IS CHRIST THE SAVIOUR OF ALL MEN? II
A study on 1 Tim. 4:10
12/9/07
Last week we began a study into a passage of Scripture that can be difficult to understand. It is one of the Scripture that when simply read on it own, that is read out of it’s context and out of the context of Scripture as a whole, it seems to say something contrary to what the rest of Scripture says. It is one of those passages that simply cannot be pulled out of its place and then form a doctrine based on what it seems to say.
As I pointed out last week whenever we read the Bible we must take into account two means by which all Scripture must be interpreted. There is a method we must follow it we are to a 1 Tim. 2:15 states rightly divide the word of truth, that is the Scriptures.
First we must look at the context of the passage. You cannot simply pull a passage out of its context and say this means so and so. The passage is where it is at, it is in the context it is in because that is where the Holy Spirit of God placed it. To pull it out of its place in Scripture is to say we know better then the Holy Spirit of God who is in fact the author of Scripture.
Second, Scripture must be allowed to interpret Scripture. If your understand of a passage contradicts other Scripture you have problem. I will say that your understanding of that passage is wrong. Scripture does not contradict itself. I don’t care what any opponent of the Bible may say. Some say it contradicts itself because they do not take into account the context of the passage or they simply do not understand what a contradiction is.
Regarding Scripture interpreting Scripture John Piper states this "The word of God ... is the only rule to direct us. You cannot have a subordinate standard. You have one rule, and everything else is under the control of that rule. The Bible is the only touchstone. It judges the preaching. It judges the decrees of councils. It judges the creeds of the church. It judges even our interpretation of the Bible itself."
So we must keep in mind those two things, Context, and Scripture must interpret Scripture, if we to get a true understanding of whatever passage we are studying.
One last thing I want to remind you of that I pointed out last week that bears repeating, Just because folks may understand certain passages in different ways, does not mean that the passage does in fact have different meanings. There may be different applications, but there is only one meaning.
Last week I used the example that if a passage states “Paul sat on a chair.” And a person who does not believe in chairs understands that word chair to mean table, does not in fact mean that the word chair means table. The persons belief does not change the meaning of chair. If the Greek word means chair, it means chair whether we like it or not. This is not to say that there are words in Scripture that are used in different ways, again we go back to context.
But a passage of Scripture is NOT validated by OUR understanding of it, it is validated by what it states within its context. While there may in fact be different viable interpretations of a passage, in the end only one is correct, only one is the truth.
Let us now turn to the passage that we began looking at last week. Please turn with me to 1 Tim 4:10.
I want to remind of the background of 1 Tim because this will play a part in our understand of 1 Tim. 4:10. 1 Tim is of course actually a letter. It is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to young man by the name of Timothy. The letter is written sometime around 62-66 AD.
Paul writes to Timothy in order to encourage him in his work of overseeing the Ephesian church. In 1 Tim. 1:3 we read , “As I urged you when I went into Macedonia––remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine,”
This tells us the location of Timothy, which is in Ephesus. We can also see that 1 Timothy is somewhat of a church leadership manual.
Because context is important in our understanding of this passage I want us to read beginning in verse 6;
“If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed. But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness. For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.”
The phrase that has causes some controversy is that last part of verse 10; “…because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.”
The question is how are we to understand that phrase “God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe.” What does Paul mean when he states that God is the Saviour of all men?
I noted last week that there have four ways in which people have sought to understand those words. Last week we dealt with the Universalist view. I gave a little lesson on Unitarian Universalists as well as what some would classify as Christian Universalists.
They would look at this passage and say that God as the Saviour of all mankind means that He does in fact save all mankind regardless of faith in Jesus Christ.
We took note that not only does this not fit in the context of the whole of Scripture, that is Scripture is clear that there are those who receive eternal life because of faith in Christ, and those who receive eternal damnation because of their rejection of Christ.
But this view also does not fit in the context of the passage when one considers that last part of the passage, “especially of those who believe.”
That phrase does not make any sense if one holds to the Universalist view.
Let us now look at the second view I want to out, the second way some folks have come to understand 1 Tim. 4:10. This is what can be called the “Free Will view”, some call it the Arminian view. But it should be noted that not all who would call themselves Arminian, would necessarily understand this passage in this way.
It is called that simply because it points towards man’s free will as being a point of Salvation. That is not to say that man can save himself, he is still in need of God’s grace through the Holy Spirit, it is this Prevenient grace that enables the person to respond to the gospel and cooperate with God in salvation. For more on all that you are going to have to go to the adult class SS.
So what does this free will view state. How does it understand those words, “because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.”?
They would say that what Paul is speaking of here is that it is God’s desire that every person be saved without exception upon a profession of faith. However, it is their free choice, their free will which will make that determination.
Man because of his free will is able to thwart the working of the Holy Spirit. He is able to resist that will of God. So when Paul states that God who is the Saviour of all men, what he is saying basically is that God make all man savable, and the rest is up to the individual person to respond to God’s prevenient grace.
So God is Saviour of all man because He has provided salvation for all mankind without exception upon the condition of a free will act of faith.
Thus the phrase, “especially those who believe” is a contrast between those God makes savable, and those who are actually saved through faith.
In looking at the context of this passage to see if this view is not feasible. Note what is said in this passage; “because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.”
The text of 1 Tim. 4:10 does not say that God makes men savable but that He is (in some sense) the Saviour of all man. The context does not say it is possible that God is Saviour of all men, but that He is.
