Bible Commentaries
1 Timothy 2

Verse 1

Chapter II

Ver. 1. I exhort then., first of all, that petitions, prayers, supplications, thanksgivings, be made for all men. The connection marked here by the οὖν with what precedes cannot be designated very close, and our then may more fitly be taken to represent the illative particle than the therefore of the Authorized Version. But it is absurd to deny, with some German critics (Schleiermacher, De Wette), that there is any logical connection whatever. The apostle had immediately before been charging Timothy and others situated like him to take heed to fulfil with all good fidelity the gospel charge, so that they might be able to war a good warfare, and escape the dangers amid which others had made shipwreck. What could be more natural, after this, than to exhort to the presentation of constant prayers in behalf generally of men, and especially of kings and rulers, that by the proper exercise of their authority these might restrain the evils of the time, and make it possible for God-fearing men to lead quiet and peaceable lives? The multiplication of terms for this intercessory function is somewhat remarkable: petitions ( δεήσεις , the simple expression of want or need), prayers ( προσευχὰς ), supplications ( ἐντεύξεις , the same as the preceding, with the subordinate idea of closer dealing, entreaties, or earnest pleadings). The distinction between them cannot be very sharply drawn; for in several passages certain of them are used where we might rather have expected others, if respect were had to the distinctive shade of meaning suggested by the etymology (as in 1 Timothy 4:5, where ἐντεύξεις is used of ordinary prayer for the divine blessing, and Ephesians 6:18, where supplications of the most earnest kind are intended, and yet only the two first of the words found here are employed). 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 favour the cause of righteousness and truth, a fit occasion being thereby presented for grateful acknowledgments to God, who had so inclined their hearts. And when it is said, that first of all such thanksgivings and supplications should be offered, if the expression is coupled with the acts of devotion referred to, it can only mean that they should have a prominent place in worship, should on no account be overlooked or treated as of little moment, not that they should actually have the precedence of all others. But the expression is most naturally coupled with the apostle’s request on the subject; he first of all entreats that this be done; it is his foremost advice that people should deal with God in the matter, as the most effectual safeguard.

Verse 2

Ver. 2. By mentioning all men as the object of their prayers and thanksgivings, the apostle undoubtedly meant to teach Christians to cherish wide and generous sympathies, and to identify their own happiness and wellbeing with those of their fellow-men. But he specially associates the duty with those on whose spirit and behaviour the peace and good order of society more directly depended kings (quite generally, as in the address of our Lord to His disciples, Matthew 10:18; also Romans 13:1; 1 Peter 2:13; hence affording no ground to the supposition of Baur, that the emperor and his co-regents in the time of the Antonines were meant by the expression), and all that are in authority ( ὑπεροχῇ , strictly eminence, but here, as elsewhere, the eminence of social position a place of authority). Then follows the more immediate end, as regards the praying persons themselves: in order that we may pass a quiet and tranquil life, in all godliness and gravity; that is, may be allowed freely to enjoy our privileges, and maintain the pious and orderly course which becomes us as Christians, without the molestation, the troubles, and the unseemly shifts which are the natural consequence of inequitable government and abused power. The last epithet, gravity, σεμνότητι , is quite in its proper place; for though it has respect to deportment rather than to Christian principle or duty, it is very closely allied to this, and is such a respectable and decorous bearing as is appropriate to those who live under the felt apprehension of the great realities of the gospel. The term honesty in the A.V. is quite unsuitable, in the now received sense of that word.

Verses 3-4

Vers. 3, 4. For this namely, to make intercession to God in behalf of kings, of rulers generally, and of men of all sorts is good and acceptable before our Saviour God, a thing which in His reckoning is good, and is sure of meeting with His approval: for there seems no need for confining the before God to the latter epithet alone; it should be connected as well with what is good as what is acceptable, though things really and properly good are such also apart from Him. But by placing both epithets in connection with God, it is more distinctly implied that they are to be taken in their fullest import. ( Ἀποδεκτός is found in New Testament only here and at 1 Timothy 6:14.) Then follows the reason why such conduct meets with God’s approval as right and proper: who willeth all men to be saved, and to come to the fill knowledge of the truth ἐπίγνωσιν , knowledge in the fuller sense, knowledge that reaches its end, saving knowledge; and the governing verb, it will be observed, is θέλει , not the stronger ( βου ́ λεται , which would have expressed will with an implied purpose or intent (see at 1 Timothy 2:8). Nothing can be better than the comment of Chrysostom here: “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. . . . But if God wills it, you will say, what need is there for my prayers? This is of great benefit both for you and for them: it draws them to love; thyself, again, it prevents from being treated as a wild beast; and such things are fitted to allure them to faith.” There seems no need for going beyond this practical aspect of the matter; and either to press the passage on the one side, with some, to universalism, as if it bespoke the comprehension of all within God’s purpose of salvation, or, on the other, to limit it, so as to make, not strictly all men, but only all sorts of men (with Calvin and others), the object of the good contemplated, is equally to strain the natural import of the words. It seems to me unnatural to understand the all men, twice so distinctly and emphatically expressed, as indicative of anything but mankind generally men not merely without distinction of class or nation, but men at large, who certainly, as such, are to be prayed for. As the objects of the church’s intercessions, there can be no difference drawn between one portion and another; and we are expressly taught to plead for all, because it is the will of God that they should be saved σωθῆναι : not His will absolutely to save them, as if the word had been σω ́ σαι ; but that they may be brought through the knowledge and belief of the truth into the state of the saved. And the whole character of the gospel of Christ, with its universal call to repent, its indiscriminate offers of pardon to the penitent, and urgent entreaties to lay hold of the hope set before them, is framed on very purpose . to give expression to that will; for, surely, in pressing such things on men’s acceptance, yea, and holding them disobedient to His holy will, and liable to aggravated condemnation, if they should refuse to accept, God cannot intend to mock them with a mere show and appearance of some great reality being brought near to them. No; there is the manifestation of a benevolent desire that they should not die in sin, but should come to inherit salvation (as at Ezekiel 33:11), if only they will do it in the way that alone is consistent with the principles of His moral government and the nature of Christ’s mediation. This, necessarily, is implied; and it is the part of the church, by her faithful exhibition of the truth in Christ, by her personal strivings with the souls of men, and earnest prayers in their behalf, to give practical effect to this message of goodwill from Heaven to men, and to do it in the spirit of tenderness and affection which itself breathes.

