Difficult Times Ahead
1 But know this: Hard times will come in the last days. t 2 For people will be lovers of self, u lovers of money, v boastful, proud, w demeaning, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, x 3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, y without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, z 4 traitors, a reckless, b conceited, c lovers of pleasure d rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. e Avoid these people. f
6 For among them are those who worm their way into households and deceive gullible women overwhelmed by sins and led astray by a variety of passions, g 7 always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. h 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres i resisted Moses, j so these also resist the truth. They are men who are corrupt in mind k and worthless l in regard to the faith. 9 But they will not make further progress, for their foolishness will be clear to all, as was the foolishness of Jannes and Jambres.
Struggles in the Christian Life
10 But you have followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, m faith, patience, love, n and endurance, 11 along with the persecutions and sufferings o that came to me in Antioch, p Iconium, q and Lystra. r What persecutions I endured—and yet the Lord rescued me from them all. 12 In fact, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. s 13 Evil people and impostors will become worse, deceiving t and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, u 15 and you know that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, v which are able to give you wisdom for salvation w through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God ,x and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. y
C. The false teachers put in their last-days context (3:1–5). 3:1. Paul has just given Timothy one reason why he need not take opposition personally: God is in control of all things and all hearts (see also Ac 13:48; 16:14; Rm 8:28–30). Now he offers a second reason: opposition has a place in God’s timetable. Paul thus reintroduces the Satan-prompted opposition to Christ’s redemption he referred to at 1 Tm 4:1–5.
3:2–5. In 1 Timothy, legalism and asceticism were Paul’s target. In 2 Timothy, Paul aims at a range of ethical failings flowing from an overrealized eschatology (the mistaken notion that the resurrection is “already,” and there is no “not yet”). To deny that sin must die one last death at Jesus’s return is, ironically, to open the floodgates to an unbridled religion of self. It is not accidental that Paul’s list of vices opens with “lovers of self” (3:2) and closes with “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (3:4). Everything in between is about building up oneself and destroying others.
3:6–7. Unlike Timothy’s mother and grandmother (1:5), some women in the Ephesian congregation do not have the grounding in the Scriptures to see the implications of the opponents’ teaching. Paul traces these women’s gullibility to their being “overwhelmed by sins” and being “led astray by a variety of passions” (3:6). It is unclear whether he means simply that they have tender consciences making them vulnerable to wrong solutions (e.g., the asceticism of 1 Timothy) or, more sinisterly, that they are involved in illicit relations with the false teachers (the latter may explain Paul’s concern with sexual purity in these two letters; see 1 Tm 2:9–10; 3:2; 5:2, 11–15). Regardless, these women have an insatiable religious hunger, and this hunger perfectly complements the false teachers and their manipulative speculations (3:7).
3:8–9. Paul likens the false teachers to the magicians who opposed Moses and produced lying miracles before Pharaoh (3:8; see Ex 7:11–12, 22; 8:7—Paul uses names supplied by Jewish tradition). Further, Paul refers to them in verse 13 with a term that often means “magicians,” but here is translated “imposters”—Paul likely means “charlatans.” It is not so much that the false teachers perform miracles but that their spurious ideas about the resurrection and their empty promises of godliness cast a spell over undiscerning listeners. Paul is confident that their falsehoods will eventually be found out (3:9).
A. Third appeal, part one: Stay with what you know . . . (3:10–17). 3:10–14. The false teaching being circulated among the Ephesians is that the resurrection is entirely “now.” In his controversy with the Corinthians over whether there was still a resurrection to come, Paul pointed to his own sufferings as proof that “you have begun to reign as kings without us” (1 Co 4:8–13). Here in 2 Timothy, Paul reminds Timothy of the normalcy of suffering by taking him back to the events of Ac 13–14, when Paul ministered in Lystra, Timothy’s hometown (3:11). After being stoned and left for dead, Paul insisted on returning in order to teach (Ac 14:22). Timothy must courageously recommit himself to living and to teaching the same pattern, regardless of an increasingly fierce opposition (3:14).
3:15–17. Timothy can trust the lives of the people whose experiences have been shaped by Scripture. Of greater benefit, however, are the Scriptures themselves (by which Paul means our OT). The Scriptures are entirely trustworthy. They are the very breath of God (3:16a), and they find their coherence in Christ Jesus (3:15). [Inspiration]