1 Timothy 2 Footnotes

2:4 God genuinely desires the salvation of all people (2Pt 3:9). Nevertheless, not all individuals will be saved (2Th 1:5-9). See note on 1Tm 4:10.

2:5 Although this verse emphasizes Jesus’s humanity, Paul also affirmed Jesus’s deity in this letter. He referred to Jesus’s special relationship with the Father (1:1-2; 6:13) who grants him the divine title Lord (1:2,12; 6:3,14). He implied Jesus’s heavenly existence before the incarnation (3:16) and said that Jesus’s saving of sinners (1:15) is a divine activity (4:10).

2:9 Paul sought to prohibit extravagant, expensive styles (recognized as immodest and seductive) accompanied by the wearer’s neglect of her own character.

2:11-15 First Co 11:5 (see note) shows Paul did not prohibit women from praying or prophesying publicly; roles of teaching and authority are in view here. Paul was no sexist, but a champion of the equality of men and women before God (Gl 3:28)—a sharp contrast to the chauvinistic teaching of many of his contemporaries. Paul recognized that male-female equality did not require abolishing all role distinctions, which were defined by God in creation. The woman was created to be a helper for the man (Gn 2:18-25). Eve’s exercise of authority over Adam brought disaster, illustrating the dangers of upsetting the family’s divinely ordained leadership structure. Evidently the false teachers taught that male authority in church and home and the woman’s childbearing role were curses for sin, which Jesus’s atoning work had eradicated (Gn 3:16). Paul recognized that Eve’s curse involved oppressive male leadership and pain in childbearing, but male leadership and childbearing were part of God’s plan for pre-fall creation (Gn 1:27-28; 2:18). Paul therefore insisted Christian wives were “saved” (restored to their pre-fall state or perhaps rescued from surrounding cultural influences like those seen in v. 9) by submitting to their husband’s compassionate leadership and through bearing and raising children. This is one way these Ephesian women could “work out” their final salvation (Php 2:12).