Let us listen attentively to the Word of God, 1 Timothy 4, verse 10. 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. Let us pray.
And we read here in this simple verse the encouragement of the apostle Paul to Timothy, that they are both suffering because they believe and trust and are following the living God, a living God who has the power to deliver and preserve all men, especially those who believe. And may this be encouragement to us as well, God, as we dig into this passage and understand what it means that the living God is the Savior of all men. We ask these things by the blood of Christ, our Lord and Savior.
Amen. One of the more or less perennial debates since the late 1500s, within Protestantism and even a little bit earlier, is a disagreement over whether or not God is the Savior of all mankind, of everyone, everywhere, at all times. And if so, in what sense? Luther believed that Jesus lived and died for his people, the elect.
But his followers split off soon thereafter, teaching that God wanted everyone saved, and so Jesus died for the whole world. In the Reformed churches, Calvin, Knox, and the others consistently taught the same as Luther. But the next generation, as I mentioned, later in the 1500s, under a professor of Leiden and Holland, Jacob Arminius, went a different direction in his teaching, culminating in the grand meeting of the Reformed churches, of Holland in particular, but also many international places in Europe and in England sent representatives, where Arminianism as such, the teaching that Christians can fall away, that was one of the bigger debates at the time, and that God indeed does save and die for everyone, was thoroughly rejected.
Of course, in these debates, various verses became the center of attention. As you can imagine, this verse right here would become one of the center of attention as well. So let’s look more carefully at it.
We can see why and how, what it does mean in this regard. So we have two points because it fits the twofold description here of the living God, right? Because the rest of the sentence here describes who this living God is. Who is the Savior of all men? That’s one point.
Especially of those who believe, that’s the other point. So you can see there’s a similarity, Savior of all, both, but there’s also a difference, especially. And we’re going to see what the similarity is and the difference in this text and in the idea, the theological truth therein.
God as Savior of All Men
God is the Savior of all men. The Savior defined, what does that word mean? In what sense is God the Savior of all mankind? Clearly not in the saving sense, in which case everyone would be saved. Then there would be no distinction between all mankind and those who believe.
Everyone’s saved. So there’s already a distinction here in the text itself. Those who believe, those who don’t.
In fact, not everyone is indeed saved or delivered in the sense that we typically think of it, the saving of the soul. And therefore, if that was true, the difference between believers and unbelievers would be gone. It would make sense to have this statement.
It’s not that all are spiritually saved, but especially believers are spiritually saved. What? No. So you already see there’s already a distinction there, just thinking of it that way.
He’s a Savior in a twofold manner for the outward affairs of mankind. It cannot be the inward affairs of mankind. Again, they would also be saved.
A paraphrase may help. We suffer reproach, right? This is the sentence here, verse 10. To this end, we both labor and suffer reproach.
That is, we are trying to be faithful with the teaching of our Lord and Savior, verse 9, and we’re suffering for it. We suffer reproach because we trust in the living Lord, this is my paraphrase, who delivers men, the implication being from all kinds of troubles, but especially delivers those who believe that is like us, Timothy and Paul. There’s an encouragement here.
Why else would he tell them that we’re both suffering? Why? Because we trust in the living God. But it’s this God who takes care of the world. Shouldn’t that encourage Timothy? Yeah, but especially believers.
And Timothy’s a believer, and he’s all the more encouraged thereby. So the word here, Savior, or you could translate it deliverer or variants thereof, is taken broadly for delivering or saving in this life from trials and difficulties. Because what? It is the living God.
That’s the description here in the verse. It is the living God that we trust and believe in. And as the living God, He is the source of life and therefore the protection of life and the grantor of life and the preserver of life, of everything in this world, of all mankind.
They are alive because God keeps them alive. See that? Then more narrowly, He delivers, that is He’s the Savior of those who believe in particular, that is unto eternal life, not just temporary life. Because the contrast again is here, what? Between men on the one hand, and He literally says believers on the other.
Because these men aren’t believers, you are a believer. That’s one of the clear contrasts here in this text. Now if we look at another text that uses the same word for especially here that you read, Galatians 6.10 will also show us and remind us again of this distinction.
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially those who are the household of faith. And we know intuitively just reading this that we’re not going to say that we do good to all and especially the household of faith the same way, in the same manner. There’s more intensity.
There’s even distinctions and differences in the household of faith, particularly the saving of the soul where we are given the means of grace the rest of the world doesn’t have. So there’s already a contrast built in into the word especial. This depends on the particular context, what the unity is, that is the similarity in our text, deliverer, preserver, Savior, and the differences.
