Bible Commentaries
2 Timothy 3

Verses 1-17

XIV

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LAST DAY

2 Timothy 3:1-17

We continue the discussion of the second letter to Timothy with 2 Timothy 3. The apostle calls attention to some characteristics of the last day, just as he did in 2 Timothy 4 of his first letter, and Just as we find in Peter’s second letter, 2 Peter 3:3 "Mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts." I do not know in any literature such a description of the character of man as given here, except that by the same author in Romans 1.

What does Paul mean by "last days"? The phrase "last days" to be properly expounded, requires a whole chapter. The "last days" in many instances means gospel days, but in the case immediately before us, and in the parallel passage in the letter to the Hebrews, there seems to be a reference to the closing days of the dispensation. He does not mean that progressing Christians will all be that way, but he is warning against a class.

We have them with us now. If a country boy were lifted up suddenly and put into the atmosphere that surrounds what is called the higher circle in Paris, London, New York, or Washington, he would say, "Last days!" It would be questionable with him whether any of those occupying front places in national society have any character at all.

Let us look at this paragraph: "Men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof."

The surprising thing of these characteristics is that they are applied to church members – men that have a form of godliness but deny its power. We now sometimes meet with a heresy affirming the power of godliness, but denying its form. Such heretics do not want any form of a church or particular ordinances, and lay great stress on spirituality and internal relation with God. But he commits a sin who denies form to godliness. It is an old question: What is chaff to the wheat? It depends upon the stage of the wheat. After the wheat is threshed the chaff is nothing, but it amounts to much until the wheat matures. It is the form which protects and shields it. And we must have a form of godliness in order to godliness of spirit. But when we insist on having form only, it reminds one of a man going into a field during the last great drought we had in Texas. The corn looked all right, good large ears, but when he gathered it he found nothing but shucks. Just the form. No corn was there.

What I want to impress upon the reader is that form is essential to the purpose which it serves, but more important than form is the inner life. There is an inner man and an outer man. We cannot safely disregard the outer man. We may say that we will live spiritually, but the body gets cold, it gets hungry, it has to be clothed and fed. There is an intimate relation between the body and the spirit. A Quaker may say, "We have no form of baptism; we believe in baptism of the Spirit, and we dispense-with all externalities." That is a capital mistake, and contrary to the Bible, but this mistake which Paul is here discussing is infinitely worse. They held onto the form and left out altogether the heart and power of religion.

Romans 1:28-32 resembles this passage somewhat: "And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful, etc."

It is easy to see bow that parallels with the one we are considering. The sin of the Timothy passage is more heinous, for these are professed Christians that have these characteristics. Claiming to be Christians, and yet with such characteristics as these I There are times of spiritual power and strict discipline when people are not allowed to retain the form of religion, when their lives are at variance with the form. But at times of spiritual decadence and relaxation of discipline, any kind of a life will be tolerated if only the externals of religion are maintained.

Paul’s one theme in this letter is an exhortation to be a faithful preacher. He is calling Timothy’s attention to his necessity of being faithful in view of a class of men who would come to the front. He says, "turn away from these men," and gives a description of them and their propagandism. It must be evident to any one who has carefully studied the letters to the Colossians and Ephesians, that this gnosticism had a method of propagandism just the opposite of the gospel’s. The gospel is open and above board. A man gets the biggest audience he can, proclaims from housetops to all classes of men without any distinction, the very quintessence of the gospel. Contrary to that, the prevalent Gnostics evaded public presentation to crowds. They always wanted to address privately single individuals or single households, and they are represented in this letter, and in all other letters on the subject, as people who crept privately into the church, crept privately into the home, under the disguise of a form of religion. Retaining their membership in the church, they would go around and talk about a select few, making a distinction in classes. Only the cultured few were to be initiated into the mysteries of this new philosophy.