Such appears to be the fair and natural interpretation of the apostle’s declaration, and the whole that it properly calls us to intermeddle with. It is true that all whom God wills to be thus entreated and prayed for shall not actually be saved not even many who have enjoyed in the highest degree the means and opportunities of such dealing. And seeing, as God does, the end from the beginning, knowing perfectly beforehand whom He has, and whom He has not destined to salvation, grave questions are ready to arise as to whether the work of Christ can be really sufficient to meet the emergency occasioned by the ruin of sin, or whether God be sincere in seeking through His church the salvation of all, questions which touch upon the deep things of God, and which it is impossible for us, with the materials we now possess, to answer satisfactorily to the speculative reason. Knowing who and what He is with whom in such things we have to do, we should rest assured that His procedure will be in truth and uprightness; and that the mysteries which meanwhile appear to hang around it will be solved to the conviction of every reasonable mind, when the proper time for doing so shall have arrived. But enough is known for present duty. God has unfolded for one and all alike the terms of reconciliation: He is willing, nay desirous, for His own glory’s sake, that men should everywhere embrace them; and for this end has committed to His church the ministry of reconciliation, charging it upon the conscience of her members to strive and pray that all without exception be brought to the saving knowledge of the truth. What more can be required for faith to rest on, and for the intercessions and labours of an earnest ministry?

Verses 5-6

Vers. 5, 6. For there is one God, one Mediator also of God and men. The connective particle ( γὰρ ) presents what is here stated as an adequate ground, more immediately for the statement in the preceding verse, that God would have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth; but also, more remotely, for the call to prayer in behalf of all men, that so the benevolent desires of God toward them may come into effect For in the mind of the apostle the two are essentially connected together; and what affords a valid reason for the one, provides it also for the other. What, then, is the reason? It is, that all stand related to one and the same God, also to one and the same Mediator; for mankind generally there is but one Dispenser of life and blessing, and one medium through which the dispensation flows; and in the invitations and precepts of the gospel all are put on a footing in regard to them: there is no respect of persons, or formal preference of some over others. Substantially the same thought is exhibited in the Epistles to the Romans (Romans 3:30) and the Galatians (Galatians 2:20); there, as grounding the universality of the gospel offer, as here the universality of the goodwill, which the provisions of the gospel on God’s part, and the prayers of His people on theirs, are ever breathing toward men. The oneness of the Mediator is followed by a declaration respecting His person and work: man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all. The want of the article before ἄνθρωπος is noticeable; not the man as contradistinguished from some others, but man, one possessing the nature, and in His work manifesting the attributes, of humanity. Not, however, as if this were all; for the very fact of Christ’s mediating between God and men implies that He was Himself something that other men were not: they men, indeed, but in a state that men should not occupy toward God (hence requiring a Mediator); He, man in the ideal or proper sense, true image and representative of God, and as such capable of restoring the relations which had been disturbed by sin, between Creator and creature, and rendering earth, as it was designed to be, the reflex of heaven. Man, therefore, is used here much in the same emphatic manner that Son of man was by Daniel in his prophetic vision (Daniel 7:13), and by our Lord Himself in His public ministry; man as ordained by God to hold the lordship of this lower world, to hold it for God, and therefore to establish truth and righteousness through all its borders (Hebrews 2:6-18). He who should be this is the true Head as well as pattern of humanity the New Man, and at the same time “the Lord from heaven,” because only as related to that higher sphere, and having at command powers essentially divine, could He either be or do what such an exalted position indispensably requires. So that the use made of this passage by Unitarians is without any just foundation.

Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all ὁ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων ; a participial clause indicating how especially Christ did the part of Mediator = Christ Jesus He who, as Mediator, gave Himself, etc. The expression plainly involves the idea of substitution, an exchange of forfeits, one in the room of all, and for their deliverance. The words are, with a slight variation, an adoption of our Lord’s own, who said that He came to give His life λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν (Matthew 20:28). For that in both passages it is mainly the death of Christ by which the ransom was paid for, or in exchange of, the persons indicated by the many in the one place, and by the all in the other, can admit of no reasonable doubt. And as the apostle is here contemplating Christ as the Messiah that had been promised, and now come for mankind at large, it is perhaps most natural to understand the language here with reference to those prophetical passages which represent the Messiah as obtaining from the Father the heritage of all families or nations of the earth; not the preserved of Israel alone, nor a few scattered members besides of other nations, but also the fulness of the Gentiles (Psalms 2:8, Psalms 22:27; Isaiah 49:6; Luke 21:24). So Cocceius, who remarks: “When it is said that, Christ gave a ransom price for all, it is also signified that Christ of His own right demands all for His inheritance and possession. This, therefore, is a sure foundation for our prayers, that those whom the Father gave for an inheritance to the Son, we should ask may become the Son’s possession; and since Ave know that all are given to the Son, we should pray for all, because we know not at what time God may be going to give this rich inheritance to the Son, and who may belong to the inheritance of Christ, who not; yet we do know, that if we ask all, we shall imitate the love of the Son.”

