight no less surely of the one true God, for to Him there is no access for living man but only through the Mediator, his Son Jesus Christ. And lose sight of your own individual souls, try to sink their personal existence in that of other men, call their belief your belief, and surrender your conscience to their conscience, and then also we lose the one true Mediator, putting other and false mediators in his place, and they can not keep the individual soul alive as he does; but they weaken and destroy it, and we who should be living stones in a living temple, with our own personal life vigorous, our own faith and our own love, become dead stones in a dead building, and we lose God as we have lost Christ, for God is not a God of the dead. These, then, are the three which it becomes us to realize to ourselves most strongly all the days of our life, and hold fast to them, and let nothing obscure our sense of either of them; God, and Christ, and our own individual soul, which Christ has purchased by his blood, and by his Spirit will unite to God, that it may itself know and love God for ever. T. A.

1-7. Here our encouragement in prayer, supplication, and intercession for all men is grounded first on the clear declaration that such prayer is “good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour”—“our Saviour” giving intensity to the expression. It is further grounded on the express declaration of his will regarding others, that he “will have them to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” Here is not only the assurance that we are right in praying that they may be saved, but right in praying that the truth may be brought to all, and that they may be saved through its instrumentality; praying, in fact, for the universal diffusion of Christ’s gospel and the universal salvation of men. It is further supported on the ground of the unity of God, the unity of the Mediator between God and men, and the unity of man as regarded by His mediating atonement. We have, then, the clear example of the first preachers, the express declaration that the early conversions were as a pattern for the ages to come, the statement that trust in God as the Saviour of all men was the animating strength under apostolic toil and shame, the command to pray for all, and the most formally stated warrant for such prayers boldly to lay hold upon the promises of God. Arthur.

1. The variety of expression is perhaps chiefly to be regarded as indicating the large place the subject of intercessory prayer had in the apostle’s mind, and the diverse forms he thought should be given to it, according to the circumstances in which, relatively to others, the people of God might be placed. Hence, thanksgivings were to be added, when the conduct of the parties in question was such as to favor the cause of righteousness and truth—a fit occasion being thereby presented for grateful acknowledgments to God, who had so inclined their hearts. P. F.

2. Public prayer should have a large scope, and cover the interests of all mankind. Special emphasis is laid on the duty of intercession in behalf of the kings of the earth, for whom, while they were heathen and hostile to the gospel, the early Christians may have hesitated to pray. There must be no narrowness in the spirit of the praying assembly. God cares for all men; Christ is provided for all men. Therefore let the prayer of the Church ascend to God through Christ in behalf of “all men.” D. F.—Imitate God. If he is willing that all men should be saved, it is meet to pray for all. If he willed that all should be saved, do thou also will it; but, if thou willest, pray; for it is the part of such to pray. Chrys.—You may have many to commend, parents, brothers, sisters, helpmates, friends, children, pastors, parishioners, and may commend them all by the simple, quiet, devout recitation of their names. Yes, thou mystical Aaron, forget not to wear thy breastplate, when thou goest in to offer up a spiritual sacrifice; neglect not to exhibit silently before God, graven upon thy heart, the names of all thou lovest; yea, be an intercessor, as far as in thee lies, for all the people; for of what member of the human family can it be said that he has no claim whatever upon thy sympathy and kind offices? E. M. G.

4. All unto the knowledge of the truth.** The gospel is no system of high and abstract truth. The salvation it offers is not the prize of a lofty intellect, but of a lowly heart. The mirror in which its grand truths are reflected is not a mind of calm and philosophic abstraction, but a heart of earnest purity. Its light shines best and fullest, not on a life undisturbed by business, but on a soul unstained by sin. The religion of Christ, while it affords scope for the loftiest intellect in the contemplation and development of its glorious truths, is yet, in the exquisite simplicity of its essential facts and principles, patent to the simplest mind. Rude, untutored, toil-worn you may be, but, if you have wit enough to guide you in the commonest round of daily toil, you have wit enough to learn the way to be saved. The truth as it is in Jesus, while in one view of it so profound that the highest archangel’s intellect may be lost in the contemplation of its mysterious depths, is yet in another so simple that the lisping babe at a mother’s knee may learn its meaning. Caird.

5. For “the man, Christ Jesus,” a more accurate rendering would be, “Christ Jesus, himself man.” A.—The center of Christian divinity is not in God, nor in man, but in the Godman. Christian theology is essentially a Christology, centering in facts, not deduced from metaphysical or ethical abstractions. Neither God’s agency nor man’s will can give us the whole system; but, as Calvin says, “Christ is the mirror in whom we may without deception contemplate our own election.” Above the strife of the schools rises in serene and untroubled majesty the radiant form of the Son of God, the embodiment and reconciliation of divinity and humanity. H. B. S.

