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1 Timothy 2:1 · World English Bible

1 Timothy 2:1 Meaning I Exhort Therefore

I exhort therefore, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and givings of thanks be made for all men:

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What does 1 Timothy 2:1 mean?

Prayer comes first in the gathering's work, and four words stack because one would be too small: asking out of need, plain address, formal petition, thanks. Intercession was the word for a petition handed up to a king, filed when only he could act.

From the Protestant reading below.

1 Timothy 2:1 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

PROTESTANT

Protestant

Prayer comes first in the gathering's work, and four words stack because one would be too small: asking out of need, plain address, formal petition, thanks. Intercession was the word for a petition handed up to a king, filed when only he could act.

Thanks belongs there too, hardest when the people in view are the ones making life hard. The reach is everyone, nobody screened out for being hostile, foreign, or in power. That follows from what God is doing: His mercy in Christ is offered that widely, and prayer asks Him to bring people into it.

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Protestant lens

Live 1 Timothy 2:1 today

  1. Name three people out loud tonight and wish each one well, and make the third one someone who has been difficult this week. Keep it short, and do it before you have talked yourself out of it.
  2. Instead of talking about a hard person behind their back, say one true good thing about them to someone else. It will cost you something, and it will lower the temperature.
  3. For whoever holds power over your week, a boss, a landlord, a politician you cannot stand, wish them wisdom rather than a bad day. You can still disagree with them completely.

Who have I quietly written off, and what would it cost me to want good for them?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism · metta

Goodwill is practiced outward in widening circles, first to those you love, then to strangers, then to the one you cannot stand. The last circle is the one that changes you.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

When someone wrongs you, remember you share a nature with them and that anger harms you more than it corrects them. Wish them well, which is the strangest and strongest response available.

Sufism

The heart is widened by praying for the one who injured you, because a prayer like that has no room left in it for a grudge.

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