(3:1-9)

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; and avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. And just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected as regards the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two came to be. (3:1–9)

     The full counsel of God has been displeasing, unacceptable, and even repugnant to self-centered, self-serving, and worldly mankind throughout the ages. But even in the professing church today there is greater confusion, apostasy, moral decay, and tolerance for things that are clearly unscriptural than ever before. Sermons on current issues, selectively using Bible passages that are “relevant” and “positive,” are attracting many hearers, including genuine but misled and worldly believers. “The time will come,” Paul writes later in this epistle, “when [many in the church] will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires” (2 Tim. 4:3).

DIFFICULT TIMES

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. (3:1)

     In the intervening 2,000 years, the apostle’s divinely revealed prediction of difficult times has come true as heresies have become progressively more characteristic of nominal Christianity. In this passage he gives the most serious possible command to avoid, expose, and oppose spiritual impostors in the church.

Throughout church history the full counsel of God has been unpalatable to many who have claimed the name of Christ. In his book Damned Through the Church (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1970), John Warwick Montgomery discusses the difficult times as he offers a list of what he calls “the damnable epochs of church history.” He identifies and discusses seven specific movements or theological orientations—from the sacramentalism of the Middle Ages (also called the Dark Ages) to the subjectivism that is so rampant in our own day—that are clearly unbiblical, ungodly, and destructive of the body of Christ. As the title of the book implies, these false gospels are damning to their adherents.

In each of those difficult times, men’s ideas were substituted for God’s truth and therefore for God Himself. Under sacramentalism, the church replaced God; under rationalism, reason was god; under orthodoxism, god was sterile, impersonal orthodoxy; under politicism, god was the state; under ecumenism, god was uncritical fellowship and cooperation among nominal Christians; under experientialism, god became personal experience; and under subjectivism, which still reigns in much of Christendom, self has become god.

It would be appropriate to add to Montgomery’s list the current emphases on mysticism, which seeks to determine truth about God by intuition and feeling, and on pragmatism, which attempts to determine what is true by what produces desired effects. These movements do not come and go but come to stay, so that as the years go on, the church accumulates them, and the battles continue.

Besides our present text, the only other prediction Paul made to Timothy is found in the first letter, in which he gives a similar warning: “The Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” (1 Tim. 4:1–2).

That problem was not new to God’s people. Jeremiah wrote, “The Lord said to me, The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility and the deception of their own minds’” (Jer. 14:14). Later he relates that “among the prophets of Jerusalem I [the Lord] have seen a horrible thing: The committing of adultery and walking in falsehood; and they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one has turned back from his wickedness. All of them have become to Me like Sodom, and her inhabitants like Gomorrah” (Jer. 23:14). The prophet then warned, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; they speak a vision of their own imagination, not from the mouth of the Lord’” (v. 16).

The most serious and lamentable aspect of such rejection of God and His Word is that the danger comes from within the church. As noted several times, near the end of his third missionary journey Paul sent for the Ephesian elders to meet with him at Miletus. Pouring out his heart to them, he warned, “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30, emphasis added).

Although our Lord assures us, “I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it” (Matt. 16:18), He did not promise that His people would be free from spiritual danger and harm. Much to the contrary. Near the beginning of His ministry, in the Sermon on the Mount, He warned, “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15). In the guise of spiritual shepherds and prophets, who were noted for wearing wool garments, they devour and destroy the very ones they profess to lead and protect. Zechariah spoke of such men as those who “put on a hairy robe in order to deceive” (Zech. 13:4). Earlier in His revelation to that prophet, the Lord declared, “For behold, I am going to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for the perishing, seek the scattered, heal the broken, or sustain the one standing, but will devour the flesh of the fat sheep and tear off their hoofs. Woe to the worthless shepherd who leaves the flock! A sword will be on his arm and on his right eye! His arm will be totally withered, and his right eye will be blind” (11:16–17).

Near the end of His ministry, Jesus expanded the warning cited above from Matthew 7. “Many false prophets will arise, and will mislead many,” He said. “And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold…. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:11–12, 24).

Similar warnings are given in the epistles. Peter warned that “false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned” (2 Peter 2:1–2). John warned, “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:18–19). Jude warned that “certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).

Those warnings were about the contemporary as well as the future condition of the church. The dangers that plagued the New Testament church would continue and become worse throughout the church age, as “evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:13).

