Reflections on 2 Timothy 3

2 Timothy 03 (Contemporary English Version)


1. You can be certain that in the last days there will be some very hard times.
2. People will love only themselves and money. They will be proud, stuck-up, rude, and disobedient to their parents. They will also be ungrateful, godless,
3. heartless, and hateful. Their words will be cruel, and they will have no self-control or pity. These people will hate everything that is good.
4. They will be sneaky, reckless, and puffed up with pride. Instead of loving God, they will love pleasure.
5. Even though they will make a show of being religious, their religion won't be real. Don't have anything to do with such people.
6. Some men fool whole families, just to get power over those women who are slaves of sin and are controlled by all sorts of desires.
7. These women always want to learn something new, but they never can discover the truth.
8. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, these people are enemies of the truth. Their minds are sick, and their faith isn't real.
9. But they won't get very far with their foolishness. Soon everyone will know the truth about them, just as Jannes and Jambres were found out.
10. Timothy, you know what I teach and how I live. You know what I want to do and what I believe. You have seen how patient and loving I am, and how in the past I put up with
11. trouble and suffering in the cities of Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. Yet the Lord rescued me from all those terrible troubles.
12. Anyone who belongs to Christ Jesus and wants to live right will have trouble from others.
13. But evil people who pretend to be what they are not will become worse than ever, as they fool others and are fooled themselves.
14. Keep on being faithful to what you were taught and to what you believed. After all, you know who taught you these things.
15. Since childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures that are able to make you wise enough to have faith in Christ Jesus and be saved.
16. Everything in the Scriptures is God's Word. All of it is useful for teaching and helping people and for correcting them and showing them how to live.
17. The Scriptures train God's servants to do all kinds of good deeds.
    
    

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    In the previous chapter Paul encouraged Timothy to be willing to "Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus." (2:3) In other words, don't turn away from Christ when following Christ becomes difficult. Later in the chapter, he tells Timothy how he will be able to do this. It is by fleeing "youthful passions," and pursuing "righteousness, faith, love, and peace." (2:22) Paul continued this instruction to Timothy in chapter 3.
    
    The theme throughout this instruction was to remain faithful to the cause of Christ in the face of difficulty. The difficulty in mind in chapter 2 was combating false teachers.  Paul adds to that in chapter 3 the increasing moral decay of society. "In the last days." Paul says, "people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of religion but denying its power." (3:1-5) Paul considered the time in which he lived to already be in the last days and the moral decline to already be happening. It was not going to become easier, but more difficult for Timothy.
    
    The false teachers Timothy combated were a product of this moral decline. Paul pointed out that it was from among this crowd caught up in the moral decline that the false teachers came. "For among them are those who worm their way into households and capture idle women burdened down with sins, led along by a variety of passions, always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." (3:6-7) These are not well-intentioned but misguided people. Misguided, yes, but well-intentioned, no. Rather than being motivated by good intentions, they are instead "blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."  Yes, they hold to "the form of religion" but they are not "lovers of God." Nor are they attempting to lead others to God through their false teaching. They are to be avoided, Paul says. It is at the hands of such people that "all those who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." (3:12)
    
    Paul then turned to instruction that would enable Timothy to remain faithful to Christ and the gospel.  It was through continuance in what he had learned from Paul and from the instruction of "the sacred Scriptures." For, he said, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." (3:16-17)