Well, the body is delivered and protected, but our soul and body are delivered and protected. So the point being, God will preserve us through our suffering, as he says here, to this end that we suffer reproach, for if he takes care of the unbelieving world with food and shelter, he will all the more take care of you and your soul. And so in a twofold manner, as I said before, that he is a Savior of all mankind, as a preserver and as a rescuer, as a preserver and as a rescuer.
As a preserver, that is preservation. Hebrews 11.7, we read, by faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. So the word here, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, the same word, but obviously it doesn’t mean the saving of souls per se.
He isn’t the Savior of souls. Christ is the Savior of souls. This is an external preservation and protection of the family of Noah, of their concerns of this life.
And so he preserves and delivers their body there in the account in Acts, as picked up in Hebrews 11. And this is done in particular through providence and the church. Through providence and the church, God, the living God, not a dead God, who has all power within him and preserves life, preserves it through providence and his church.
From the familiarity, of course, with the New Testament teaching there, New Testament there, he, that is Jesus, says he makes his son to rise on evil and on the good, it’s in Matthew 5, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. They’re able to eat, be protected from the elements of this world because God gives them these good blessings. He is their preserver.
He is their Savior. See? The Old Testament has a number of places that have more details, such as Psalm 36. This is very fascinating.
Psalm 36, 6 and following. And we read the following. Lord, you preserve man and beast.
Right? How precious is your loving kindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of your wings. They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your pleasures. For with you is the fountain of life.
In your light we see light. O continue your loving kindness to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright in heart. And so here, as well as elsewhere in the Psalms and the Old Testament, all of creation, all those passages, you may remember some of them going through providence, arguing that God is behind history in guiding and protecting and preserving all things, as Proverbs 36 describes.
That’s God as a Savior in that sense. That without Him, they would starve to death, they would freeze to death, and they would die. Even the beasts.
So you can say, in essence, He preserves the entire world. Now, the context here is what? Fallen creation. The sons of men are fallen men.
The sons of Adam and the sons of Eve. And yet, in spite of their rebellion against Him, God still preserves and delivers them and watches over their bodies, doesn’t He? And in some sense, even over their souls, so far as they haven’t died yet and gone to hell. But that doesn’t mean that Christ literally saved their souls, does it? No, it doesn’t.
There’s a difference in what the emphasis here in the text on saving the world versus saving those who believe. But He’s a Savior in the sense of watching over and preserving both of them in His providence. And unbelievers, even in particular, they ought to magnify the Lord for preserving their lives.
But part of what it means to be a rebel is to, well, shake the fist at God and not ever acknowledge that fact. But the prosperity that they have in the land of America and in the West is not ultimately from their hands. All the blunders they’ve made and the wars we’ve created in the last hundred years, they should have wiped themselves out by now.
But the loving God, the Creator God, was also their judge. Preserved them nevertheless. And through the church.
Now, if you remember when I preached on 1 Corinthians 15 as Christ the God-Man, the mediator, and He has His mediatorial kingdom, and how He uses providence for the good of the church indirectly by giving us safe havens and good societies that preserve us and protect us, right, for the church. That’s what’s going on here as well. The Savior, Jesus Christ, has all power and dominion, Jude 125, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory, majesty, dominion, power, both now and forever.
He’s not just the Savior of the soul, but the Savior of the body and preserver of all things by His dominion and His power, who is all wise and directs and guides all these things, as 1 Corinthians 15, 25 reminds us, for He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. He’s reigning now. He is guiding and directing providence and the church to make a difference, to preserve societies, to preserve even life, because the church, in particular, that God uses here as a Savior of all, is 11 in society, both collectively and individually, both positively and negatively, of course.
The negative, that is, convicting of wrongdoing, preaching of the law, warning them to stop these things and destroying themselves. We’re preserving them in that sense. That is, we are an instrument of the mediator, Jesus Christ.
And, of course, positively, through good example and teaching, which brings us to the second way in which God, the living God, is the Savior of all men, both through providence and the church as a subset of providence and by preserving us in society, but as a rescuer as well. Not just giving them food, water, and shelter, but rescuing them, delivering them from their own follies, from even death itself, for a while. The magistrate, the police, the firemen, can imagine all the stories.
You probably know some of them. You’ve seen them in news media, like, what were these dummies doing? And God brings them these deliverers, right? They’re from God. They don’t act independently of His plans.
And He saves them from a burning house. He saves them from terrorist attacks. He stops wars.
That’s the idea here. That’s what it means that He rescues them as well, that He is their Savior. He protects their bodies in spite of their wickedness and rebellion against them, of course, especially through the church.
We’re by positive example and teaching. This is the real rescuer. You want salvation, not just for your body, but for your soul, we point to Jesus Christ.
It’s the teaching of the law and gospel, that the law may guard them from foolishness, of course. And it can, and it does. And they listen at times.