The twin dangers are the closely related evils of ungodly teaching and ungodly living, of false doctrine and sinful lifestyle. As Jesus pointed out in the quotation above from Matthew 24:11, as “false prophets will arise, … lawlessness is increased,” and as Jeremiah predicted, “the committing of adultery and walking in falsehood” are companion evils (Jer. 23:14). Those enemies of God and of God’s people originated at the Fall and will continue to thrive until the Lord returns and takes back the world for Himself. In the meanwhile, the alliance of false teaching and ungodly living will continue to afflict the church.

The conjunction but indicates a change of direction, from the admonition to be a godly “vessel for honor,” one characterized by kindness, patience, and gentleness (2:21–25), to the admonition to be a responsible and fearless guardian of God’s people, protecting them from false doctrine and immoral living.

Realize this translates a Greek present tense, which, as often noted before, carries the ideas of constancy and continuity. As long as Timothy was given breath and energy to serve the Lord and the Lord’s people, he was to heed Paul’s warning.

In Scripture, the phrase last days can have several meanings. In his prophecies about “the latter days,” Daniel referred to the entire sweep of history from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar of ancient Babylon to the time when “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed” (see Dan. 2:28–45). In Isaiah’s prophecy, the phrase refers to the time just prior to and including Christ’s second coming, when “the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills; and all the nations will stream to it” (Isa. 2:2; cf. Micah 4:1).

The writer of Hebrews declared that “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world” (Heb. 1:1–2, emphasis added; cf. James 5:3). It seems clear that these last days, which began with the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, are the ones about which Paul is speaking here. Explaining the miraculous descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Peter made clear that “this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel: ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all mankind’” (Acts 2:16–17; cf. Joel 2:28, emphasis added). The Messiah, Jesus Christ, initiated these last days, the continuation of which was attested by the descent of His Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the birth of the church.

In John’s first epistle, he warned his readers in the early church that “it is the last hour,” which, in this context, is the equivalent of the last days. “And just as you heard that antichrist is coming,” he continued, “even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). We are still living in the messianic time between Christ’s first and second comings, all of which may properly be called the last days.

In those days, Paul says, difficult times will come. Chelepos (difficult) carries the ideas of perilous or grievous, as some English versions translate the word. In Matthew 8:28, referring to the Gadarene demoniacs, it is translated “violent” (NASB). The famous Greek writer Plutarch used the term to describe an ugly, infected, and dangerous wound.

Times does not translate chronos, which, as one would guess, indicates chronological time, but rather kairos, which refers to periods of time, to seasons, epochs, or eras. The plural times may indicate the epochs of varying degrees of danger and difficulty the church would experience throughout its history. As Paul makes clear a few verses later, these perilous times will become more and more frequent and intense, whereas the intervening periods of relative tranquillity will become less frequent and peaceful, as the return of Christ nears.

LOVERS OF SELF

For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; (3:2–4)

     Paul’s description of these seasons of danger is specific. In this context, men does not refer to mankind in general or to the unsaved world but to members, especially leaders, in Christ’s church, men who not only claim the name of Christ but claim to be His ministers, His prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists. These men are apostate leaders in apostate churches. As Paul will shortly point out, they hold “a form of godliness, [but] have denied its power” (v. 5) and they pose an immeasurable threat to the spiritual health, safety, and power of the entire body of Christ. In these three verses, Paul lists eighteen characteristics of ungodly, apostate men, and doubtless women, who have corrupted and will continue to corrupt the church of Christ until He returns.

The first characteristic is that these men will be lovers of self. The pride of self-love is the pervasive deadly sin that grips the human soul and is the foundation sin of all the others. It might be called the sewer out of which the rest of these ugly sins are discharged.

Lovers of self translates the single Greek word philautos, a compound of the verb phileō (to have great affection for) and the pronoun autos (self). Phileō is not a wrong kind of loving, and the verb is frequently used positively in the New Testament. In John 16:27, it is used both of the Father’s love for believers and of the believer’s love for the Son. It is used of Jesus’ love for John (John 20:2) and is used once even of the Father’s love for the Son (John 5:20). In the present passage, it is not the kind of love that is evil but the wrongly elevated object of that love, namely self. Whenever love for self is raised, love for God and the things of God is lowered. For that reason, misdirected love always engenders vice. It was first from Lucifer’s and then from Adam’s and Eve’s love of themselves over the Lord—and from the similar self-love of their descendants—that every other sin has issued.