Think of this in human terms for a moment. Say there is a lifeguard and he sees two men drowning. He throw a life ring to each man. One man grabs that life ring and is saved, the other refuses the life ring and drowns. I do not believe that it would make sense to say that the lifeguard is the Saviour of both men, especially for the one who grabbed the life ring. The lifeguard is not the Saviour of the man who drowned.
He may of provided the opportunity to save the man, but providing the opportunity does not make him a Saviour, that is one who saves.
Some may argue here that Saviour is a title of God here in 1 Tim. 4:10 and that is true regardless of whether He is accepted as such or not. Again to put it in human terms the lifeguard is still a lifeguard regardless of whether someone drowns in his pool or not.
But what that would fail to take into account is the word Saviour here in 1 Tim. 4:10. It is the Greek word “SOTER” (so-tare) which is a noun, is anarthrous which means it is without an article. This indicates that Saviour here in 1 Tim. 4:10 is not a title, but tell us something that God is doing. It describes His action.
As Dr. Steven Baugh professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary, states “He is "a Savior" of all people, because he acts as a Savior toward all.”
I also believe that is well worth pointing out that if you read the context of 1 Tim. 4. You will find that Paul is not speaking directly on the issue of the atoning work of Christ. In reading from verse 6-10, and you can go back to the very beginning of chapter 4, you can see that Paul is not discussing how people are saved, He is speaking about teaching proper doctrine and so forth. More on that later.
So then, what we see than is that the free will view fails in taking into account the context of 1 Tim. 4:10. The context is, again that Christ is the Saviour, not could be, or wants to be, but “is” in some sense the Saviour of all mankind. It is an act that He is doing, not desires to do.
Let us now look to the third view of how some understand 1 Tim. 4:10.
This is called the “distributive salvation” view. This is how more then a few Calvinist see 1 Tim. 4:10. I must point out that not all Calvinist would hold to this view.
They understand that when 1 Tim. 4:10 states that “God, who is the Savior of all men,” that what Paul means is that God is the Saviour of all kinds of men. That is to say that God is Saviour of all kinds of men in that He is bestowing His salvation on all kinds, or classes of men.
In other words within the elect of God are Jews and Gentiles, kings and paupers, men and women, God is saving all kinds of people.
The word “all” becomes not an absolute term but a relative term.
This addresses the fact that the word Saviour tell us that God is doing something, that He is Saving someone. God is saving His elect. He is not making it possible, but He is actually saving them, thus He is their Saviour.
I will say this, there are times that Scripture does use words in an non absolute way, again we must look at the context. A good example is found in 1 Tim 6:10, though there are others in Scripture;
The NKJV reads; “For the love of money is a root of all [kinds of] evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
The reason that “kinds of” are in parentheses is that they do not appear in the Greek.
Young’s Literal translation puts it this way, “for a root of all the evils is the love of money, which certain longing for did go astray from the faith, and themselves did pierce through with many sorrows;”
It is clear from the context of the passage and from Scripture itself is that the intent of 1 Tim 6:10 is not to say every single evil comes from the love of money. The context of the passage is to say that there are all kinds of evil that come from an unspiritual desire for money.
But is that what is meant in 1 Tim. 4:10. Does the context allow for a relative use of the word “all men”? I would say no.
This view has to deal with the second part of the phrase, “because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, “especially of those who believe”
If one states that the elect of God are included in God being the Saviour of all men, then who is the group of those who “especially believe”. You cannot have the elect of God who do not believe in Christ, who do not have faith. If God is the Saviour of someone in the salvific sense of the word, then that person must believe, that person must have faith. The last part of the phrase does not fit with this view, it makes no sense.
There are those who hold this view who say that the Greek word here translated “especially” does not mean epically but “namely”. So we end up with a paraphrase as follows of 1 Tim. 4:10 ; "We have put our hope in a living God, who gives (eternal) salvation to all kinds of peoples namely believers from among those various groups.”
The problem I see with this position is that it takes a passage of Scripture, and rather then letting it say what it says, they have taken their view and forced the passage to say that which agrees with their position.
I also will once more point out that if you read the context of 1 Tim. 4. You will find that Paul is not speaking directly on the issue of the atoning work of Christ. Paul is not discussing how people are saved, He is speaking about teaching proper doctrine and so forth. I again will be talking about that more next week.
So in looking a 1 Tim. 4:10 we have seen that the Universalist view must be rejected because it neither fits in with the context of Scripture or the context of the passage.
The “free will view” most be rejected as well, because it too does not fit in with the context of 1 Tim. 4:10, nor the context of chapter 4.
Also the “distributive salvation” view of 4:10 must be rejected on the same grounds.
Where does that leave us? How are we to understand 1 Tim. 4:10? What is the Holy Spirit saying in this passage? You are going to have to come back next week as we will take a look at the view I believe is the true view. A view that best fits into the context of the passage and the context of Scripture itself.
I closing I will say this, no matter what view you hold to. No matter if you agree with this assessment of this passage thus far, one thing that there can be no doubt about is that in order to have eternal life you must have faith in Jesus Christ. You must believe that He died for your sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day.
Without Him, without His gospel, there is no salvation. I pray that you have placed your faith in Christ. Trusting in Him for the forgiveness of sin, acknowledging Him as Lord and Saviour of your life.
If you have any question regarding your salvation please speak with me.
LET US PRAY
