2nd Timothy: Chapter 3
Sermon 5–2nd Timothy: 3
Let us recall that we are reading 2nd Timothy as a last will and testament of the Apostle Paul. As such, we must view the topics explored in 2nd Timothy as fundamental to Paul's doctrine. Last week we read, "Two facts, then, are to be ever in Timothy’s mind: the Resurrection and the Incarnation of his Lord." In a weird way, these two so-called "facts" represent the same polar opposites we have been discussing for weeks: the way of INNER transformation (faith and enlightened knowledge), as opposed to the way of OUTER transformation (good works). Paul, in his spoken or written words, has insisted on the principle of "sola fide", faith alone--this is what Jesus taught--but he also insists that "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." In other words, good works on Earth will be rewarded in heaven. Can these two spiritual orientations exist side by side? We shall see what we shall see. . . .
The 3rd Chapter of 2nd Timothy prophesies even worse trouble for believers, hence an even stronger recommendation to keep the faith. These prophecies relate indirectly to the idea, mentioned earlier, that Paul was convinced that Jesus was going to return SOON; thus these prophecies of "the last days" were, to Paul, the fairly immediate future. The main thrust of the warning is not about any apocryphal fire and brimstone stuff, but more about the FALSE PROPHET issue:
"1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."
I have never taken much stock in interpreting Bible prophecies in literal terms. Certainly, if Paul expected the Second Coming to take place in his own lifetime, he was quite wrong. History will demonstrate that people from every generation, since time immemorial, have thought that they were living in “the last days”. However, if all his prophecies amount to is a general description of evil-doing on the Earthly plane at any time, ungodliness, pleasure-loving, blaspheming, covetousness, pride, etc., then the warning applies as much to today as to any other time. Generation after generation of people have believed that WHENEVER they were living were "the last days"; obviously, so far they have ALL been wrong; however, if we interpret the expression “last days” metaphorically, this is absolutely true, we ALL are living in “the last days”. Certainly for US at Basin Bible Church, these are the last days. I admit that there must, eventually, come a “last day”; but we are told it will come as a thief in the night:
1 Thessalonians 5:2
“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.”
Mathew 24:35-36
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
and NO ONE will know of its coming.”
An example of a Christian organization living in “the last days” is represented by the Let God Be True website. I am presenting this article as an example of the narrow-minded attitude toward spirituality that pervades the American Bible Belt—I think these people would rather be right than good, but –you decide:
"The greatest threat to the kingdom of Jesus Christ today is the carnal, compromising, effeminate, and worldly Christianity the devil has spawned to destroy the faith once delivered to the saints. False teachers promote it on every side. The cure is simple, but few ministers will use it, since most hearers are demanding fables and entertainment instead. The importance of this prophecy cannot be overstated. You are living in the fulfillment of the perilous times!
Introduction
- 1. This is one of the very most relevant and important passages in the Bible for Christians in the year 2005.
- 2. There is one lesson in these 22 verses, and the flow of the context should be preserved; though you may know several of the verses in the passage, you need to see them as part of one single lesson.
- 3. These are Paul's last words of exhortation to Timothy, as he was prepared to depart this life (II Tim 4:6-8).
- 4. In stark contrast to the mega-church movement, seeker sensitive compromise, and purpose-driven drivel is Paul's demand for old-fashioned Bible preaching and rejection of religious association and market surveys!”
[I love it how this author mentions Paul’s “demand for old-fashioned Bible preaching”, when, as yet there was no old-fashioned Bible preaching. It was all new-fashioned preaching, and there was no Bible.]
- 5. “If you are a lover of Jesus Christ, you are at war, whether you know it or not, with contemporary Christians!
- 6. Take a strong stand on any New Testament doctrine or practice and you will discover you are at war!
- 7. True and zealous saints will want to understand and obey every word and phrase in this sober prophecy.
- 8. We have just studied the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, where the Lord gave many practical warnings; you also have many practical warnings in this passage of a dangerous and threatening brand of Christianity.
- 9. Nominal Christianity is degenerating rapidly every day in a downward spiral of carnality and compromise.