It is for that reason that the most frightening development within the contemporary church is the wide acceptance and enthusiastic proclamation of self-love, not only as being allowable but as being the basic virtue. Turning God’s truth completely on its head, the source of all evil is touted as the source of all good. And on the other hand, the lack of self-love and its many derivatives—such as self-esteem, self-worth, self-fulfillment, and positive self-image—have been imported almost unchanged into the church from antibiblical secular psychology.

It is widely claimed that a person cannot love God and other people rightly unless and until he loves himself rightly, completely reversing what both the Old and New Testaments teach. As already noted above, Jesus said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37–39). Instead of taking the words “as yourself” as an assumption of self-love that is natural to sinful man, many interpreters not only take these words as a command but as the first and greatest command!

Throughout church history, many Christians, both true and nominal, have been guilty of perverted self-love. Self-love always has been associated with worldliness, but heretofore it was never taught as a doctrinal tenet in the church, even in its most corrupt periods. It was universally acknowledged to be the sin it is. Even most neoorthodox theologians have recognized self-love, or pride, as the root sin of all others. But psychologists Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, and many others strongly denounced that God-centered view and boldly claimed that lack of self-love and self-esteem is the root problem of man. That false and damnable twist has permeated the church to an alarming degree.

In The City of God, Augustine wrote, “Two cities have been founded by two loves, the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God. The heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glorifies itself, the latter the Lord.” In his great theological work The Institutes of the Christian Religion the Swiss Reformer John Calvin said, “For so blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love that everyone thinks he has good reason for exalting himself. There is no other remedy than to pluck up by the roots that most noxious pest, self-love.”

The concept of self-love as a positive characteristic did not find its way into the church until the late twentieth century, and, lamentably, it has spread quickly to broad portions of evangelicalism. Contrary to the unambiguous teaching of Scripture and contrary to its clearly destructive consequences, the heresy of self-love continues to find acceptance among those who claim Christ.

The roots of the modern infatuation with self-love can be traced to the humanism of the nineteenth century, especially in the development of evolutionism. If man is seen as the product of impersonal chance, God is ruled out, making the elevation of self perfectly acceptable. Because there is no basis for right and wrong, the individual’s natural bent to self-centeredness is reinforced, and he finds consummate justification for being his own god who does his own will. Each man is captain of his own ship and master of his own fate and cannot allow his self-will to be hindered or he does harm to his well-being.

The philosophy and theology of existentialism have also contributed to selfism. Although some existentialists genuinely believe there is a God and even that Jesus Christ is His Son and the Savior of the world, they reject the authority of Scripture except in a mystical way and claim that God is too far removed from man to be clearly understood, much less be personally known. Man is thrust back on himself to make of God and of life what he can. Consequently, and regardless of any protests to the contrary, man becomes in effect his own interpreter of God. Because no outside absolutes are recognized, personal beliefs and personal actions must be based solely on what seems best at the moment. Rather than unconditional submission to God, there is unconditional submission to self.

Fortunately some psychologists and psychiatrists are contesting the premise that man’s basic problem is low self-esteem. In a book written under the auspices of the Christian College Coalition, called Psychology Through the Eyes of Faith, David Meyers and Malcolm Jeeves give abundant evidence against that myth. In a chapter titled “A New Look at Pride,” they write,

Later in the book the authors maintain that “the most common error in people’s self-images is not unrealistically low self-esteem but rather self-serving pride; not an inferiority complex but a superiority complex.” Even self-depreciation, putting yourself down, is but a thinly disguised attempt to get others to build you up.

The eighteenth-century preacher Samuel Johnson said, “He that overvalues himself will undervalue others. And he that undervalues others will oppose them.” Self-love alienates men from God and from each other. Self-love is the supreme enemy of godliness and of genuine friendship and fellowship.

What a contrast self-seeking love is to the self-giving love that God requires. “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit,” Paul adjures, “but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3–4). Just as the second great commandment assumes self-love, so Paul’s admonition assumes that people naturally “look out for [their] own interests.” As always, the Lord Himself is our perfect example. “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,” the apostle continues, “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (vv. 5–8). If the heavenly Lord had that attitude in His incarnation, how much more ought we to humble ourselves, empty ourselves, and become unselfishly submissive to God to the point of death.

A concomitant of being lovers of self is being lovers of money, a term which represents materialism, the craving for earthly possessions of whatever sort. It is being covetous, as the Greek word is here rendered in the King James Version.

