Praying for Civil Authorities (1 Tim 2:1-7): A Contextual Study

Abstract

Most exegetes regard 1Timothy 2:1-7 as a general command for Christians to pray for all people and kings or rulers. This paper will demonstrate how Paul exhorts the church in Ephesus to pray for all people, including kings, in order to fulfill God's mission of bringing salvation to all humanity in the text under consideration. In the same vein, Christians in Nigeria must equally pray for themselves and civil leaders in order to exercise their mission in a country riddled with ills that dehumanize the image of God in the human person. To elaborate on the meaning of this passage, the grammatical structure of the text will be examined. This article argues that if 1Tim. 2:1-7 is read and understood, Christians in Nigeria would know that authority comes from God to humans, therefore they would appreciate and pray for civil authorities. Hence, the work uses contextual exegetical approach. This method combines rhetorical and literary analysis in the quest for theological meaning. Furthermore, it is a synchronic approach, this is because, it seeks to co-ordinate the different levels of meaning, the literary and theological, the historical and the hermeneutical with a view to drawing out the meaning and message of biblical text at the level of its composition and for today.