- 10. We are living in the very midst of the fulfillment of this prophecy, which ought to challenge all zealous saints.
- 11. Either you are part of the perilous times and going down, or you are fighting against these perilous times.
- 12. We must fight in our souls, lives, families, schools, churches, entertainment, friends, associations, etc., etc.”
To gain a proper perspective in this issue, we must remember that Prophecy, like Hope, has a tendency to live in the future; furthermore, such negative prophecies as these usually predict, not a distant future but, an IMMEDIATE future, a future generated by the evil Karma of the present day (whenever that was/is). We will recall C.S. Lewis’ comments on the future:
“The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”
[What follows is a list of all the things Christians must beware of (I have cut out a lot of them for the sake of brevity); it reads kind of like a HATE list, and sees fearful threats around every corner. To be sure, it will not do to dismiss these warnings out of hand, since the evils mentioned are no doubt truly with us (as always); it just seems to me that the attitude of exclusivity, solipsism, and suspicion are more negative than the seductions of false prophets. As C.S. Lewis says in Perelandra:
“As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it is also dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can’t eat and home the very place you can’t live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable. Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.”
Furthermore, the list of threats noted here seem no more specific to our time than to any other time. People scanning for negativity will see whatever evils they project from out of their own ailing hearts:]
Back to the Let God Be True website:
"PERIL #1: Christians shall be lovers of their own selves. Self-love and self-esteem are perilous times.
Self-love, self-esteem, self-image, and self-confidence are bywords of a humanistic, existential psychology that our generation adores, which has spawned a narcissistic, selfish, and spoiled society.
The world, especially the educated, shows its ignorance and confusion by promoting self-love.
Every degree program requires a psychology course to learn this vain babbling.”
[Sidebar: Notice, the first enemy of the anti-intellectual is the "educated"; the vain babbling of people they don't understand MUST be wrong. This “high-falutin” education, we don’t understand MUST be of the devil. HA! This goes against the principle we encountered in Philip, which places a high value on the ability to know and speak true things:
“The one who cognized the Truth is free. The free one does not commit sin: because the one who commits sin becomes a slave of sin (i.e. burdens one’s own destiny, first of all).
The true knowledge is like a mother and a father (i.e. like wise teachers, advisers, and guardians of their child).
Those who are not capable of sinning are said to have attained freedom. The knowledge of the Truth raises them even more. This makes them both free and above this world.”]
I repeat: “The knowledge of the Truth raises them even more.”
I myself have spoken many times of the seductions of words to promote misunderstanding and vulgarization of the Truth, so I can relate to this author’s suspicion of “educated people” —people who care more about the words than the meaning; but isn’t this author doing the same thing, with his parochial endorsement of “old-fashioned” Bible preaching? Paul says,
“Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.”
We might quibble about what “form” means, and what “sound” means, but I do not get the sense from this that Paul is endorsing ignorance over education; in fact just the opposite—he wants the people to test everything they hear against a template of spiritual truths that dominate their hearts AND their minds—truths whose expressions were coined by him.
Back to the Let God Be True website:
“They continue to chant their mantra, even though criminals have the highest self-esteem of all men.”
[I can't think of anything stupider than to say that criminals have high self-esteem. This sentence pissed me off so much I dug deeper; a comment in support of this outrageous claim goes like this:
“If Baumeister is right, and violent criminals have higher self-esteem than most people, and if Rosemond is right, and people who do not grow up with high self-esteem are more likely to be among the finest human beings, then society has the strongest interest in not promoting self-esteem among children.”
Contrariwise, I found this bit by Stanton E. Samenow Ph.D. Inside the Criminal Mind:
“Observers, including many mental health professionals, maintain that basic to the psychology of many criminals is their low self-esteem that gives rise to antisocial behavior. The reasoning goes something like this. The individual likely has experienced numerous failures in life - in school, at work, in his family, and in other relationships. Even in crime, he has failed each time that he is apprehended. The thinking of some professional evaluators and counselors is that criminal behavior represents a desperate attempt to compensate for this prevailing sense of inadequacy. That is, he builds himself up by tearing others down. He aims to control and overcome others to feel better about himself.