Paul is not speaking of the rightful earning and use of money to feed, clothe, and otherwise provide necessities for ourselves and our families. “If anyone will not work,” the apostle said in another letter, “neither let him eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). But as he explains in the first letter to Timothy, “If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content” (1 Tim. 6:8). Those who are not content with those essentials and want “to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith, and pierced themselves with many a pang” (vv. 9–10). Because Ephesus was a wealthy city, it is likely that Paul had in mind specific members of the church there who had “wandered away from the faith” because of their love of money.

Because false teaching always leads to wrong living, it is not surprising that many false teachers, such as those who promote the so-called health and wealth gospel, “suppose that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Tim. 6:5). It is the inordinate desire for money and for the things money represents that has made this perverted gospel so popular in the church today. It follows logically that a Christian who thinks first of himself has no problem in expecting God to provide not only necessities but luxuries, to believe that because he is a child of the King he should live like a prince. “Godliness actually is a means of great gain,” Paul goes on to say, but only “when accompanied by contentment” (v. 6, emphasis added).

Such false teachers “must be silenced,” Paul declares, “because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach, for the sake of sordid gain” (Titus 1:11). They are consumed with self, which inevitably leads to greed, “and in their greed they will exploit you with false words” (2 Peter 2:3). It is a cycle of sin. Greed leads to false teaching, and false teaching leads to further greed. The false gospels of self-love and prosperity go hand in hand; they promote each other and feed on each other.

Being boastful is the outward manifestation of self-love. Boastful translates alazōn, a noun meaning “braggart,” which Plato defined as a person who claims greatness that he does not possess. Boastful persons brag about their accomplishments, overstating the truth to the degree that it has no basis in reality. They are know-it-alls who try to deceive people into thinking they are brilliant. They love to see their names in print and their faces on television. They exaggerate their abilities, their accomplishments, their talents, their reputations, and their value to society and to the church. They are always the heroes of their own stories.

Like self-love and love of money, being boastful is closely related to false teaching. Boasters want “to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions” (1 Tim. 1:7). The boastful person “is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words,” and out of those sins arise such companion sins as “envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions” (6:4).

A person who is boastful is invariably arrogant. Those who are characterized by these twin evils are perpetually self-exalting and determined to have their own way. Huperēphanos (arrogant) has the literal meaning of placing above, hence the idea of superiority.

The arrogant are best illustrated in the New Testament by the Jewish religious leaders mentioned by Jesus “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). He proceeded to tell them the well-known parable of the Pharisee and the tax-gatherer, or publican, who went to pray in the temple:

Quoting from Proverbs 3:34, both James and Peter declare that “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5; cf. Ps. 138:6).

William Barclay gives a helpful comparison of boastful and arrogant:

The boastful and the arrogant are much more alike than different. It is a rare instance when a person who is one is not also the other. Even in the modern church it becomes harder and harder to find those who are meek and humble and equally difficult to avoid those who are proud and conceited.

Revilers translates blasphēmos, from which we get “blasphemous,” and carries the basic idea of being abusive and slanderous. It is inevitable that a person who is contemptuous of others will eventually revile them. When you elevate yourself, you automatically lower and denigrate others. Inner disdain will eventually find expression in outward slander, because the tongue always follows the heart. “For from within, out of the heart of men,” Jesus made clear, “proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness” (Mark 7:21–22).

Disobedient to parents is the next evil in Paul’s list and is self-explanatory. The disobedience of children to parents in our day has become endemic, and the cause is not hard to find. Not only are children born with a bent to self-will and disobedience, but the disappearance of mothers into the work force and the spiritual failure of fathers is exacerbated by the prevailing philosophy of self-love that is promoted in modern society, including many classrooms and churches, making being disobedient to parents all but compulsory. Children who will rebel against their parents will have no qualms about rebelling against anyone else. It should be no surprise that a generation whose natural, sinful self-love has been reinforced and justified by society is now undermining the family, the church, and the permissive society that has misguided it.

Like the previous sin, ungrateful is self-explanatory. The person who elevates self above all others will feel he deserves everything good he receives and therefore feels no need of gratitude for it. Although he may not put it into words, the ungrateful person despises the very idea of grace, which denotes goodness received that is undeserved. This is a particularly noxious sin to God, whose wrath is revealed against sinners for being unthankful (cf. Rom. 1:18, 21).

Unholy translates anosias, which carries the idea not so much of irreligion as of gross indecency. It was used of a person who refused to bury a dead body or who committed incest. The unholy person is driven by self-love to gratify his lusts and passions of whatever sort, as fully as possible with no thought to propriety, decency, or personal reputation.