The testimony that which is to be testified or set forth for its own seasons: a pregnant clause standing in apposition not to the immediately preceding term ransom, but to the whole participial clause, which declares Christ to have given Himself a ransom for all. “I understand it to mean,” says Scholfield ( Hints for Imp. Version), “that the great fact of Christ’s having given Himself a ransom for all is that which is to be testified by His servants in His times; that is, in the times of the gospel: it is to be the great subject of their preaching.” ( Καιροῖς ἰδίοις , the dative of time, the temporal sphere or space within which the action takes place; Winer, Gr. § 31. 9; Fritzsche on Romans 12:1, note. The own, however, is more appropriately coupled with the testimony than with Christ: comp. Galatians 6:9; here, 1 Timothy 6:15; Titus 1:3.) The matter in question being primarily a fact the death of Christ but that fact in its doctrinal bearing as a ransom for the sins of men, it is here and in other places presented under the aspect of a testimony. It was above all other things the subject to which the apostles had to bear testimony, since it was through Christ’s name, as that of the crucified, atoning Saviour, that they proclaimed the pardon of sin and eternal life to the penitent. And its times the times specially appropriate for the bearing of such a testimony, and the witnessing of its results are those which follow the great event itself, and reach onward to the second advent. All was but preparatory before; it was the time only for the anticipations of hope respecting it, or the longings of spiritual desire. But with the introduction of the reality, there came also the period destined for its full and proper exhibition, that through belief of the testimony its merciful design might be realized. (See Appendix A.)

Appendix A Page 119. The Peculiar Testimony for Gospel Times 1 Timothy 2:6

TO designate the truth that Christ gave Himself a ransom for all, the testimony for its own ( i.e. gospel) seasons or times, is so peculiar, and at the same time so important a statement, that some further illustration of it than could fitly be introduced into the text may not be out of place. Indeed, as matters now stand, it calls for vindication as well as for more lengthened exposition. The peculiarity and importance of the statement consist in the singular prominence given, not to the simple fact of the death of Christ, but to that death in the character of a ransom or redemption-price for sinful men elevating this to the central place in God’s scheme as disclosed for gospel times. The death of Christ on the cross as a historical fact is recorded with great fulness by all the evangelists, and is unquestionably the most prominent subject in their respective narratives. But has it there the same doctrinal significance as is assigned to it by the apostle? This is now frequently called in question, and by some the teaching of St. Paul on the subject is expressly affirmed to be out of accord with that of Christ Himself as reported by His more immediate witnesses. Of the class referred to. Professor Jowett may be taken as one of the most eminent representatives. He says: (Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistles, ii. p. 555.) “It is hard to imagine that there can be any truer expression of the gospel than the words of Christ Himself, or that any truth omitted by Him is essential to the gospel. ‘The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant greater than his lord.’ The philosophy of Plato was not better understood by his followers than by himself; nor can we allow that the gospel is to be interpreted by the Epistles, or that the Sermon on the Mount is only half Christian, and needs the fuller inspiration or revelation of St. Paul, or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. . . . How strange would it have seemed to the apostle St. Paul, who thought himself unworthy to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of God, to find that his own words were preferred in after ages to those of Christ Himself! “To regard the teaching of the Epistles as an essential part of Christian doctrine, it is again said, “is to rank the authority of the words of Christ below that of apostles and evangelists.”

Now, representations of this sort proceed on the idea that Christ and His apostles stood related to each other just as Plato did to his followers; that they were alike simply teachers of certain moral or religious truths; and that, of course, the master-mind must have taught in a clearer and nobler strain than any who might sit at His feet. But this is not the view of the relation given by the Master Himself not, at least, in its bearing upon the question at issue. Jesus Christ had not simply a doctrine to teach, but a work to do; and a work of which His doctrine in the fuller sense was to be but the proper exposition and the varied application. Hence the promise of the Holy Spirit so largely dwelt upon by Christ before His departure, as requisite to bring His disciples to a full knowledge and appreciation of the truth concerning Him. The revelation He had given of Himself, therefore, in the Gospels could not by possibility be the whole. The germ of all, indeed, was there, but not its development into a comprehensive scheme of truth and duty. There are sayings and discourses of Christ which are profound and large enough to embrace everything: as when He said, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16); or, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28); or, “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain man that made a great supper, and bade many” (Luke 14:16); and so on. But how much was still required to explicate the meaning of such statements, and show precisely what they involved respecting the work of Christ, and its adaptation to the wants and circumstances of mankind? Then, there were utterances of Christ which were thrown out as occasion offered like seed-corn scattered here and there but in which so little regard was had to systematic form or rounded completeness of representation, that, if taken apart, and without regard to acts and operations yet in prospect, which would shed a reconciling light upon them, might have seemed scarcely compatible with each other. For example, we find forgiveness of sin at one time coupled simply with the exercise of a penitent disposition, as in the case of the woman who was a sinner, or in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 7:15); on other occasions with the manifestation of a forgiving spirit toward one’s fellow-sinners (Matthew 6:12, Matthew 6:14; Luke 6:37); while, again, in a different class of statements everything in that respect is made to depend upon the atoning death of Christ as when He said that He came to give His life a ransom for many (Matthew 9:28), or that He must die, that repentance and remission of sins might be preached in His name (Matthew 16:21; Luke 24:44-47), plainly pointing to His suffering obedience as the ground on which all hope of blessing was to rest.