Such thinking inverts cause and effect. In most instances, the criminal has rejected his family, teachers, and the world of work long before they ever rejected him. By refusing to cope with adversity constructively and by exerting little to no effort in responsible endeavors, he has accomplished little that is substantive. If a person throws away opportunities and resorts to deception, intimidation, or force to make his way in the world, is it not realistic for him to have low self-esteem, at least by the standards of the responsible world? A nineteen-year-old who dropped out in tenth grade, who has not even tried to develop job skills, and who has alienated his family would have little basis to think well of himself. In making the choices that he has, the criminal's attempts to "feel good" about himself ultimately result in hurting others whom he professes to care about and, ultimately, in his freedom being severely restricted.”
This is what we would expect to read about self-esteem. At this point Samenow goes on to say:
“The criminal builds up a precarious image of himself as a unique and superior human being by tearing others down and preying on their vulnerability. His “self-esteem” is based on pretensions and conquests. Put another way, having made choices to take a particular path in life, the criminal has no basis other than his own pretensions to “feel good” about himself.”
This paragraph seems to support the idea that criminals have high self-esteem, except for this MAJOR point: “The criminal builds up a precarious image of himself.” I submit that a false self-image built up out of internal fantasies about what the world ought to be like, does not constitute self-esteem—it constitutes self-deception. A self-centered person does not necessarily have a high opinion of himself, a self-centered person usually has trouble formulating a coherent self-image, because the focus on the self obscures context; and without context the image of the self obtains in a vacuum, such that there is no relativity—hence no esteem one way or the other. Furthermore the notion that “society has the strongest interest in not promoting self-esteem among children,” makes me scream. What does this author propose as a substitute for high self-esteem among children? Guilt? Is built the basis for humanitarian success? All those geniuses were writing great symphonies because their mothers didn’t breast feed them? Give me a break!
Perhaps the problem resides in the expression “self-esteem” itself. Perhaps high self-esteem and low self-esteem are equally false ego constructions. But is self-esteem the same as self-love? If so, we must remember these words about Jesus:
“If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.”
Self-love is ultimately love of God--so can a lover of God be thought to have low self-esteem? And can a person with low self-esteem have a heart open to esteem others? This whole convoluted argument is based on a superficial understanding of the self in relation to the self, and in relation to others. Moreover, fear and hate run rampant through this entire mental construct.
Going on with the Let God Be True website, and the discussion of self-esteem:
“It is our solemn duty to zealously hate this heresy and train our children to love and serve others.”
[We can all agree that serving others is a righteous way to use our time, but I can't believe Jesus would endorse HATING anything or anybody, although we did hear a sermon some time ago about "righteous hatred" supported by C.S. Lewis in Perelandra. Are we then also to train our children to HATE as a fact of life? In this case, where do we draw the line? There may be special cases where “righteous hatred” is not only appropriate, but necessary; but I think anybody who claims hatred as a component of his spiritual stock-in-trade is pedaling with no wheels.
That said, just let me remind you that we heard a sermon some time ago about "righteous hatred" supported by C.S. Lewis.
There are a couple of examples of righteous hatred, in the Science Fiction Trilogy, that bear repeating. The first one is a speech from Out of the Silent Planet, spoken by a Martian "hrossa" about his natural enemy, the hnakra; this enemy is a fierce water animal that the hrossi hunt, much like whalers hunt the leviathan. Here the hross explains his complex relationship with this enemy:
"I long to kill the hnakra as he also longs to kill me. I hope that my ship will be the first and I first in my ship with my straight spear when the black jaws snap. And if he kills me, my people will mourn and my brothers will desire still more to kill him. But they will not wish that there were no hnakri; nor do I. How can I make you understand, when you do not understand the poets? The hnakra is our enemy, but he is also our beloved. We feel in our hearts his joy as he looks down from the mountain of water in the north where he was born; we leap with him when he jumps the falls; and when winter comes, and the lake smokes higher than our heads, it is with his eyes that we see it and know that his roaming time is come. We hang images of him in our houses, and the sign of all the hrossa is a hnakra. In him the spirit of the valley lives; and our young play at being hneraki as soon as they can splash in the shallows."