Unloving translates astorgos, a negative adjective form of the verb storgē, which commonly was used of family, social, and patriotic love. The noted theologian Benjamin Warfield described it as “that quiet and abiding feeling within us, which, resting on an object as near to us, recognizes that we are closely bound up with it and takes satisfaction in its recognition.” It is not natural for people to love God or the things and people of God, but it is natural for them to love their own families. To be astorgos is therefore to be “without natural affection” (KJV). Just as the self-loving person is without common decency, he also is without common affection. He cares nothing for the welfare of those who should be dearest to him. His only interest in them is for what he believes they can do for him. To be unloving is to be heartless.

Unloving behavior is reported daily in newspapers and broadcasts. Husbands and wives abusing one another, parents and children abusing one another—often to the point of murder—are so common that they make headlines only if they are particularly brutal or sensational. Tragically, the evangelical church has its share of the unloving and heartless.

The irreconcilable are those who refuse to change, no matter how desperate even their own situation becomes, much less the situations of those they should care about. They are determined to have their own way regardless of the consequences, even to the point of knowingly destroying their own lives and the lives of their families. They do not forgive and do not want to be forgiven. They are implacable, beyond reasoning, and inevitably self-destructive. As far as they are concerned, there is no compromise, no reconciliation, no court of appeal. Their self-love is so extreme and their egoism so massive that absolutely nothing matters except doing as they please.

Gossip is often thought of as being relatively harmless, but at best it is unkind, harmful, and ungodly. Malicious gossip is a sin of an even more evil and destructive sort. Whereas the irreconcilable person tends to disregard and neglect others, malicious gossips make a point of harming others. Whether to promote their own interests, to express jealousy or hatred, or simply to vent their anger, they take perverse pleasure in damaging reputations and destroying lives.

Malicious gossips translates diabolos, which, even to the person unacquainted with Greek, suggests the severity of this evil, with our English derivative “diabolical.” Diabolos means “accuser” and is used thirty-four times in the New Testament as a title for Satan. Engulfed and blinded by self-love, malicious gossips do the very work of Satan.

Akratēs (“without self-control”) denotes incontinence, in this context that of a moral and spiritual kind. When Jesus excoriated the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, He told them they cleaned “the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence [akratēs”] (Matt. 23:25).

Without self-control describes the person who has jettisoned inhibitions and shame, who does not care about what people think or about what happens to them because of what he does. Like a driverless car, he careens haphazardly and crashes into whatever gets in his way. The lover of self eventually loses control of his own life and becomes a slave to his passions and ambitions.

Brutal refers to savagery, like that of wild beasts, whose nature it is to attack enemies and tear them in pieces. Self-love that is not checked makes a person insensitive, malicious, and eventually brutal.

Next in their downward spiral, self-lovers become haters of good, hating what should be loved and loving what should be hated. They sink to what amounts to an animal level; but unlike animals, they know what is good yet choose to despise and oppose it. “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil,” the Lord warned the wicked; “who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isa. 5:20). Haters of good remain under God’s judgment.

Lovers of self eventually become treacherous, turning against even their own families and friends. Treachery comes naturally to a person who loves money, who is boastful and arrogant, ungrateful and unholy, unloving and irreconcilable, a malicious slanderer who has lost self-control, and who is brutal and hates what is good.

Jesus warned the Twelve that “brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all on account of My name” (Matt. 10:21–22; cf. 24:9–10). Whenever the church has suffered persecution, true believers have been betrayed into the hands of the oppressors, often by members of their own families who value safety and prosperity above devotion and fidelity. Feigned love and friendship become means of treachery. That is also the time when genuine loyalty proves itself, often at a high price.

The reckless person is careless, negligent, and rash. This characteristic is not as serious as most of the others and often is manifested unconsciously. The self-centered person is so preoccupied with his own interests that he simply does not notice people and things around him that are not related to those egotistic concerns.

It goes without saying that the self-lover is conceited, having a much higher view of himself than is justified. Tuphōo (conceited) has the root meaning of being enveloped in smoke, or beclouded, so that what is outside one’s circumscribed world of self cannot be seen.

Paul advised Timothy in his first letter that an elder, or overseer, should “not [be] a new convert, lest he become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil” (1 Tim. 3:6). Later in the same letter the apostle states that conceit is a sure mark of a false teacher, again certifying the inescapable connection between wrong doctrine and wrong living. A false teacher who “advocates a different doctrine, and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, … is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions” (1 Tim. 6:3–4).