Indeed, this one great fact of the death of Christ its necessity, its priceless worth, and the essential relation it was to hold to the entire mission of Christ obviously rendered His own teaching, during the period of His personal ministry, in a great degree fragmentary and incomplete. It was with His death (coupled, of course, with the resurrection that was to follow) that He connected the finishing of His work; it was in that He was to perfect Himself as the Messiah; and till the destined consummation actually took place, the doctrinal significance of it could not possibly be more than very partially revealed. It was then only that the mystery which had hung around God’s scheme of grace began to clear away, and that it became possible to present anything like a full and harmonious exhibition of the truths and principles embodied in it. All instructions delivered beforehand, though uttered by One who spake as man had never spoken, were in a doctrinal respect necessarily imperfect; they could not possess the perfect clearness of gospel light, because the consummating act still lay in the future, which was to constitute for all time the main ground of God’s gracious procedure toward men, and of their confidence and love toward Him. It hence is the mediatorial death of Christ, not the moment of His incarnation, or of His entrance on His public ministry, which forms the proper boundary line between the Old and the New. It is with the shedding of His blood for the remission of sins as He distinctly announced at the institution of the supper that the new covenant was ratified, and its provisions of grace and blessing were made for ever sure to a believing people. And so the doctrine taught up to that time could not be final; in other words, the utterances and facts of gospel history could not be seen in their proper force and meaning till the events had taken place to which they all more or less pointed. The Gospels, indeed, reveal much; but they themselves close with the expressed need and promise of further revelations, in order to set in its true light, and carry out to its moral results, the perfected work of the Redeemer. (Archbishop Whately long ago urged very cogently the considerations just stated: “How could our Lord, during His abode on earth, preach fully that scheme of salvation, of which the keystone had not been laid even His meritorious sacrifice as an atonement for sin His resurrection from the dead, and ascension into glory, when these events had not taken place? He did, indeed, darkly hint at these events in His discourses to His disciples by way of prophecy; but we are told that ‘the saying was hid from them, and they comprehended it not, till after that Christ was risen from the dead.’ Of course, therefore, there was no reason and no room for Him to enter into a full discussion of the doctrines dependent on those events. He left them to be enlightened in due time as to the true nature of His kingdom by the gift which He kept in store for them [the Holy Spirit]. . . . Our Lord’s discourses, therefore, while on earth, though they teach the truth, did not teach, nor could they have been meant to teach, the whole truth, as afterwards revealed to His disciples. What chance, then, can they have of attaining true Christian knowledge who shut their eyes to such obvious conclusions as these? who, under that idle plea, the misapplication of the maxim that ‘the disciple is not above his master,’ confine their attention entirely to the discourses of Christ recorded in the four Gospels, as containing all necessary truth; and if anything in the other parts of the sacred writings is forced upon their attention, studiously explain it away, so that it do not go a step beyond what is clearly revealed in the evangelists? As if a man should, in the culture of a fruit-tree, carefully destroy as a spurious excrescence every part of the fruit which was not fully developed in the blossom that preceded it.” Essays on St. Paul, sec. 2 of Essay ii.)

What, then, do we find as to those further revelations, or that more explicit and developed knowledge, when we turn to the other books of the New Testament? Do we find our Lord still acting with a view to impart it? We do. His agency in this respect did not cease with His death, nor even with His ascension to the heavenly places. A period of instruction, we are expressly informed, intervened between His resurrection from the dead and His ascension to glory, during which He often met with the disciples, and expounded to them the things concerning the kingdom. Of these explanations we are merely told that they turned much upon the necessity of His sufferings and death, in order to the fulfilment of what had been written of Him in the law and the prophets; and the results of the teaching we naturally look for in the discourses and epistles which, under the power and guidance of the Spirit, were addressed by the apostles to those who received their testimony. It had now become, in a sense, the dispensation of the Spirit, but it was not the less the dispensation of Christ, the glorified Redeemer. And it is instructive to mark how beautifully the one is linked with the other in the narrative of the Acts, where the Spirit is represented as working all, yet working as the representative of Christ carrying forward His agency, giving effect to His will. Hence, in the march of events we never lose sight of Christ, any more than of the Spirit: everything is done as under the direction of His hand, and the witness of His risen power and glory. It is the same when St. Paul comes upon the scene; it is Christ who, by the Spirit, arrests him in his career of persecuting violence, and calls him to the work of an apostle, furnishing him with the authority and gifts requisite for its discharge. Hence the apostle disclaimed his doing anything as of himself: the commission he bore was not of man, or by the will of men, but by Jesus Christ, or by the commandment of God our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ: the gospel he preached was received, not of man, but by revelation from Jesus Christ, so that the things he spake and wrote were to be acknowledged as the commandments of the Lord (1 Corinthians 14:37); and he and his fellow-labourers were but instruments to bear the treasure of the gospel, that others might believe as the Lord gave to every man. In short, the later history of the New Testament was but the varied manifestation of the continued life and agency of the Lord Jesus Christ. Through the instrumentality of His delegated servants. He was, though personally unseen, giving articulate form to His gospel, and applying it to the salvation of souls and the planting of His church in the world. The voice of Paul or the voice of Peter speaking to the churches, was in effect the voice of Jesus. Hence He had Himself said from the outset, “He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me” (Luke 10:16).

Was the voice the same now, then, as when it came directly from Christ? The same, we reply, in substance, but with a difference of a circumstantial kind suited to the more advanced stage of things which had now been reached. It was no longer the objective Saviour merely, but this through the Spirit made manifest in the hearts of men: in other words, the facts concerning Christ’s person and work known and apprehended as doctrine; divine truth entering into human thought and human experience. On this account, also, it might be expected the word would be more effective, since everything would appear now at once in its proper harmony and proportions, and in its thorough adaptation to human wants and circumstances, enlightening the understanding, satisfying the heart and conscience, taking possession of the thoughts and feelings of the inner man.