There are, on the mundane plane of existence, manifestations of evil which are so contrary to the way of spirit, that they MUST be hated in order for them to be expunged from our earthly reality. There are simply some things that are NO GOOD, and we must hate them, as much as we love God.
The paradoxical part is that the hross says, "The hnakra is our enemy, but he is also our beloved." The hnakra is a perfect self-centered villain, as, to Paul, the false prophet is the perfect Satanic villain. How does this apply to the subject of hating evil? Well, we don't really have to think too hard to be reminded that the carnal nature that falls so short of spirit and which we hate with a righteous hatred is IN OURSELVES--and we must hate that part of ourselves which is tainted by original sin, and strive in every moment to root it out of our nature, to cleanse ourselves of Adam's curse, and make ourselves free by the most energetic (violent) act of will possible. Thus, "he that hateth his life in this world", is involved in a cleansing process that must be carried out with the utmost intensity, and "hate" is not too strong a word to describe the devotee's relationship to his own carnal nature.
The second C.S. Lewis quote comes from Perelandra. In this scene, the hero, Ransom, is preparing to do battle with an earthling who has become possessed by the powers of Satan (it never says if it is Satan himself). Once again, we hear the idea of a "joyful hatred", but the main point of the section is summarized in the last line:
"Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him--a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner form the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a Person: but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation. It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came finding at last what hatred was made for."
Thus, the law of nature requires us to HATE our enemies; my problem is with people who see their enemies EVERYWHERE. To me, to see global negativity engulfing us completely, has got to be a projection of an inner spiritual disease.
Back to the Let God Be True website:
“PERIL #2: Christians shall be covetous of wealth and promote a "results" religion of gain as godliness.
If America is not the most materialistic society of all time, what other society could it possibly be?
The whole nation is on a treadmill at top speed to see what it can acquire to outdo the neighbors.
Covetousness is rather visible in advertising, extortion, lawsuits, covenant-breaking, theft, and lying.
It is also visible in widespread greed, depression, frustration, envy, jealousy, and complaining.
It is also visible in marital dysfunction and divorces, due to men and women coveting other spouses.
Yet "ministers," preaching a social gospel of prosperity for all, gather the largest crowds in America.
It is our solemn duty to hate covetousness, love contentment, and teach the same to our children.”
[Hatred again. Is HATE/LOVE, HATE/LOVE, HATE/LOVE, the same thing as do-be-do-be-do?
From an essay by Kevin T. Bauder, we read about righteous hatred, with a reference to the C.S. Lewis passage I just quoted:
“Hate, under certain circumstances and directed toward certain objects, is a virtue. It is also a necessity. Hatred of the truly hateful is an indispensable mainspring of just action. Hatred of lawless deeds emboldens the timid and strengthens the weak. It makes the pursuers of justice intrepid and their pursuit relentless.
Near the end of Perelandra, C. S. Lewis alluded to the power of righteous hate. His protagonist Ransom, battling for the future of an entire world against the demonic Weston, has been fought to a standstill. Knowing that his strength is at an end, he wavers. Then,
“an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him— a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. In the energy of this hate (a consuming hatred directed toward a perfectly hateful thing) Ransom found the strength to attack the enemy, and in so doing, he experienced an unlooked for joy. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for. . . . He rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion and its object.”
Hate is unquestionably powerful, and anything that is powerful can prove dangerous. Furthermore, like all human sensibilities, hate is easily corrupted by sin, and like all human expressions, it can operate viciously. The same can be said of other powerful affections: love, for instance, or fear. The fact that they are dangerous means that they must be carefully nurtured and directed rather than allowed to run wild. The fact that they can be corrupted or that they can turn vicious calls for examination and knowledge, not only of their objects, but of ourselves. Like love or fear, hate must be exercised with care, but it should no more be repudiated than they are.