Paul says, "For of these are they that creep into houses and take captive silly women." The word "silly" is not the best translation. It means little women. Not little in the sense of Miss Alcott, who wrote a most engaging series called Little Women; young people who can be trained to have the graces of older persons; not in that sense, but in the moral sense. They take captive women with little souls. There are great men and little men; great women and little women – some of them infinitesimally small. They seem to have no high nature; it is all low. They are on the plane of brute beasts. Their pleasures are sensual – pleasures that appeal to the animal nature. It may be the pleasure of eating like the lion or tiger, gorging himself on blood. So a glutton lives to eat. It may be in the direction of gossip, slander, or lasciviousness. That is what Paul calls "little"; little in the sense that it keeps down to the animal part of man.

When Henry Ward Beecher, rather upon his own solicitation than upon accusation, before an assembly of the Congregationalists was being catechised as to his departure from the faith, a question was put to him: "Do you believe in the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit?" he said, "Unquestionably." The second question: "Do you believe that this necessity arises from the sins each man himself commits or from the depravity of his nature?" That was putting him in a close place. He evaded it most adroitly – never knew any man to more adroitly evade a question: "I believe," said he, "a man needs regeneration because he is an animal." That is an exceedingly acute thought, and much can be said about it. For instance, when man was originally made part of him was made out of the dust of the earth, and God himself provided the tree of life that the mortality should be eliminated from that body, and it should become an immortal body. To evade the doctrine of depravity, Beecher took the position that regeneration should be predicated upon the fact that man is an animal – that is, has a lower nature.

In the passage before us Paul is bringing out a class of women – "little women."

Any woman is little who is satisfied with the mere round of social pleasures, loving pleasure more than God; who is satisfied to reign in merely fashionable circles, who never looks up, never thinks of what is due God.

In Paul’s sense that is a little woman.

He is about to show how irreligious teachers retain the form. He says they are "ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." They claim to have a gnosis, a knowledge that is a finality, and yet they never come to any definite result. What is gnosis to them one year may be exploded in the succeeding year. The revealed word of God is a fixed standard. It is not different in one country from what it is in another country; not different in one age from what it is in another age. The Ten Commandments are applicable to the world, the world over. But where people set up a subjective standard of knowledge, the standard changes with the individuals. Even one man may have a standard one week which he would not acknowledge the next week. All subjective knowledge is ever knowing and never knowing. This applies to all human philosophies whether by Kant, Aristotle, Epicurus, or Socrates. Unaided human wisdom cannot evolve a definite knowledge or determine a fixed standard. Says Paul, "They are ever knowing, and ever unable to come to the knowledge of the truth." The world by its science and wisdom could never find out God.

He cites a case: "Even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also withstand the truth." Here is the only place in the Bible where we get the names of the magicians who simulated the first miracles wrought by Moses. The question arises: Where did Paul get the names? I answer: By inspiration.

There was a prevalent philosophy in Egypt in the days of Moses much like this Gnostic philosophy, a philosophy that attempted to account for the creation of things; a philosophy that attempted to account for sin and gave its remedy; a philosophy that divided the race into sharply distinguished classes, only a select few to be initiated into the mysteries, and yet a philosophy that had no moral influence over their lives. A man could be at the very head of the mysteries in Egypt, and at the same time be as corrupt morally as hell itself. Just as one could be an expert in wisdom at Corinth, and yet be utterly corrupt in the sight of God: "Men corrupt in mind and reprobate concerning the faith."

How squarely against that Paul puts himself, as we have seen before, and will see again before we are through with the letter. As an example, he denies having any such record as that; he appeals to Timothy’s knowledge of him: "Thou didst follow my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, long-suffering, love, patience, persecution, sufferings, what things befell me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord delivered me." "There is my life as a teacher of the Christian religion. It has been a life of great suffering, persecution, patience, endurance. It has not been corrupt, beastly, animal, devilish." He puts that right over against the life of these other teachers.

It is the easiest thing in the world, as well as the most flattering to the human mind, to devise beautiful theories, and we are amazed to find that some theories as beautiful as the rainbow come from the lips of men and women who are as corrupt as the pit. They are meant just for theories, not to dominate life. I once saw a young lady crying over a most beautiful tribute to purity in a novel. She said the author must have been one of the best men in the world. She was surprised to learn that he was utterly corrupt in his own life. Anybody can fix up a thing like that on paper, but that does not argue internal purity.