Mediator. Jesus is the Mediator of the New Testament, who takes from us all that we have given to ourselves, and gives us all that we have taken away from ourselves. He takes from us our sins and gives us his grace. He who has experienced the power of his sin-effacing, grace-dispensing blood, knows that there is but one Mediator between God and man, namely, Jesus Christ the Crucified One. Man. My Mediator is of my flesh and blood. My Mediator is God of God. Thus God stands, clothed in my flesh and blood, between God and man. Oh, exalted humanity! Oh, humbled Godhead! A. C.—The Judge is judged, and, is silent; the Invisible is beheld, and is not confounded; the Infinite is seized, and is not wrathful; the Immeasurable is circumscribed, and resists not; the Impassable suffers, and avenges not himself; the Immortal dies, and complains not; the Celestial is buried, and calmly bears it. For the Lord Incarnate was condemned, in order to bestow mercy on us; bound, in order to loose us; seized, in order to free us; he suffered, to heal our sufferings; he died, to restore life to us; he was buried, to raise us up again. One, in truth, was condemned, thousands were set free; One was buried, thousands rose again. This is the Mediator between God and men; this is the resurrection and salvation of all; this is the Guide of the erring, the Shepherd of rescued men, the Life of the dead, the Leader of angels, and the King of kings; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. Alexander of Alexandria.

6. Gave himself.** Man is separated from God as a criminal; the communion is restored by free pardon on God’s part, and the acceptance of that pardon upon man’s. Man is separated from God as unholy; the communion is restored by accepting the sacrifice of Christ instead of the absolute sinlessness of man, and by that perpetual and progressive process of sanctification which makes a lost and ruined soul at length “meet for the inheritance of the saints.” Christ, the great conduit of mercy between God and man, arrayed in all the attributes of the two natures he came to reconcile, in his one single person effects the whole; justifying as we are in Christ, sanctifying as Christ is in us. And thus it is that Christianity restores the race of man by restoring the communion with God. Thus it is that humanity once more meets its counterpart in Deity, and the harmony of the universe becomes complete! W. A. B.

8. Lifting up holy hands.** The lifting up of the hands in their more formal exercises of devotion appears to have been common among the nations of antiquity, Jew as well as Gentile; and from the Jewish it naturally passed into the Christian assemblies. The hands so employed might fitly be regarded as bearing the petitions of the suppliants heavenward, and, in accordance with the action, should themselves possess a character of holiness. P. F.—They whose hands are stretched toward heaven procure protection to a world which perhaps misrepresents them, or at most knows them not. It is by them that the kingdom of God, trammeled by so many obstacles, gradually makes way upon the earth which it will one day completely overrun. To this obscure power, to this unknown influence, are due the numerous blessings of which a restless and turbulent activity appropriates all the glory. Such is the efficacy of prayer; and, if the number of these benevolent petitioners were increased, what evils would be removed from the earth, what errors eradicated, what abuses spontaneously reformed! Without wrath and doubting. He means that a disposition which is natural to all persons, and habitual to some, and which opposition tends always to awaken in the calmest and most moderate minds, that this disposition to wrath and disputation ought to be watched over and repressed with the greatest care, in order that, when the moment for prayer arrives, we may be able to lift up pure hands to heaven. Contrast the ordinary fruits of wrath with the results of prayer. In yielding to the former, not only do you place yourself in opposition to the holy law of God, but you destroy the peace of your life and the peace of your soul; you aggravate the evils of a situation already deplorable; you kindle up hatred in the heart of your enemy; you render reconciliation on his part, as well as on yours, always more difficult; you run from sin to sin in order to lull your pride, and this pride gives you only a bitter, poisoned, and criminal enjoyment. How much better, then, is prayer than wrath and strife! A. V.—Prayer is the issue of a quiet mind; ’tis the daughter of charity and the sister of meekness; and he that prays to God with an angry, troubled, and discomposed spirit, is like one that retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the out-quarters of an army. J. T.

9-13. In order that woman may hold her just position in society and in the Church, the gospel would have her guard with sacred jealousy the proprieties of her sex; and by the modesty and quietness of her manners, the discreetness of her behavior in public assemblies, and the abundance of her good works, wield a redeeming and refining influence over men and affairs. The influence which proved so destructive in the beginning of the race may, through the gospel, be exerted for the noblest purposes of good. That these counsels were not intended merely for a local and temporary condition of society is plain from the fact that they are based upon the order of creation and the unchanging qualities of sex. The gospel, which carries grace, modesty, and purity into the family, would also maintain order

and integrity in government, and peace, good-will, and godliness in society at large. J. P. T.