It is always wrong to hate things that should be loved. It is equally wrong to love what should be hated. In fact, indifference to the hateful is the sign of appalling moral atrophy. Perhaps the time has come to restore a robust, biblical doctrine of hate.”
Perhaps I do not object to the issue of “hate” in the Let God Be True article, as I do the issue of “fear”. We have, herein, made a case for “righteous hatred”, but I can think of no rational arguments supporting “righteous fear”. Fear projects evil into everything it observes, while “righteous hatred” battles evil on its own ground.
Going on with Chapter 3—more warnings about false prophets:
“6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
It is easy to relate to this idea of learning in vain. How many of us have spent years striving to understand, and falling just short of the mark? How our thirst for understanding is tantalized by every new bit in a string of bits reaching into eternity. Thus we have sehnsucht the sweet never-satisfied longing. Paul is saying that the enlightened knowledge of Jesus will satisfy all the mind’s requirements, and make an end of knowledge.
I can totally relate to the idea of empty knowledge that is never able to reveal truth. This is what comes of believing in what our words say, instead of looking into the heart for the mysterious meaning of life. And this is the danger in holding “fast the form of sound words”—it commits us to a formal template that seeks to fix, in time, a reality that is ceaselessly changing and evolving, such that placing a foot in the stream here and now will not be a foot in the same stream tomorrow.
Remember also, with Dante Alighieri:
“O grace abounding and allowing me to dare
to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light,
so deep my vision was consumed in it!
O grace abounding that had made me fit
to fix my eyes on the eternal light
until my vision was consumed in it!
I saw within its depth how it conceives
all things in a single volume bound by Love,
of which the universe is the scattered leaves;
substance, accident, and their relation
so fused that all I say could do no more
than yield a glimpse of that bright revelation.
I think I saw the universal form
that binds these things, for as I speak these words
I feel my joy swell and my spirits warm.
Twenty-five centuries since Neptune saw
the Argo's keel have not moved all mankind,
recalling that adventure, to such awe
as I felt in an instant. My tranced being
stared fixed and motionless upon that vision,
ever more fervent to see in the act of seeing.
Experiencing that Radiance, the spirit
is so indrawn it is impossible
even to think of ever turning from it.
For the good which is the will's ultimate object
is all subsumed in it; and, being removed,
all is defective which in it is perfect.
Now in my recollection of the rest
I have less power to speak than any infant
wetting its tongue yet at its mother's breast;
and not because that Living Radiance bore
more than one semblance, for it is unchanging
and is forever as it was before;
rather, as I grew worthier to see, the more I looked,
the more unchanging semblance
appeared to change with every change in me.”
Do false prophets all speak lies, or can a false prophecy for today become a true prophecy tomorrow? Does fixing the language of our beliefs in a frozen template crush the life out of something that should be a living, growing, changing thing? Paul clearly has his eye on eternity, but his eternity seems limited—hmm, a limited eternity. Hmm? Furthermore it is easier to defend a fixed entity than a fluid entity—and I mean defend in a bad way—defensive attitudes are born of fear—once again a snare of the devil much more pernicious than a compromised verbal structure.
More on false prophets:
“8 Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
9 But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.”
The reference here to Jannes and Jambres is of interest:
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
“(8) Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses.—To one brought up, like Timothy, by a pious Jewish mother, and who from a child knew the Holy Scriptures and all the history and ancient traditions connected with the early history of the people, such a comparison would be very striking. No child of Israel could hear the name of Moses, the loved hero of the chosen people, unmoved; and to be told that these false teachers of Ephesus stood in the same relation to him and the Church of Christ as, in old days—in the never-to-be-forgotten Egyptian episode—those famous magicians Jannes and Jambres stood to Moses, would throw for Timothy a new light on all the words and works of these wicked and ambitious men.
We can well imagine the comparison being repeated in many an assembly of the faithful, long after the great Apostle’s death: how St. Paul had likened these early Heresiarchs to those evil men who before Pharaoh had dared to resist God and His servant Moses. These magicians, also termed wise men and sorcerers at the court of Pharaoh, appear as the enemies of Moses. The names “Jannes” and “Jambres,” though not given in the sacred text, are preserved in the oral tradition of Israel. The names are found in the Targum of Jonathan on Exodus 7:11; Exodus 22:22. These traditions relate how these men were sons of Balaam, and in the first instance were the instructors of Moses, though subsequently his enemies and opponents.