Now this is precisely what we find in the representations given in the Acts and Epistles. Christ is throughout the great subject, or matter of the testimony delivered, and the instruction imparted. The apostles, we read in the Acts, “ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus Christ;” of one it is said “that he preached Christ unto them;” of another, “that he preached Christ in the synagogues,” or, “he preached Jesus unto them, and the resurrection.” The Apostle Paul sums up his preaching, in one place, as “Christ and Him crucified, the power of God unto salvation;” in another, as “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ; “or, in the one immediately before us, as “the Mediator between God and man, who gave Himself a ransom for all, the testimony for its own seasons” Heaven’s special testimony for the times of the gospel. In other passages we find the kingdom of God put along with the person of Christ as the subject of apostolic testimony. So St. Peter, for instance, on the day of Pentecost, when he gave the people to know assuredly that the “Jesus whom they had crucified was made both Lord and Christ” that is, both King and Messiah, or King Messiah; and St. Paul, in the last notice we have of him in the history of the Acts, is said to have received those who came to him, “preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This mode of representation, it will be observed, carries us back to the kind of preaching or proclamation of which we read in the Gospels: it connects the one with the other, but with an obvious advance as to the mode of doing it. “The kingdom of God is at hand.” That was the common style of preaching as reported in the Gospels, first of John Baptist, then of Jesus, finally of the twelve; and many a parable was taught by our Lord, having for their common object the kingdom of God, in its nature, its principles of administration, and final issues. But now, since Christ had finished the work which was required for laying the foundation of the kingdom in its New Testament form, the doctrine of the kingdom came to be all associated with Himself; the truth had come to its proper realization in Him; and to preach the things which concerned His person. His work, and the glory that followed, was at the same time to testify of the kingdom. All who really received Christ as the ground of their peace and hope, entered into the kingdom; they were “translated out of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son;” and what they thenceforth looked for was His appearance in the kingdom, when they also expected to appear with Him in glory. It was thus that the Spirit, through the preaching of the apostles, glorified Christ, in a way they could not possibly do during His sojourn upon earth. And, as a matter of course, the things testified respecting Him now were no longer simply facts, but facts as the basis of doctrine facts with an interpretation put upon them which gave them a spiritual significance and power in relation to men’s spiritual life and well-being. “The Christ preached by the apostles was one who [had not only lived and wrought righteousness on earth, but also] had died and risen again, and whom the heavens had received till the time of the restitution of all things. In these three facts the manifestation of the Son of God had culminated, and in them the true character of His mission had appeared. The old carnal thoughts of it had been left in the grave, and could never rise from it again. It was ‘the Prince of Life’ who had risen from the dead; it was ‘the King of Glory’ who had passed into the heavens. And no less did these facts declare the spiritual consequences of His manifestation, since they carried with them the implication of those three corresponding gifts the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” (Bernard, Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, p. 130.)

It thus appears how naturally, and by reason of the inevitable progress of events, the things concerning Christ assumed a more doctrinal form; or rather, how the facts which made up the earthly career of Christ necessarily became, on being completed, doctrines, and as such were preached in the name of Christ by apostles, and by the Holy Spirit were sealed upon the understandings and hearts of men. The question now was, not whether men simply believed in Jesus as the Messiah, but with what meaning or to what results did they accept of His Messiahship? Could they say, with St. Peter, “Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved”? Or, with St. Paul, “By Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses”? To say this was to affirm the doctrine that Christ by His death had done, in respect to the desert of sin, what the old sacrificial system of the law could do only in a symbolical manner that His death is the one great sacrifice that atones, because in it He bore our sins in His own body on the tree; and, consequently, that legal rites of propitiation must be done away, and no dependence rested on anything for salvation but the perfect work of Christ the crucified. This was the gospel of Peter and Paul; and when Paul accused the Galatians of accepting, through false teachers, another gospel, he did not mean to say that they denied the facts of Christ’s holy life and humiliating death, but that they understood these differently, failed to give them their proper moral significance in other words, did not accredit and appreciate them in their true doctrinal import. So, also, when parties in the church of Corinth and elsewhere sought to couple with the faith of Christ a disbelief of the doctrine of the resurrection, or a licence to sin, they were denounced as really subverters of the faith, enemies of the cross of Christ, because practically robbing it of that moral worth and significance which in the scheme of God are inseparably connected with it.

Such is the gospel of Christ in its completed form completed under the direction of Christ Himself, by the Spirit He gave and the instrumentality He appointed. It is simply the facts of His mediatory work in their spiritual bearing and personal application. Contemplated merely as facts or historical events, they stand outside of us, and may leave us morally much as we were. But when apprehended as doctrine, or appropriated by faith as the elements of saving knowledge, they enter into our consciousness; they touch the springs of thought and feeling in our bosom; they form the ground of new aspirations, the motives of a new and higher life. Without the facts, indeed, the doctrine might swim in the air; but without being seen in their doctrinal import, the facts would not be spirit and life to the soul.

We thus perceive the absurdity of attempting to separate Christianity from doctrine. Only as containing elements of doctrine does it become to us matter of truth and duty. Have I faith in Christ as the Son of God and Saviour of the world? Then I hold the doctrine of the incarnation, and realize its importance. Have I faith in the death of Christ, as the ground of my reconciliation with God? Then I hold the doctrine of the cross, or of a crucified Redeemer, as the one thing needful to my peace and hope. Have I faith in Christ as the conqueror of death, the resurrection and the life? Then I embrace Him as the source of a new and undying life, beginning here and perfected in eternity. Have I faith in Christ as ready to come again and appear on the throne of judgment? Then I hold the doctrine of the second advent, and recognise its bearing on my personal condition and destiny. Thus Christianity as a doctrine, is the root of Christianity as a life; reject it in the one respect, and you cut the sinews of its vitality and strength in the other.

