The Gospel All

1 Timothy 2:1-7 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings 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 is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
For there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, 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 (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

Feeling left out is something we’ve all experienced. You may not have been the last one picked on the playground, but maybe you were passed over when applying for a job or asking someone out on a date. When I was about eight I had asked my best friend to spend the night, she told me her mom said she couldn’t, and then later that night I found out she was already spending the night with another friend…and I hadn’t been asked to join them. Feeling left out hurts, even after the initial experience there is that lingering feeling of ‘not being good enough for them’. This was the situation at the church in Ephesus. Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, a young pastor dealing with a lot of different issues. There were two groups in Ephesus that were particularly complicating life for the Ephesian church.
The first group was the Gnostics. Their main claims were that Jesus was purely a spiritual being, he only looked like he was human and that he had given secret, spiritual knowledge to a select group of disciples. This created an elitist feeling among the Gnostics, they had the ‘true knowledge’ and the rest of the disciples weren’t good enough, smart enough, and spiritual enough to receive it.
The second group was the Judaizers. They would come behind the Gospel messengers trying to convince the new Greek converts that they must become good Jews, before they could become good Christians. Ephesus was a thoroughly Greek city, so for Christian believers to be required to convert to Judaism meant asking them to begin living according to Kosher dietary laws and to be circumcised. For the Judaizers those who were not also Jewish could not be Christian. Both the Gnostics and the Judaizers set up restrictions to keep some people out.
The church leadership in Jerusalem had already decided that the only requirements for those who were Greek to become Christian is that they avoid meat sacrificed to idols and fornication (Acts 21:25). The barriers to become a Christian were set as low as possible, to allow everyone to become believers, but without compromising what it meant to be a Christian. The Jerusalem Church understood that the offer of salvation was extended to all people, Jews or Greeks.
This is the context into which Paul is writing. He uses 4 different words for prayer: supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings. These prayers are for all people, but then Paul gets more specific, instructing Timothy to pray for the kings and officials. It is important to keep in mind that the king is Cesar and the high officials are the ones that have already been persecuting Christians. Yet Paul says we are to pray even for the officials, in this simple statement we have echoes of the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount where he teaches, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your father in Heaven (Matthew 5:44)”.
Paul gives us a further reason why we should pray for everyone, including the leaders, ‘so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity’. Persecution for religious beliefs is not something that most people ask for. We’d all rather live in peace, free to worship in our own manner. In America we take for granted that we can gather for worship without fear of the government throwing us in jail or dying as a martyr. In places like China and the Middle East people can be arrested and executed just for being Christian. So Paul commands us to pray for the government leaders that control whether Christians can live in peace. This doesn’t just mean praying for President Obama, it also means praying for Hu Jintao – the president of China, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – president of Iran, so that Christians in other parts of the world have the freedom to worship God and to witness to others freely.
The greatest motivation for praying for everyone, including kings and those in high positions is that it is right and acceptable to God our Savior. Verse 4 states that, “God desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth. The Gospel can be spread easier when Christians are free to live as Christians, instead of in fear for their lives. Notice the scope that God has, ‘he desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’. Here the exclusionary ideas of both the Gnostics and the Judaizers are contrasted with the very desires of God Himself.
What exactly is salvation and the knowledge of truth? Here Paul inserts what must have been part of one of the earliest creeds.
‘For there is one God;
There is also one mediator between God and humankind
Christ Jesus, himself human
Who gave himself a ransom for all
This was attested to at the right time.