One legend mentions them as perishing in the catastrophe when the waves of the Red Sea overwhelmed the armies of Egypt; another tradition speaks of their having met their death in the slaughter after the worship of the golden calf, the making of which they advised. It was their prophetic words, so say these legendary histories, which, foretelling the birth of Moses, induced Pharaoh to give this order for the destruction of the Jewish children. The later Jews distorted the names into John and Ambrose.
So do these also resist the truth.—The point of comparison between the depraved teachers of Ephesus and these Egyptian sorcerers consisted in a persistent and deadly enmity to the truth, which existed in both cases. The life of the prophet Balaam, the traditionary father of this Jannes and Jambres, supplies a vivid illustration of this malignant and persistent hatred of what is known and felt to be true. That these Ephesian heretics in like manner availed themselves, or pretended to avail themselves of occult power is just probable, though in the comparison this point is of but little moment. We know, however, that the claim at least to possess mysterious and unearthly powers was often made by covetous and worldly men in these times: as, for instance, by Simon Magus (Acts 8:9-24), by Elymas the sorcerer, the false prophet and Jew in Cyprus (Acts 13:6-12). See also the episode of Acts 19:18-20, when “many which used curious arts came to Paul and his companions, and confessed and shewed their deeds.”
Men of corrupt minds.—Literally, corrupted in their minds. Timothy might possibly have been induced to regard these evil men, though erring in some particulars, as still of the flock of Christ, to which they belonged nominally; but he was now instructed that they were simply enemies to the truth: that it was vain to hope that they would ever come to a knowledge of the truth, for their “mind,” the human spirit, the medium of communication with the Holy Spirit of God, was corrupted. There was no common ground of faith, save in the bare name of Christian, between Timothy and these men, for they, in the matter of faith, had been tried and found wanting.”
I especially like this line:
“that it was vain to hope that they would ever come to a knowledge of the truth, for their “mind,” the human spirit, the medium of communication with the Holy Spirit of God, was corrupted.”
“their “mind,” the human spirit, the medium of communication with the Holy Spirit of God,” seems to me to hit the nail on the head, as far as false prophets go: the language, the “sound words” of a doctrine cannot compete in potency with the human spirit as a medium of communication with the divine. Thus, if the spirit is corrupted, the doctrine must be false no matter pretty and high-falutin’ the language is; but if the spirit is connected in holy union with the divine no false words can possibly proceed from the mouth.
In the next section I think Paul puts together a synthetic doctrine—a doctrine that combines concept with activity in the world. We will also see how he, once again, claims authority for his words based on his persecutions and suffering, from which his Lord delivered him:
“10 But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience,
11 Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me.
12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”
At this point it almost seems as if Paul is saying that persecutions and afflictions are a GURANTEE of life everlasting. Here, the good guy, the underdog victim of the bad guys, is exalted to the status of a hero of spirituality, as Jesus indicated when he said, “The meek shall inherit the Earth.”
Now, Paul encourages his flock to continue along the path he has prescribed, insisting that they remember what he has taught them.
“14 But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;”
Here, we are reminded of the idea that childlike innocence is the key to truthful understanding:
“15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
Finally, Paul takes another stab at the “sound words” idea by declaring that all scripture is inspired by God for the purpose of instruction and the motivation of good works:
“16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”
In conclusion we may summarize the 3rd Chapter of 2nd Timothy in a nutshell by saying this: we should examine every word in our expressed doctrine for the truth of the Holy Spirit; we must guard against false prophets. I say, we should transcend fearful attitude toward everything, and of course let’s not get too cocky with all this self-esteem crap.
Let us pray: Jesus we know that Satan is at our elbow whispering lies into unsuspecting ears. Give us the confidence and the guidance to tell the truth from the lies, and connect our minds with the Spirit of God in which all crooked ways are made straight. Amen.
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