But there is no difficulty in understanding how many should be disposed to make such a separation disposed, that is, to accredit more or less of the recorded facts in Christ’s life, but make little or no account of them in their doctrinal aspects. So long as they are considered apart from these aspects, everything about them presents a kind of loose, sporadic appearance; and men may fix, some upon this, others upon that point in the life-history of Jesus as what, in their view, chiefly serves to make it valuable and important. There is, too, so much in that history, brief and chequered as it was, which appears attractive and winning even to the natural man so much of grace and condescension, of disinterestedness in doing good, of compassion toward the miserable and unworthy, of readiness to brave the fiercest opposition, and to sacrifice life itself in the cause of truth and righteousness, that all the better feelings and sympathies of the heart can without difficulty be awakened, and turned toward the Son of man as exhibited in the Gospels with profound affection and regard; nay, can find there, as they can find nowhere else, what is fitted to interest and instruct them, in the varied circumstances and relations of life. But it is another thing when all that there was in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is brought out in the subsequent parts of the New Testament, and, under the form of doctrinal belief, presented to every Christian bosom as the ground and nourishment of a life devoted to God, and fraught with the fruits of righteousness. Under this aspect of matters the natural heart rebels, and seeks in a thousand ways to escape the unwelcome conclusion. It does so, often, by putting another than the natural interpretation on the facts of gospel history; or, if not, by allowing other things to intercept their due influence on the affections of the soul and the actions of the life. To enter aright into this part of gospel teaching to accept and relish Christianity as exhibited by the apostles, and by them formed into a system of truth and duty has for its essential prerequisite a mind that has become profoundly conscious of the guilt and danger of sin, and longs for an interest in the restored favour and blessing of God as the one great good. Whenever men reach this state of spiritual conviction and desire, they will be ready to hail the entire manifestation of the truth in Scripture, and will find but the fitting sequel of Christ’s own teaching, and the true explanation of His work in the world, in the discourses and writings of His apostles.

It is incumbent on all who would do the part of faithful representatives of Christ, and true exponents of His mind and will to men, to draw their materials from what He has thus made known to us as the whole of His counsel in regard to salvation. It is of special moment that they should do so in an age like the present, when many persons of note, biassed by the aims and spirit of literary or scientific culture, are disposed to take the gospel only in part, and refuse to go the full length of a cordial appreciation and belief of the truth. They will speak, perhaps, in the most approving terms of the simply human aspects of our Lord’s character, and of the moral qualities exhibited by Him in His career on earth; they will also frankly concede the impulse derived from the power of Christianity in raising the tone of thought and feeling among the nations that have received it, and ameliorating in many respects the condition of society. But in all this they restrict themselves to humanitarian ground, and appear to make account of nothing as actually true, or at least appreciable by them, except the incomparable excellence of Christ’s character, and the pure morality of the gospel. But had that been all, great and valuable as it is, should the results which even such writers acknowledge to have followed in the train of Christianity have been produced by it? What wonders have been achieved, what moral reformations accomplished, by such a Christianity in the hands of its formal abettors, the modern Unitarians? Has not the history of the past taught us to associate with them the stagnant marshes of Christianity, rather than its vivifying streams and fruitful fields? “The force which Christianity has applied to the world, and by which it has produced that change in the world which it has, is the doctrine of grace. There has been a new power actually working in the system, and that power has worked by other means besides doctrine; but still it is the law of God’s dealings with us to apply His power to us by means of our faith and belief in that power that is, by doctrine. Faith in his own position, the belief at the bottom of every Christian’s heart that he stands in a different relation to God from a heathen, and has a supernatural source of strength, this it is which has made him act, has been the rousing and elevating motive to the Christian body, and raised its moral practice.” (Mozley on Miracles, p. 182.)

Yes, for a Christianity of regenerating power and divine blessing, we must have the saving doctrines, as well as the historical facts and moral teaching, of the gospel wrought into men’s convictions and experience. The light shall otherwise want power to reach the conscience, and call forth the nobler acts of self-denying love and patient continuance in well-doing, which are the marks of a living Christianity. Only when there is a faith which embraces all the essential elements of truth and hope in Christ, and is itself sustained in the heart by the Spirit of God, is there a principle of life powerful enough to resist the desires of the flesh, and overcome the evil that is in the world. With such faith, however, the followers of Christ have no need to be afraid. They will prevail in the future as they have done in the past. “Their antagonists themselves will be their helpers;” for these will but serve to drive them the more closely to Christ, and cause them to drink more deeply from the well-spring of His salvation.

Verse 7

Ver. 7. The apostle here introduces his own relation to this testimony-bearing: Whereunto I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I speak the truth, (The received text has ἐν Χριστῷ, but it is wanting in the best MSS., A, D, F, G, also It. Vulg. Syr. Cop. versions, and is therefore justly omitted by Tisch, and others.) I lie not), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. This personal asseveration, which seems at first thought peculiarly strong for the occasion, especially in an epistle addressed to his bosom companion and associate Timothy, we must remember, is brought in as an important part of the evidence which existed for the universal aspect and bearing of the gospel, in its character as a remedial scheme for the salvation of all who were willing to accept it. The position and calling he had received in the church of Christ had nothing partial, nothing exclusive about it. More even than any or all the original delegates of Christ, he was a witness to the universality of Christ’s overtures of mercy, having been appointed a herald to proclaim everywhere the glad tidings; a herald even of the highest rank an apostle (however some of a grudging or contentious spirit might dispute his authority, he at least will hold fast to it, as a fact written in the depths of his spiritual consciousness, and will have Timothy also to assert it); and as an apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. In this his declaration respecting himself reaches its proper climax, announcing as it does his destination to labour among the Gentiles the far off, the aliens as the more special objects of his apostolic agency, and signalizing faith and truth as the elements in which it was to move, the prominent characteristics of the spirit in which he was to teach, and the subjects he was to handle. If emphatically faithful and true in the testimony he was called to give concerning God, how could he be otherwise in what he delivered concerning himself? Self, however, was not an object of concern with him, except in so far as it bore on the nature of the mission he was appointed to fulfil, and the gloriously free and world-embracing character of the interests it sought to promote. But both were of a piece; the one was the proper image and reflex of the other. In principle, we have the same mode of representation at 2 Corinthians 1:18-20. Taking this view of the passage, I would discard as very needless questions, whether the expressions faith and truth are to be taken both objectively, or the former only (with Huther and Ellicott) objectively, and the latter subjectively. In an experimental utterance of this kind, in which the internal and the external necessarily go together, it is hypercritical, and can serve no good purpose, to draw such distinctions.