The final sinful characteristic of dangerous false teachers given in this extensive but not exhaustive list is their being lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Lovers of pleasure translates the single Greek word philēdonos, a compound of philos (loving) and hēdonē (pleasure), from which we get “hedonist” and “hedonism.” Along with all his other sins, the false teacher is a self-loving, pleasure-mad hedonist.

It should be noted that pleasure, especially in this context, is not limited to the desire for comfort, fine food, sexual satisfaction, and other indulgences normally associated with hedonism. As already mentioned, a self-centered person also derives perverse pleasure from such things as malicious gossip, brutality, and treachery. His satisfaction comes, in part, from the pain and misery he sadistically inflicts on others, including parents and supposed friends.

This depraved pleasure is not loved more than God, but rather than … God. In other words, the true God has no place at all in the thinking and living of a false teacher or of anyone who is self-centered. Jesus told Nicodemus, “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19, emphasis added).

Those who love pleasure rather than … God cannot possibly obey either the first or the second great commandments. They cannot truly love God or their neighbors, and have no genuine desire to do so. Jesus made clear that a person can have only one god, and for the self-lover, self is god. Satan has never had a shortage of false gods with which to tempt man, and by far the most useful to his cause is the god of self. Lucifer fell from his exalted and magnificent state in heaven because he became his own god, and since that time he has endeavored to entice fallen mankind into the same form of idolatry.

CHARLATANS OF RELIGION

holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; and avoid such men as these. (3:5)

     Leaders in the church who foster false systems of belief and corrupt standards of living not only are lovers of self but also are charlatans of religion.

Form comes from morphsis, which refers to outward shape and appearance, such as that of a silhouette, which is an undetailed outline or shadow of something. Like the unbelieving scribes and Pharisees, lovers of self are concerned only about the outward form, about “the outside of the cup and of the dish,” while “inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence” (Matt. 23:25). They are religious fakes, phony religionists who masquerade as Christian leaders. They claim to be servants of God and teachers of His Word, but they are really servants of Satan and purveyors of his lies. Again like the scribes and Pharisees who opposed Jesus, they “are of [their] father the devil, and [they] want to do the desires of [their] father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

That false teachers hold to a form of godliness, that is, an outline of Christianity without substance, makes them all the more dangerous, because immature members in the church will accept their paganized Christianity as the true faith. Like most of the other vile traits Paul has just mentioned, this one was not new among God’s people but was regularly recurrent in ancient Israel. Ezekiel warned against such impostors, who “do the lustful desires expressed by their mouth, and [whose] heart goes after their gain” (Ezek. 33:31). Paul warned Titus that such men “profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient, and worthless for any good deed” (Titus 1:16).

Satan is deceptive and subtle. He never tells the truth about anything, although he frequently tries to use a partial truth or a truth out of context to his advantage, as when he quoted Scripture to Jesus during the wilderness temptations (Matt. 4:6). And Satan’s most dangerous attacks against God’s people come from within the church by means of false preachers and teachers who pretend to speak for God.

The deception of such false leaders is seen in their denying the true, gracious, life-giving power of the true gospel. Although it is presented in many persuasive ways, theirs is an empty, worthless, damning message that keeps its adherents out of the kingdom. Ungodly leaders have no love for God and no love for His Word or for His people, only love for themselves.

True believers are given a standing order to avoid such men as these and reject the false doctrines they teach and the false standards they live by. And because the verb apotreō (avoid) is here in the middle voice, the idea is to make yourself turn away. Regardless of how convincing a false idea may appear or how sincere a false teacher may seem to be, we are to take ourselves by the scruff of the neck, as it were, and make ourselves avoid such men as these. We should avoid and keep on avoiding such men, whenever, wherever, and however they may confront us. Whether their heresy is sacramentalism, rationalism, ecumenism, subjectivism, experientialism, mysticism, pragmatism, or any of countless others, both they and their ungodly ideas are to be rejected. As with counterfeit money, it is not necessary to understand every false detail of a teaching but only necessary to recognize that it does not match the real thing, namely, God’s Word. Whether a counterfeit is a well-done fraud or a shoddy fake, it is equally worthless.

There are three guidelines for judging whether a teacher or preacher is from God. The first thing to measure is his creed, the specific beliefs and ideas he propounds. Is Scripture, the whole of Scripture, the basis for everything he believes and does, or does he use certain Bible passages selectively to bolster unbiblical ideas? If his creed does not measure up to Scripture, or if he belittles the importance of doctrine, nothing else about him matters, because he obviously does not speak for God and has not been sent by Him.