The opening line takes hearers all the way back to Deuteronomy 6, “Here O Israel, the LORD our God is one”. Even today around the world Christians begin both the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed with the same powerful declaration, “I believe in one God…”. Ephesus was a Greek city, which meant it was filled with the pantheon of Greek gods & goddess, with the Ephesians being particularly loyal to Artemis, goddess of the moon and of the hunt. Affirming the oneness of God requires the rejection of every other deity.
The next line begins to lay out what is particular to Christian belief: there is one mediator between God and humankind. In the culture of the time the concept of a mediator was primarily a legal concept. Two parties were involved, generally one was the offender and the other was the one who had committed the offense. If they could not reach a solution to the conflict on their own a mediator was brought in. The mediator risked his own reputation on his ability to find a just solution for both parties. The mediator was unbiased, representing both sides equally.
In this creed, as well as those that followed, the mediator is named and a peculiar fact is noted. His name is Christ Jesus. The title ‘Christ’ is the Greek translation of the Jewish term ‘Messiah’, both meaning ‘the anointed one’. In Matthew the angel tells Mary and Joseph to name the child Jesus, because he will save his people. In these first 2 words we see that Jesus is the one anointed to save his people. John Calvin writes, “For as Man, He was a Mediator; but as the Word, not in the middle between God and man, because equal to God, and God with God, and together one God”. This is why God is addressed as Savior in verse 3. We affirm that Jesus Christ is fully God; therefore God must also be Savior.
Now the question is who are his people? The clause that follows carries great weight, the humanity of Jesus is undeniably affirmed. He was most definitely human. Later creeds expand this concept by speaking of his birth, his crucifixion and his death. Christ Jesus is not identified by his gender, or by his race or religion, he is identified by the humanity he shares with every person. This is why he alone is a suitable mediator between God and humankind. Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine, which means he is able to represent both parties equally.
The final line of this profession of faith lays out how Christ was able to mediate between the holy God and the sinful humans. He gave his own life as a ransom for all. This is a radical action of the God-man, to sacrifice something on behalf of those who don’t deserve it. Yet if we look over the record of God’s dealings with people we see that it is his very nature to sacrifice and save. Beginning in the Garden with Adam and Eve, God sacrificed animals to provide clothing for His wayward children. In the Exodus, salvation for the Israelites was bought at the price of the Passover lamb. Leviticus is a priest’s handbook about how to make atonement for human sin, with the life blood of clean animals. The Psalmist understood this cost when he wrote in the 49th Psalm, “Truly no man can ransom himself, or give to God the price of his life”.
Salvation out of slavery or captivity always comes at a price. Ever since the Fall humanity has been held captive to the power of sin and death. The price for our freedom was too great for us to pay. As the bumper sticker reminds us, “freedom isn’t free”. The price of our freedom from sin and death was the willing sacrifice of a perfect life. This is what the cross is all about. Jesus gave himself as a ransom for ALL. The offer of this salvation is limited only by the willingness of a person to accept it. God leaves no one out, but desires everyone to be saved.
What makes this belief possible is not actually a what at all, it is a who! The third member of the Trinity enables fallen human beings to start at a place where they can hear the offer of God’s salvation and accept it. This is the concept of prevenient grace that is so fond to Methodists. It is the work of the Holy Spirit that allows new believers to confess faith in the Triune God and profess that Jesus Christ gave his life as a ransom for sinners. Most Evangelists are content to leave believers right here. They are, to use the popular phrase, ‘converted’ or ‘born again’ and that is good enough. The only problem is that this passage doesn’t end here. For those who have declared God as their savior now join Paul and all the other disciples as a herald of the Gospel.
This is part of the reason for the prayers in verse 1 – 2. Have you ever noticed how brand new converts want everyone else to come to the same saving faith they have? It seems that these new believers have the exact same desire that God does; they too want everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth that is found in the Triune God. Over time this evangelistic passion fades in most Christians, and we remain content and secured in our own faith. Somewhere along the line we stop praying earnestly for the salvation of the world, at best we only pray for those unbelievers closest to us, and worst not even that.
This passage is a call for Christians to affirm their faith in the one God and the one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all. It is also a call to prayer and active witness of the God whom we have trusted for our salvation. Brothers and Sisters, it is time for us to intercede for the salvation of each person in our world.