Verses 11-12

Vers. 11, 12. The apostle proceeds now to give prescriptions of a more general kind respecting the proper sphere and behaviour of women. Let a woman learn in silence in all subjection spoken primarily and mainly with reference to the public assemblies of the church, and only an abbreviated reinforcement of the instruction previously issued to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 14:34): “Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” The all subjection, however, can only be understood to reach as far as the authoritative teaching is of the right stamp. Woman does not lose her rational power of thought and responsibility by abiding in the place assigned her by the gospel; and she also has a right to prove all things only in a manner suited to her position in order that she may hold fast that which is good, and reject what is otherwise. But to teach (the best authorities place διδάσκειν first) I permit not a woman namely, in public: she is not to act the part of a teacher in the meetings of the faithful; nor to lord it over the man, but to be in silence. The verb αὐθεντεῖν scarcely means to usurp authority, the sense ascribed to it in the Authorized Version, but only to exercise it in an imperious manner. Leo (as quoted by Huther): “ αὐθεντεῖν et αυ ̓ θε ́ ντης apud seriores tantum scriptores ita occurrit, ut dominii notionem involvat; melioribus scriptoribus est αὐθέντης idem quod αὐτόχειρ .” Here it is plainly the later use that must be adopted; and what is forbidden by it to woman is, that she is not to assume the part of ruling or domineering over man. When she attempts this she goes out of her proper place, and ventures upon a line of things which is not compatible either with her natural constitution or with her distinctive vocation. And in proof of this, the apostle appeals to the original order and course of things as marking out the great landmarks for all time.

Ver. 13. For Adam was first formed ( ἐπλάσθη ) taken from the Sept. version of Genesis 2:7; ἐκτίσθη is used in the corresponding passage at 1 Corinthians 11:9), then Eve; the precedence in time implying superiority in place and power. The relation in this respect is still more strongly marked in the Epistle to the Corinthians: “For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man; for also the man was not made for the sake of the woman, but the woman for the sake of the man.” Thus did God in the method of creation give clear testimony to the headship of man to his right, and also his obligation, to hold directly of God, and stand under law only to Him; while woman, being formed for his helpmate and partner, stands under law to her husband, and is called to act for God in him. And simply by inverting this relative position and calling the helpmate assuming the place of the head or guide, and the head facilely yielding to her governance was the happy constitution of paradise overthrown, and everything involved in disorder and evil.

Verse 14

Ver. 14. From this sinful violation of the primeval order, with its disastrous results, the apostle fetches his second reason for fixing in the manner he does the social position of woman: And Adam was not deceived; hut the woman, being altogether deceived, (The best reading is ἐξαπατηθεῖσα, a stronger form of the verb, in order to emphasize the deception in Eve’s case.) fell into transgression: literally, became in; but the expression γίγεσθαι ἐν is always used of entering or falling into a particular state (Luke 22:44; Acts 22:17; 2 Corinthians 3:7; Philippians 2:7). This explanatory statement has often been deemed strange, or partially misapprehended, from not sufficiently regarding the precise light in which the matter is contemplated by the apostle, and the purpose for which it is here brought into consideration. As already indicated, the case is referred to as a grand though mournful example, at the commencement of the world’s history, of the evil sure to arise if in the general management of affairs woman should quit her proper position as the handmaid of man, and man should concede to her the ascendency. She wants, by the very constitution of nature, the qualities necessary for such a task in particular, the equability of temper, the practical shrewdness and discernment, the firm, independent, regulative judgment, which are required to carry the leaders of important interests above first impressions and outside appearances, to resist solicitations, and amid subtle entanglements and fierce conflicts to cleave unswervingly to the right. Her very excellences in other respects excellences connected with the finer sensibilities and stronger impulses of her emotional and loving nature tend in a measure to disqualify her here. With man, on the other hand, in accordance with his original destination, the balance as between the intellectual and the emotional, the susceptible and the governing powers, inclines as a rule in the opposite direction. Hence, in the great trial to which the parents of the human family were subjected as the test of their allegiance, it was Adam who was mainly charged with the responsibility, and who should have been, in everything relating to it, the prime agent. But Eve, affecting to play the master, and to decide the question for herself and her husband, soon gave proof of her incompetency; she was overreached by a subtler intellect than her own, and induced, under specious pretexts, to prefer an apparent to the real good. “The serpent beguiled (or deceived) me, and I did eat” (Genesis 3:13), was her confession before the Judge, thereby in effect acknowledging her weakness and folly in taking her impressions from such a quarter, and acting independently of her appointed head. But Adam, says the apostle, was not deceived, although the representation of Eve may, in point of fact, have wrought like a deception on his mind. That, however, was not exactly the point of weakness in his case, nor is anything said of it in the original account. “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me,” was his confession to the Lord, “she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (Genesis 3:12). Yes, but God had given her, not for authority and rule, but for kindly ministrations; to be a helpmate by his side, not a directress to control his judgment or determine for him the course of life. And in allowing her to become this, in what touched the very heart of his calling, whether it might be in the way of deception, by the constraint of love, or by threats of evil, it booted not; anyhow, Adam showed that he had fallen from his true position, and ceased to rule, as he should have done, with God. This aspect of the matter, however, it was not necessary for the apostle’s purpose to bring out. As his theme was the place and calling of females in respect to things of public moment, he contents himself with pointing to that part of the transactions connected with the fall which more directly concerned Eve, and presents it as a beacon to future generations, in particular to the female members of Christian congregations, lest, amid the greater liberty of gospel times, they might be tempted to assume functions which they were not qualified or called in providence to fill.