A lot of Christian influence in the West. We forget about that as much as things have gone bad in the last 50, 80 years. But of course, the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they’re called to repent and trust in Him, that He would deliver and save not only their body, of all men, but their soul, that they would be believers.
God’s goodness and His providence through the church is to call men to repentance. Romans 2.5 reminds us of this fact. Or do you, he argues against his naysayers there in the book of Romans, or do you despise the riches of His goodness, the goodness of the Father, forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance, the goodness of God in preserving nations and empires and cities and families in spite of their foolishness, rescuing them from their bad decisions and even trying to kill themselves, as it were, through collective stupid decisions and individual decisions.
Instead of crying out to God and acknowledging His longsuffering, His forbearance and His goodness that should lead them to cry out for mercy, they spit in His face. So He is the Savior of all, insofar as He preserves their body and even rescues them from their stupid decision that could have brought them to death and hell even quicker. Why? That they would repent.
His goodness and His forbearance is that they would be led to repentance, that they would become believers by God’s grace like the rest of us. So that leaves us to the second point, God as a Savior of all believers. Believing makes all the difference here, obviously.
God as Savior of All Believers
There’s a similarity is real, the word Savior describes for both of us, but the differences are as real as well because the similarity is limited. The difference of salvation between the two is great for the preservation of all things is unto judgment unless they repent. It’s short, it’s limited, it will only last as long as their life is around and then God calls them to judgment unless they repent and believe.
And it’s believing that marks all the difference in this text. The Savior of all men who don’t believe is the implication, especially those, in particular those who do believe, who do trust, who do rely upon Christ Jesus and not upon their own good works. We are blessed by the spirit of illumination as Paul and Timothy were, granted regeneration, the waking up of our soul as we talked about in Sunday School class, the great rescue from God.
He preserved us and rescued us. The living God is our Savior of believers is seen both before conversion and after conversion and an after conversion both in body and in soul. So, pre-salvation or before conversion, the spirit of God has worked upon us.
He has delivered us. He has preserved us. His saving is unto an efficacious cause to a full effect upon our soul by granting us regeneration.
He watched over us and guided us until we could hear the gospel and believe. So, in that way as well, God is the Savior of us, rescuer of us, preserver of our body and our soul to the time in which we are appointed to convert and to cry out to Him for deliverance. That’s what I’m talking about.
From conception to here and now, all things have been guided by His glorious hand of providence. Your body was clothed and fed, the schooling that you went to, the family that you had, the path you walked down life, the decisions that you made did not catch them off guard. And the decisions that you made or did not make, the people that you met or did not meet brought you to the point in which you cried out for mercy.
That was the Lord God exercising His prerogatives as one who preserves all men, but especially His people, to the point in which they believe. It’s a glorious truth. It’s a wonderful truth.
Brought you to the saving knowledge of our Lord and Savior. Think specifically of the times in your life, the many times that you did foolish things, especially as a kid or a teenager. You were this close to death.
You didn’t even know it. The world chalks it up as random events, but we understand it’s God protecting us, preserving the world, but especially His people, those who in this case haven’t believed yet, but they’re going to believe because God is guiding and directing them by His power and His might and His wisdom. The near misses while driving or walking or hiking, while choking, the bad influences that you could have run into or followed down instead of fleeing from them, the bad influences that you did give into, but didn’t go all the way.
Somehow, some way, it seems that all fell apart. God preserved you and brought you to regeneration. That’s the activity before conversion of God being the Savior, the preserver, the protector from your foolishness that could have let you off another path and you would deny Jesus forever and ever.
It wasn’t you. It wasn’t your family. They’re part of it, of course.
They are means to an end in which God exercises His power to guide and direct such that the people that you met, people that you didn’t meet, decisions that you made, decisions that you didn’t make, places you went or didn’t go or went very close to all brought you to that point of conversion, of hearing the gospel, of praying and crying out for mercy, of accepting Jesus and saying yes to Him and no to the world. This is our Lord and Savior guiding and preserving us to the right moment, to the right people who directed us to Jesus, our Lord and Savior, to the pastor, to the friend, to that Bible as we heard in prayer time in the back of the car. It reminds us that this is really true, that this is very personal for us, the changes in our life brought about by God, the living God, the all-powerful God, the almighty God, the all-wise God, the all-benevolent and patient Lord who did guide us, preserve us, and protect us, that we would hear the word of truth and that we moved from this relationship of hating Him to God the Creator preserving our body and now preserving our soul.
The salvation of the body, of course, after we’re born again, we’re given this promise. The general case of God being the Savior of all mankind and the special case of God being your Savior both include preserving the body. They’re still here, still walking, breathing, because God is preserving them.