The second guideline to examine is personal character and its reflection in his lifestyle. Even if a person’s professed doctrine is orthodox, ungodly living betrays a godless heart. Godly belief always produces godly living.

A third measure of a godly leader is his converts, his most ardent followers. If his devotees are weak, confused, or unconcerned about doctrine, and if their living does not reflect biblical standards, the leader himself almost certainly is not godly, because godly leaders will not claim or be satisfied with ungodly converts. Christ-honoring, Scripture-loving teachers and preachers will produce Christ-honoring, Scripture-loving converts. Religious charlatans, on the other hand, will produce converts in their own image.

CAPTORS OF THE WEAK

For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (3:6–7)

     A third identifying mark of false teachers is their capturing of the weak. This particular characteristic does not apply to all false teachers but is found among them. Endunō (enter) carries the idea of stealth and therefore of creeping in undetected. Like all ungodly leaders who come from within the church, these men go under false colors. Jude wrote of “certain persons [who had] crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).

A favorite target of these particular false teachers is weak women [who] are weighed down with sins, [and are] led on by various impulses. Because they are deep into sins and ungodly impulses that have weighed [them] down emotionally and spiritually, the weak women Paul describes here are especially vulnerable to being religiously seduced by false teachers. They are weak in truth and weak in virtue, and they feel the heavy weight of their sin and the guilt it brings. And just as wrong doctrine leads to wrong living, so can their wrong living easily lead to embracing wrong doctrine. Just as Eve was the first target, as the weaker sex (1 Peter 3:7), so Satan continues to target women as his initial captives. Cults not only are often spawned by women, but women are the most numerous and devout adherents.

Often moving from one false teacher or group to another, such women are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. If they have been reared in the church, they are especially susceptible to ideas that purport to be Christian. But their ignorance of Scripture and their sinful living make them utterly undiscerning and defenseless against unbiblical and ungodly precepts. They are continually learning about everything except the knowledge of the truth. Because legalism deals only in outward performance, it is very attractive. Many such women, and men as well, are glad to find a way that promises to make them right with God simply by adhering to certain outward forms and conforming to certain behavioral standards.

Epignōsis (knowledge) refers to deep understanding, comprehension, and discernment, not merely awareness of factual truths. It is the knowledge of the truth that God wants all of His children to have and for which our Lord interceded on our behalf: “Sanctify them in the truth; Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). In fact, God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4, emphasis added; cf. 2 Tim. 2:25; 2 Peter 3:9). Reflecting that divine love, Paul sought the salvation even of those who were “in opposition” to the gospel, hoping that, “perhaps God [would] grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 2:25).

OPPOSERS OF THE TRUTH

And just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected as regards the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two came to be. (3:8–9)

     Although Jannes and Jambres are not mentioned in Exodus or anywhere else in the Old Testament, they may have been among the magicians in the pharaoh’s court who duplicated many of the miracles the Lord performed through Moses. Because Jannes perhaps means “he who seduces” and Jambres “he who makes rebellion,” those may have been symbolic names given to these men at a later time. Jewish tradition holds that they pretended to convert to Judaism in order to subvert Moses’ divine assignment to liberate Israel from Egypt, that they led in making and worshiping the golden calf while Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Law from God, and that they were slaughtered by the Levites along with the other idolaters (see Ex. 32). That possibility is consistent with Paul’s warning about false leaders who corrupt the church from within. Just as those two men opposed Moses in his teaching and leading ancient Israel, so these men in Ephesus also oppose[d] the truth of the gospel.

If Jannes and Jambres were indeed among the Egyptian magicians, Paul may be warning that, similarly, these men in the early church also might perform magical feats. They may have been like the “false Christs and false prophets [who] will arise” in the last days, “and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24; cf. 2 Thess. 2:9).

Those false teachers were men of depraved mind. The Greek word behind depraved mind is a perfect passive participle, indicating an established, continuous, and unalterable condition. It was of such reprobates that Paul declared, “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,… and, although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Rom. 1:28, 32).

Because they had rejected the faith, they were themselves rejected by God as regards the faith. Adokimos (rejected) was used of metals that did not pass the test of purity and were discarded. The word also was used of counterfeits of various sorts. The fact that the men were rejected as regards the faith makes clear that Paul was speaking of individuals within the church who claimed to be Christians but were not.

