Day 203, 1 Timothy 2
Paul now begins giving specific guidance and instruction to Timothy about helpful practices and patterns in the church families Timothy guides and exhorts.
Firstly, prayer is central to the life of the congregation of God’s children (just as it was with the Jews). Our Western traditions focus on prayer meetings, spoken supplication and accompanying agreement, and personal prayer times (sometimes with prayer journals or lists). All these things are good, but a closer examination of the Greek offers a larger picture of what prayer is. The root word euchomai literally means to utter a deeply held wish or desire. To this is added the preposition pros, meaning toward or to. So prayer is every way we express deeply held desires to God - those may be requests about specific concerns spoke out in a prayer meeting or a personal prayer time. Additionally, every time our hearts cry out for more of God’s love to be seen in us, each moment we long for a loved one to know God better, every circumstance that moves us to turn to God in earnest longing for the Kingdom to increase - these are all prayer too.
Sadly, religious misogyny has twisted this chapter to diminish the feminine to the advantage of male dominance. That is nowhere in a true understanding of Paul’s writing, and I am grateful for the perspectives of the translators of the Passion version for seeking to correct this (see the footnotes).
Paul is urging all men to express their heart desires to God (such encouragement is often necessary for men). Likewise women too are to do this. In Ephesus, where the cult of Diana worship was led by vocal female ‘priests’, it was necessary to add “don’t speak out of turn” (verse 11) to counteract the cultural tendency to speak over the established leaders.
In the Fall, Eve was deceived by the shining one (serpent), causing her to become a wrongdoer. Adam (who was created first, in contradiction to a Gnostic heresy of that time) did not deceive her, yet he was the one who disobeyed, by not exercising his commission to subdue the earth (including the beings who opposed God). Sideline: I do not agree with the Passion Translation that “Eve misled him” - the text does not support blaming Eve in this way, rather it focuses on how Eve was deceived (by satan).
Women are to join the men in expressing the longings of their hearts to God, but in peacefulness rather than the disorder promoted by godless pagan rituals.
This chapter is not a command for women to be silenced and sidelined, and it is a tragedy that so much of religion has promoted such a distortion.
Comparing verse 15 to Genesis 3:15 shows us that the promise of salvation through childbearing is a messianic reference, and the translators do well to draw this out. Jesus was born of a woman, and saves us all.
Thank you ladies, for your heartfelt longing to see God’s Kingdom come - we welcome you expressing that to God in true prayer alongside your brothers!
Have a great day!
Mark.