Pray for the President

Did that get your attention?

Ours is not a convenient faith.  We are bound by the commands of the word of God no matter how difficult they might be for us.  While there was a lot of division in evangelical and fundamental circles regarding our previous president, there is not much sympathy at all for President Biden.  It doesn’t matter.  Paul said to pray for him.

In fact, we are supposed to pray for (not just against) Nancy, AOC, and all that bunch too.  Some of you are getting a little hot under the collar now.

Therefore, I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle—I am speaking the truth [d]in Christ and not lying—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-7)

All is an inclusive word that leaves no room for exemptions.

“Yeah, but he didn’t actually mean __________________!”

Paul anticipated such a protest and clarified.

Pray for kings and all who are in authority.

This epistle was probably written in Rome or Spain between Paul’s first and second Roman imprisonment.  When he said kings, he and his audience knew exactly who he was talking about.

Nero was the Caesar to whom Paul had appealed.  The inner workings of the household of Caesar would have been well-known to Paul.  Crowned at 17 years old Nero lived a life of incredible wickedness.  He had his mother, two of his wives, and many Roman leaders executed.  from, Not many years after Paul wrote this, Nero would blame the Roman fire of 64 AD and inaugurate the first great persecution of Christians.

Paul did not know this was coming, but the Holy Spirit did, and it is the Holy Spirit that inspired these words.

Pray that God would use them to provide a quiet and peaceable environment in which we can share the blessings of our faith with those around us (1 Timothy 2:2).  Under Tiberius, Christianity and Judaism too had enjoyed such a time of stability.  But the excesses of Caligula, the weakness of Claudius (who expelled the Christians and Jews from Rome) and the evils of Nero were changing all that. God does not always give us what we ask for in this prayer, but we are still required to ask.

Pray for their souls.

Should there be anyone beyond our prayers for their eternal souls?  Paul’s answer to that is “Absolutely not!” Is it bitterness or hatred that drives the names of certain people from our prayer lists?  If Jesus could pray for the Roman soldiers that drove the nails through His hands, we can pray for those who are outspoken enemies of the faith.

Or is it unbelief that keeps us from naming them before our Lord?  Who is it that is beyond our Lord to save?  And who are we to determine who is worthy of salvation prayers and who is not?

In this context, Paul utters these words.

. . . who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

There was a soft place in Paul’s heart for such opponents of the faith.  Paul was called by God to reach just such people (1 Timothy 2:7).  Paul was one of those people.  He was on his way to Damascus to persecute believers when God turned his life upside down.

We can identify with the Ananias of Acts 9. When the Lord told him to go to Saul of Tarsus and restore his sight, Ananias questioned.

“Are you sure?  This man has come to persecute us?” (my paraphrase)

However, God told him to go.  To go pray and heal.

But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children[a] of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:15-16).

His plans are beyond our ability to imagine.  So, we must pray.  Pray for peace and the opportunity to live out our faith unhindered, but also pray for the salvation of the most unlikely among us. We have a big God.