1 Timothy chapter 2

vs 1

This sounds like the full gamut of the prayer arsenal! Here Paul says he wants this for everyone, but in the next verse he says he wants it for kings and people in authority. The better translation would say "on behalf of all men" - and you could almost argue that this means that all men should be praying for kings and authorities if it didn't then go on to say "on behalf of kings..." with the exact same words.

So assuming Paul isn't writing here to a church made up of kings and authorities, I think we've got to assume that Paul is writing about prayer for all people, but then his focus narrows to the others. The point possibly being that all humanity can and must be prayed for. This isn't just a last resort "oh, we can't do anything else, let's pray". This his his first urging, and should be our first response. Harder than it sounds.

vs 2

The church is being persecuted by those in authority. Paul gives the reason for praying for those in the high up positions as the ability of the church to live a peaceful, quiet, godly and holy life. We've actually got that here in Australia - how much do we send up prayers of thanks for it?

vs 3

I'm not sure whether Paul is saying that the ability to live that quiet life is good, or whether praying for kings is good. The peaceful life is the most immediate. I am sure that both are good and pleasing to God, and so Paul might be referring to the situation generally.

vs 4

Now notice here the attribute of God which Paul mentions in relation to God being pleased in this regard - it is his love and desire for all people to be saved. Does this refer to praying for kings and those in authority, so that they might be saved and their example will be powerful and effective on others? Or does it refer to the ability for Christians to live a peaceful and quiet life so that their holiness and godliness shines forth and they are able to witness more effectively than if they were being persecuted?

Christians really should be able to live holy and godly lives no matter what the circumstances. Now peaceful and quiet lives, these are more difficult to find under persecution. And such persecution or oppression does prevent people from coming to know God. Paul was probably seeing that.

The salvation of kings does cause major social reform. Look at the conversion of Constantine. Christianity changed almost immediately, and the transformation was immense. But it wasn't all rosy either. The beginning of the Christian Empire is also the beginning of nominalism.

The problem we face is that because the New Testament was written entirely under a system of persecution, we have the documents of a persecuted church. But the Western church hasn't been actively persecuted for 1700 years. Sure, it lost a lot of its cultural relevance in the last couple hundred years, but that's not the same thing. People ignoring the church and people destroying the church are two different things. This is just one more reason why a literalistic reading of the NT will only be very vaguely applicable to our current church situation. Now, when you go to China or the Middle East, it's a hell of a lot more applicable in a simple straightforward way. But we've got to work harder to understand its modern relevance. It's relevant - no doubt about it - but we've got to be sensitive in understanding how and why.

vs 5-6

Before there were church councils, before there were books on systematic theology, all you had was a knowledge that God was there, and that Jesus was his Son, and that his death somehow paid for our sins. Makes it easy to get mixed up about how things actually go together, and so Paul's statement, while fairly obvious to us, would have helped to clear up some inconsistencies in people's beliefs.

And Paul points out that there is something perfect about the timing in which this living testimony was given. Considering his next verse, he might well be thinking about the perfect timing of Christ with regards to the cultural mix between Judaism and Greek (Roman), and the existence of synagogues all over the empire.

vs 7

Because Paul's job is to teach this truth to the Gentiles, the non-Jews. If Jesus had turned up during the Macabbean revolution, then he might have won Israel to his cause, but it would have been a lot harder to win over a ruling society with which you were at war.

Paul also sees the need to defend his position as an apostle. He does this frequently. I mean, he didn't see Jesus like all the normal apostles did. So it's only fair for people to doubt his Damascus road experience. But to him and to us it is vital, because it gives him an authority he would otherwise simply not have.