How people will be at the end of this age
3
📚Understand this also: In the last days 📖 perilous times will come. 2 📚For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 📚without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, lacking self-control, fierce, opposers of the good, 4 📚traitors, reckless, arrogant, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, 3:2-4 The word “lovers” is the key word in these verses. The terrible people of those terrible times will be “lovers” but altogether of the wrong kind. Their character will be opposed to the clear teaching of God’s Word. They will be “lovers of themselves”; “lovers of money” – compare Luke 16:14; 1 Tim 6:10;
They will be “without love” for what is good and right, for their parents and neighbors, for God. They will not be willing to give up sinful pleasures for Christ’s sake, or obey Him in the matter of money or renounce anything they really want. By their attitude and actions they will show that they do not have the one kind of love that really matters – the love of God (1 John 2:15-16; Matt 22:37-40; 1 Cor 13:1-3; 1 Cor 16:22).
Because of this all the other evils in these verses will find a nest in their hearts and minds. Of all people they will have the least to boast about, but they will boast. If they are rebuked they will get abusive. They will have no more gratitude than those of Rom 1:21. They will reveal they do not have God’s forgiveness by refusing to forgive others. Believers will not be able to trust them or believe anything they say. Though they are spiritually blind and ignorant they will think they know everything and will not listen to godly teachers.⚜
5 📚having a form of godliness 📖 but denying its power. Keep away from such people 📖.
6 📚These are the sort who worm their way into households and take over silly women who are loaded down with sins and led away with various cravings,
3:6 Some of these hypocrites will seek for some people to deceive and control, and their eyes will fall on the women in the church. It seems they will consider them easier prey than the men.⚜
7 📚always learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
3:7 This is the sad condition of many. They hear the truth again and again, and may even think they want the truth. But actually they do not, so they do not understand what they hear. This is the reason why opponents of the truth are able to lead them astray (2 Thess 2:10).⚜
8 📚Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so these also resist the truth, these men of corrupt minds 📖, rejected in regard to the faith.
3:8 The names Jannes and Jambres appear nowhere in the Bible except here, but the opposition to Moses is recorded in Ex 7:10-12, 22, etc.⚜
9 📚But they will proceed no further, for their folly will be made clear to everyone, just as theirs was.
3:9 They will not be able to conceal forever their lack of truth and power. Jannes and Jambres were exposed (Ex 8:18) and so will these hypocrites be.⚜
Timothy exhorted to follow the example of Paul
10 📚But you have fully known my teaching, manner of life, purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance,
3:10 Paul was not trying to get glory and honor for himself. He speaks in this way because he knew God had set him forth as an example of how believers and Christian workers should live, and he wanted Timothy to follow him (v 14; 1 Cor 11:1; Phil 3:17; 2 Thess 3:7; Acts 20:18-35).⚜
11 📚persecutions and hardships which came to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra. What persecutions I endured! But the Lord delivered me out of them all. 12 📚Yes, and all who want to live godly lives in Christ 📖 Jesus will suffer persecution. 13 📚But evil men and hypocrites will go on getting worse, deceiving and being deceived.
3:13 They have an evil goal in life and will make steady progress toward it. Evil always results in further evil, deceiving others will result in becoming unable to recognize the truth oneself.⚜
14 📚But you must continue in the things you have learned and have been assured, knowing from whom you learned them,
The divine inspiration and use of the Bible
15 📚and that from childhood 📖 you have known the Holy Scriptures that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ 📖 Jesus. 16 📚All 📖 Scripture is given by inspiration of God 📖, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
3:16 By “all Scripture” Paul did not mean all that the various religions of the world regarded as holy books or as God-given writings. Absolutely not. He was referring to the Holy Bible. See also 2 Pet 1:20-21; Matt 4:4; 5:17-18; 15:3-4; 22:43; Mark 12:36; Luke 24:44; John 10:35; Acts 4:35; 1 Cor 2:13; Heb 1:5-13; 1 Pet 1:11; Rev 1:1; 2:1; 22:18-19. Compare Jer 1:2, 9. See the Introduction to Judges.⚜
17 📚that the man of God may be perfectly prepared and thoroughly equipped for every good work 📖.
3:17 No servant of Christ can be thoroughly equipped for every good work without a thorough knowledge of the Bible. We may learn other things but let this be the chief study of our lives.⚜