Scripture for Sunday, October 15: 1 Timothy 2:1-7
Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 29 and 30
Last week, our Words on the Wall series brought us into the presence of Jesus, whose place as Prophet, Priest, and King answers three questions that everyone faces in life:
- How should I order my life? We saw that Jesus is our prophet/teacher, who teaches us the way of life through him.
- What is wrong with me, and what can be done about it? Here, we saw that Jesus is our priest, who makes peace with God on our behalf and grants us his righteousness.
- What is the ultimate goal and purpose of life? We saw that Jesus is our king, whose current-and-future reign gives us reason for great hope.
"No other name under heaven...by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12)
1 Timothy 2 opens with a call to prayer. But the prayer is not for the benefit of the people who pray. While the pray-ers may benefit from God's response to their prayers secondarily, e.g., through a government that allows them to pursue peaceful and godly lives (see verse 2), Paul's opening, overt call in verse 1 is a prayer for "all people."
Prayer for "all people," so Paul's logic continues in verse 3, is good and acceptable before "God our savior, who wants to save all people."
God's stated intention, Paul says, is to save all people. We know that when Jesus judges humanity at the end of time, not everyone will be saved. But God's heart is for all kinds of people, and many of them, to be saved through Christ.
One question in response to God's stated intention is this: What about the people who have never heard of Jesus, or who have followed other faiths in search of God? Rev. Jonker will consider these question on Sunday.
Another question in response to God's stated desire deals with our own attitude toward people outside the flock of faith. Do we pray in line with God's intention as Paul instructs, for "all people" to come to a saving, transformative knowledge of Jesus?
Much though I hope my heart's attitude is one of concern for people who do not yet know Christ, I need God to keep working in me. The natural tendency to love people who are familiar and who love me is strong. It's a work of the Spirit when prayerful attention and a hopeful attitude for God's work characterize my posture toward "outsiders" or "enemies."
I see examples of this most clearly in my childhood. When I was growing up, my parents provided me with a Christian education. But as I progressed through elementary school, they recognized troubling attitudes in me. While I seemed to be growing in knowledge and love for Christ, I was demonstrating both fear of and disregard for people outside of Christian faith.
That anxious and dismissive attitude gave my parents pause. They concluded that I needed to learn by immersion--to see that people Christ loved, people he died to save, orbited in spheres outside of my immediate circle of home, church, and Christian school.
Perhaps counterintuitively, my parents decided to enroll me in a public middle and high school to help shape my soul. (This is, of course, not the only or best option to help young students learn about God's care for his world--but it is the way my family chose.)
In those schools, God opened my eyes to his concern for my locker partner, Chelsea. And to our eventual class president Madhan, who was from India. And to Kristin and Anne, Brian, Leah and Rebecca--who were Christians of different denominations from mine. I saw Caleb, who had a mohawk and sported piercings, stand up for his Christian faith by opting out of watching movies that denigrated Christianity in class.
I began to experience how big God's world is; how very many kinds of people there are in the world--and, in retrospect, to watch God grow in me a heart that looked a little bit more like my Father's--a heart that desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth:
For there is One God,
and One Mediator of God and of people--
the man Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:4-5)
One God and One Mediator. And so we pray for all people to come to a knowledge of this God.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion:
1. From the Sermon: This passage and others (John 14:5-14, Acts 4:1-21) teach clearly that Jesus is the only way to the one true God. Living in relationship to this one true God through his son, Jesus Christ, led many early Christians to speak of this truth even when doing so earned them persecution.
Putting on your "alternative argument" hat, what reasons can you think of for why people would find the idea that there are many ways to God attractive?
2. One commentator on this passage responds to the objections raised by people who say there are multiple paths to God. He says this:
"Unless there is one God and one Mediator there can be no such thing as the brotherhood of [people]. If there are many gods and many mediators competing for their allegiance and their love, religion becomes something which divides...instead of uniting them. It is because there is one God and one Mediator that [people] are brethren of one another" (Wm. Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, 1975: Westminster Press, 66).
Does Barclay's argument that the "one way" of God through Christ is actually more inclusive than the alternative seem persuasive to you? How would you restate his argument in such a way that you could explain it to a non-Christian friend?
3. Do you find yourself drawn to pray for people who don't know Christ? If so, what motivates you to pray? If not, why not?
4. What one small step could you take this week to "pray for all people"--that if they know Christ they might live in him; and if they don't, that they would come to know him? (Some ideas: pray over the news headlines; pray for the person ahead of you at the grocery store; pray for the person on the other end of the phone at work).
