2:4

Here Paul stated the reasons that God would be pleased when believers prayed for everyone. Paul knew that God wanted two important things:

(a) that people are saved (2:4a)

(b) that people come to a knowledge of the truth (2:4b)

2:4a

wants everyone to be saved: This is the first thing that God wants for everyone, that is he wants to save everyone.

to be saved: In some languages it will be necessary to provide a subject here and say that it is God who saves people. In other languages it may be necessary to make explicit what people are to be saved from. God saves people from their sin.

2:4b

to come to the knowledge of the truth: Not only does God want to save everyone. He also wants everyone to understand the truth about him, not just with their minds. They should also act according to the truth.

the truth: In this context, Paul used the expression that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the truth to refer to the Christian message. Paul explained more about this in 2:5b through 2:6b.

In many languages this can be a difficult expression to translate. Three possible ways are:

God’s true message
-or-
what is true, that is, God’s message
-or-
the true message about God

General Comment on 2:3–4

In 2:4, Paul stated the reason that it is good to pray for other people and why it pleases God. In some languages, it may be necessary to reorder 2:3 and 2:4. One way to do this is:

4aGod wants all people to be saved 4band come to know the truth. Therefore, when we pray for everyone, 3awe are doing something right 3band pleasing God.

© 2003 by SIL International®

Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.