Verse 15

Ver. 15. But she shall he saved through the child-bearing, if they abide in faith, and love, and holiness, with discretion. It is clear from the structure of the passage, that while Eve was formally before the eye of the apostle, it was she as the representative of her sex, womankind: hence, she shall be, not she has been saved; and to render still more plain how the general was contemplated in the particular, it is added, if they abide. Viewing womankind as personated in Eve, the apostle had shown how, through one grievous mistake, leading to a departure from her proper place and calling, not a rise, as had been imagined, but a fall, had taken place, a fall involving in its consequences her partner, along with herself, in present ruin, which also, but for the interposition of divine mercy, would have been irremediable. By reason of this interposition, however, a way of escape was opened to her, in connection, too, with that part of her destination which was in an especial manner to bear the impress of the fatal step which she had taken. She was still, in pursuance of her original appointment, to give birth to offspring to be the mother, indeed, of all living; but trouble was henceforth to weigh heavily upon this portion of her lot: in travail she was to bring forth children; yet at the same time in hope, for it was precisely through the seed thus to be given her that the lost ground was to be recovered, that the doom of evil should be reversed, and the serpent’s head, in relation to humanity, should be bruised. It is this complex destination as to child-bearing pronounced over woman at the fall mournful enough in one respect, but fraught with consolation and hope in another to which the apostle here briefly alludes. Salvation lay for her through this one channel; and if it was her condemnation to have been so directly concerned in the guilt which required its appointment, and the pains and perils through which it must be made good, it should also be her peculiar honour, even through such a troubled experience, to be the more immediate instrument of accomplishing for herself and others the destined good. Do we, then, say that the child-bearing here spoken of has direct respect to the birth of Christ, through whom the work of salvation was really secured? We are certainly not inclined, with some commentators (Hammond, for instance), to fix the meaning down simply and exclusively to that. Undoubtedly it is the prime and essential thing, that without which the woman’s child-bearing could have wrought no deliverance, and the prospect of which was like the hidden germ which from the first lay enfolded in the promise of a seed of blessing, yet not without regard, at the same time, to the collective seed associated in the divine purpose with the One. The apostle, in his brief allusion, abstains from details; he merely points to the original word, and the prominent place assigned to woman in connection with its fulfilment, as indicating her proper glory in relation to the plan of salvation. Let her be content, he virtually says, with this, that through her as the mother of a seed, given by the God of grace and blessing, she herself, as well as others, are to find salvation. But lest women should imagine that, by their participation in the simply natural part of the process, they should attain also to the higher good in question, he couples certain spiritual qualifications as indispensable to the result: if they abide in faith, and love, and holiness, with discretion (or sober-mindedness). In short; they must fall in here (as Eve should have done in Paradise, but did not) with the spiritual provisions and requirements of the plan of God: in faith, implicitly resting upon God’s word of promise; in love, yielding themselves heartily to the duties of their special calling, as well as consenting to live and act within its appointed limits; in holiness, wakeful, and striving against occasions of sin; and all tempered and controlled by that spirit of meek and wise discretion which instinctively shrinks from whatever is unbecoming, heady, or high-minded.

The view now given, it is scarcely necessary to add, implies that women, as a rule, though admitting of occasional exceptions, should keep within their proper sphere, and give themselves to the family and domestic affairs especially connected with it which is all that some would find in the passage; but it includes also a great deal more. Alford, who appears to think he had discovered the only tenable interpretation, represents the τεκνογονία as that in which the curse finds its operation (an extravagant statement to begin with, since death was plainly set forth as for both man and woman the proper embodiment of the curse), then that she was to be exempted from this curse m its worst and heaviest effects (of which, however, nothing is said in the original word), and that, besides, she should be saved through that is, passing through the curse of her child-bearing trials saved, notwithstanding the danger and distress connected with these! Surely a most unnatural and forced explanation, and ending in a very lame and impotent conclusion! The peculiar passage of 1 Corinthians 3:16, where the apostle speaks of certain parties being saved, yet so as through fire, which is chiefly leant upon, cannot be fairly applied here: for fire is there figuratively represented as the saving element, since it is that which tests every one; and the parties in question, who had along with the sterling gold at bottom many combustible materials about them, were just saved, and nothing more escaped, as it were, only with their lives. There is no proper parallel between such a style of representation and the one before us. Ellicott, though very brief, and adhering perhaps somewhat too closely to Hammond, comes nearer the point, and justly lays stress on “the high probability that the apostle, in speaking of woman’s transgression, would not fail to specify the sustaining prophecy which even preceded her sentence,” also “the satisfactory meaning which the preposition ( διὰ ) thus bears,” “the uncircumscribed reference of the σωθήσεται , and the force of the article [ τῆς τεκνογ ., the child-bearing, that, namely, so prominently exhibited from the first].” Indeed, it seems only necessary to present the view which takes all these into account in a judicious manner, not pressing it too much in one direction or another, to commend it to general acceptance.