Sunday Devotional: 1 Timothy 2:1-4

¹ Therefore I exhort, first of all, petitions, prayers, and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, ² on behalf of kings and all those who are in authority, in order that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and respectability. ³ This is good and pleasing before God our Saviour, ⁴ who desires all men to be saved and to come to a recognition of the truth.

This passage is commonly appealed to as a refutation of the Reformed belief that God has an elect people and He only desires to save those He has chosen, those for whom Jesus died. I don’t believe that’s what this passage is teaching, but the correct understanding of this passage has a surprisingly practical application for the times in which we live.

Someone on Twitter (or X as it’s now called) recently asked how we are to think about terrorists who do horrendous acts against innocent men, women, and children in the name of their cause. We could broaden this to apply to any person who commits atrocities against their fellow human beings. Our natural inclination is to allow our hearts to be consumed with hatred and revulsion and to desire nothing but suffering, death, and the eternal lake of fire for such people. But is this appropriate for Christians? How are we to respond?

Biblically speaking, there is a place for anger and a desire to see justice done. This is at the heart of the so-called “imprecatory” psalms, such as Psalms 5, 35, 79, and 137. The cry for Yahweh to bless the person who seizes and dashes the infants of Israel’s oppressors against the cliff grates against our sensibilities, but this is a cry for God’s justice to be done. Their enemies have acted cruelly against them, and they appeal to Yahweh to bring to bear His wrath against them.

As Christians, it isn’t wrong for us to likewise look for God to rain down His justice against the wicked. The key term there is His justice–justice as God defines justice, not as we with our sinful, prideful, self-interested inclinations might interpret justice. It’s not wrong for us to be angry at injustice and godless wickedness, and to desire that such wrongs be made right and God to be glorified in the destruction of His foes. But we also know the incredible mercy of God who can take the vilest offender, such as the Pharisee Saul, and turn them into a valiant warrior for the gospel, such as the Apostle Paul.

In this passage, Paul is appealing to Timothy that he and his church make petitions, prayers, and thanksgivings on behalf of all men. He then goes on to define what he means by “all men”: kings and all those who are in authority. Why might Paul call out these particular types of men? You may recall that in Paul’s day, the Christian community was not very popular among the civil leaders. The emperor Nero would, in the coming years, famously use burning Christians to light his gardens. Christians were treated with suspicion and often regarded as seditious and morally corrupt. Christianity wasn’t a legal religion in the Roman Empire until 313 AD. Typically, the “kings and all in authority” were men out for their blood. These were men who hated the church and persecuted Christians.

This is why Paul tells Timothy not to neglect these people in the prayers of the church. It would be very easy while praying for the various needs of the saints to overlook the fact that these cruel overlords are also creatures made in God’s image, and are also as worthy of God’s saving grace as any sinful person, including Timothy and his congregation. God doesn’t just desire the salvation of good people, nice people, people we love and care about. Jesus himself exhorted us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). Candidates for salvation include Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, beggar and king, sweet aunt Doris, and the most vicious terrorist. All kinds of people. Because God is sovereign over salvation, He is able to save anyone.

Feelings of anger and cries for justice are biblical and appropriate in the face of insane acts of barbarism. But let’s also remember to include prayers for the salvation of every kind of person–even the ones committing those acts.