The apostle admonished members of the church in Corinth, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test [adokimos]?” (2 Cor. 13:5; cf. vv. 6–7). Paul used the word in his previous letter to that church, expressing fear that “possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified [adokimos]” (1 Cor. 9:27). He was not, of course, speaking of being disqualified from salvation, as were the men who were rejected as regards the faith, but of being disqualified as a usable instrument, a vessel of honor, of the Lord in ministry.

Paul assured Timothy that, despite the great turmoil and damage they cause the church, such men will not make further progress. In other words, they can seriously harm the church and can prevent many unsaved from becoming saved; but they cannot rob His redeemed people of salvation. Jesus Himself assures us that “the gates of Hades shall not overpower” His church (Matt. 16:18), and that “all that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). Until the Lord returns, “false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order, if possible, to lead the elect astray” (Mark 13:22). But they will not make further progress in their evil schemes.

Many times throughout history, the church has been so fiercely persecuted that believers have feared not only for their own lives but for the very existence of the church. But God has a boundary that proscribes the work of Satan, not only in the church but in the world. He is on a divine tether that he can neither break nor lengthen.

Sooner or later the folly of false teachers and preachers becomes obvious to all of God’s people, as also did the folly of those two, Jannes and Jambres, in ancient Israel. While these “evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (v. 13), their plunge into the depth of sin and error, which deceives them and other ungodly men, ceases to deceive the people of God, who see the error clearly.

This passage holds several lessons, explicit or implicit, for believers today. First, we must realize that the church is in spiritual warfare, a warfare that will intensity as Christ’s second coming draws nearer. Second, we must be doctrinally discerning, testing every message that claims to be Christian against God’s Word, as did the God-fearing Jews of Berea, who “received the word with great eagerness,” but carefully examined “the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things” that Paul and Silas preached “were so” (Acts 17:11).

Third, we must be pure and holy, vessels of honor for the Lord to use. Christ’s own righteousness is our protection against false teachers, false doctrine, and ungodly living. Fourth, we must be patient, a difficult task for many Christians today who want instant answers to their questions and immediate resolution of their problems. We know the ultimate outcome is certain, that victory already belongs to Christ and His church, but the actual time of victory may be further away than we would like to think. In the meanwhile, our responsibility is to remain faithful (see 1 Cor. 4:2).

The church today faces times of unparalleled difficulty and danger. As extraordinary opportunities for spreading the gospel increase with rapidity after the breakup of much of the former Communist world, attacks on that church are also increasing with great speed. Heresy, apostasy, self-will, and their accompanying moral decadence are engulfing the evangelical church. Like cancer cells that rebel against the body, these evils are in rebellion against God by corrupting and weakening the church, the body of Christ. Also like cancer cells, the evils multiply rapidly and choke out and destroy normal cells. Much like white cells in the blood, which will not attack cancerous cells because they are identified with the body, many naive and careless church leaders take no action against corruption in the church simply because the corruption hides behind the guise of orthodoxy. Simply put, much of the church is in rebellion against the Lord.

In the days ahead, the escalation of violence against the kingdom of God by the kingdom of darkness will intensify. As in any warfare, there will be times of relative calm, but God’s Word assures us of ever-increasing wickedness, which will culminate in the appearance of Antichrist, the ultimate deceiver and enemy of God except for Satan himself. Like the wolves that would come into the flock at Ephesus from within and try to destroy it (Acts 20:29–30), Antichrist, along with other false christs, false apostles, and false prophets, will come from within Christendom.

Before the Antichrist appears, Paul informs us, the great apostasy will come first, which, by definition, is a falling away, or defection, from God and His truth. At the peak of his power, Antichrist, “the man of lawlessness, … the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, [will take] his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God, … the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders” (2 Thess. 2:2–5, 9). We know that his defeat is certain, because “the Lord will slay [him] with the breath of His mouth and bring [him] to an end by the appearance of His coming” (v. 8). But before that final defeat is accomplished—before and during the great apostasy and before the Lord takes His own to Himself at the Rapture—the church will continue to experience expanded assaults from the adversary.

Even now, the attacks against God Himself and against His truth and His righteousness come from so many sides and in so many forms that it is hard for His people to know which front to defend. Discerning Christians are hard put to know which falsehood to refute or moral compromise to oppose. No believer, no matter how gifted and willing, is able to fight on all fronts. But we are not called to win God’s battles single-handedly and are presumptuous and foolish to try. He does, however, expect us to yield to Him all that we are and have and to be willing to be used wherever and in whatever way He leads.