Yet in the Christian’s body, even if it’s more broken than the unbelievers, and some are, has a guarantee they don’t have, that you will be given a better body and a better universe, a better world, a new heaven and a new earth, a time in which our Lord and Savior and the glorious return of our God, Jesus Christ, will return and give us that better body. So that is Him being a Savior of our body. Yes, He also saves the body of unbelievers, but they don’t have that guarantee.
They don’t have that change. They don’t have that faith. Meanwhile, we have many of the same providential tools, in preserving our body.
God does not preserve all men willy-nilly, but gives them the wisdom and the gifts, the wherewithal to create a family, to create a house, to create a civilization, to preserve one another. We’re called to do the same thing. We should not be foolish and say, well, you know, God preserves and protects and saves all kinds of people, especially believers, so we’re just going to sit here and wait for it to happen.
No. That’s why Paul wrote to Timothy. He’s like, let’s get things done.
Let’s make a plan. Let’s not do this. Let’s do this instead.
Because he knows God is working in and through them, and through the efforts and common sense that we have, that we’re supposed to take care of our bodies to the glory of God, and not just give up and say, whatever, God’s in charge. So lastly, the salvation of the soul. He is our Savior, especially those who believe before we believe, after we believe, and after we believe, it’s both body and soul to guarantee that, yeah, your body’s wracked with sin, but it’ll get better.
It may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. The saving of the soul. Even in the case of unbelievers, as I pointed out, their soul is preserved for now, because God could call them all right now.
He has no, there’s no moral principle against him saying, okay, it’s over with. It’s time for judgment. But as we read in Romans 2, his forbearance, his long-suffering, his patience is to lead them to repentance, if they would but repent, submit, and believe.
But believer souls, of course, are preserved and transformed right now. That’s the big difference. Regeneration wakes up our mind, wakes up our will, wakes up our emotions, so that we believe and trust in living God.
And so when he’s a Savior of man, he preserves their body and even their soul in a limited sense. But especially of those who believe, he’s highlighting it’s the work of God. To be a living God means he’s an active God.
He’s not a passive God. And he’s in charge, and he’s guiding and directing all things for his glory. And in our life, he’s preserving us and our soul as well, and gives us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, regeneration.
He is involved in our believing by his power that we trust in Jesus. Otherwise, we’d be like everyone else. I know the world likes to make us feel guilty at times.
And we’ll look at you guys, think you’re special or something. Well, I mean, first of all, we are by God’s grace, as I highlighted last week. We are God’s chosen people, his chosen treasure.
But that’s the highlight. It’s because of him. It’s God.
It’s all about, it’s God. He possesses, he owns us. It’s not like we’re like, oh, I think I’ll decide one day.
No, we know it came from him. It’s all of grace, grace, mercy, and compassion, and long-suffering. Thankfully, that he is a living God.
And therefore, we are called not to a dead idea or religion, but to a living, glorious religion, the gift of our Holy Spirit. And such deliverance is through the means granted to us, given to us, internally, of course, the spirit of living God, giving us life and that more abundantly, but externally, the means of grace, especially preaching and teaching, hearing the word of God, and meditating upon it, and praying according to it, and praising God according to it, and listening to its message and truth in our lives. I’ll apply it a little different here, a little different there, to be sure.
But this is the way in which we become believers. This is the way in which he preserves us as well as our Savior. He saves us the uttermost, and part of that is the tools that he has granted us in his providence, in history, here and now, the means of grace, both public and private, especially the word of God, which is the means of grace, par excellence, outside of Christ.
This is a privilege and a blessing that we should embrace. When he describes here to Timothy that God is the living God, and he saves all, and especially saves the believer, it’s in the context of what? Timothy being a pastor who preached the truth, and the truth was preached to him as well, and he believed, and Paul believed. There was a time in which they did not believe, highlighting all the more the great power of our Lord and Savior.
Our God is glorious and kind even to those who hate him, brothers and sisters. That’s what you see here when it says, and describes the living God as one who is the Savior or preserver of all men. He delivers them from foolish decisions and preserves them at times.
You’ve seen it perhaps in your family’s life, and certainly in your own life, but as only his people, those who believe and trust in him that he saves to the uttermost, in the most everlasting fashion. Praise the Lord, God Almighty, for his infinite kindness in granting us salvation, body and soul, brothers and sisters, that he does indeed preserve all things, but especially his people. Let us pray.
Indeed, God above, we rejoice that this message is true, that you are a kind God to all men, and those who hate you and flee from you and curse your name and even persecute your people, but especially, God, you are a Savior, deliverer, and rescuer of those who believe and trust in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. May indeed all of us here, we pray, continue to trust in him. Give all of us, we ask, more of your spirit.
By the blood of Christ, our Lord and Savior, we pray and trust in him. Amen.