Take this law in 2 Timothy 3:13: "Evil men and imposters shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." There is an awful trend from which no man can escape, any more than he can escape from the suction above the Niagara Falls. A man who lives an animal life, a life of evil desire, a life of slimy imagination, a life of unholy thoughts, is going down just as certain as a boat without oars or help will go down when it strikes the current of the Niagara, or as a boat when it strikes the circle of the maelstrom. It may seem that the man is holding his own, but every circle he makes, he goes deeper, deeper, deeper, and at last he goes under. That is the law inexorable. They wax worse and worse. It is another law that there is a tendency in habit to crystallize into character. In other words, to attain after a while the fixedness of type. When things get to that stage they are irreformable.

Paul now makes almost pathetic appeal: "Timothy, do you remember from whom you learned the standard that you are being guided by? Do you remember your old grandmother Lois, your mother Eunice; that you from a child were instructed in the Holy Scriptures which are able to make one wise unto salvation? Do you remember the time the apostle came to your home and held up Christ and him crucified as your Saviour from sin, and you accepted him?" Now, what was the standard held up? It is expressed in the Greek: hiera grammata– the "Holy Scriptures." That is not subjective knowledge; we do not evolve that out of our own consciousness.

The question arises: What Holy Scriptures? It means the sacred books put into the hands of the Jewish people, the Holy Scriptures which were in the hands of Christ. In other words, the books of the Old Testament, just as we have them, clearly defined. Now comes a declaration: Having referred to these scriptures collectively, hiera grammata, he declares concerning them distributively: pasa graphe; every one of these sacred scriptures is theopneustos, "God-inspired," and is profitable for teaching, conviction, correction, instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped for every good work. This makes a fixed and perfect standard. From inspiration comes power. First, these scriptures are able to make one wise unto salvation. They are profitable for teaching what a man ought to believe and what a man ought to do.

The next point is, they are profitable for reproof, for convicting of error. Not only to teach what to believe and to do, but when one goes wrong in belief or in life, these scriptures will convict him of error. Next: "for correction." That means that having shown wherein one has believed wrong or done wrong, it will tell him how to correct that wrong.

"For instruction," or discipline, "in righteousness." There the word "instruction" has the idea of training, disciplining. We see a woman put out a bulb or plant a seed. Even before it comes up she has a purpose in her mind and fixes a frame over it. When the vine begins to grow she trains it to run on that frame, and when it wants to run off at a tangent, she gently attaches it to the frame and trains it, trains it, trains it, until it circles all around her window. That is the power of training. These God-inspired scriptures are profitable in training one in doing right. A raw recruit does not know whether to commence buttoning his coat at the top or bottom, does not know how to "present arms," "order arms," "right shoulder," "shift arms," "charge bayonets"; does not know how to keep step. He has to be trained. He is turned over to an experienced drill sergeant. After he is trained as a unit, he is then trained as a member of a squad, then of a company, then of a battalion, then of a brigade, then of a division, so that he not only knows what to do from a military point of view, but he knows exactly where his place is when the trumpet calls to arms.

"In order that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work." The sum and substance of the teaching of the word of God is that doctrine must be transmuted into life. We must not only bloom, but bring forth fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and thrown into the fire. Herein is the supreme difference, broad as the ocean and deep as eternity, between the Christian system of religion and other systems of religion. It is the effect on life, bringing men nearer to God.

QUESTIONS

1. What the meaning of "last days" in 2 Timothy 3:1?

2. What the present indications as to the fulfilment?

3. Cite a passage similar to this in 2 Timothy 3?

4. Why is Paul’s description of ’men here more terrible than his description of the heathen in the first chapter of Romans?

5. What the relation of "form" to "godliness"? Illustrate. Which the more important? Illustrate.

6. What elements of Gnosticism are here condemned?

7. What the meaning of "silly women"?

8. What was Henry Ward Beecher’s position on the necessity of regeneration?

9. Contrast the gnosis of the teachers here referred to with revelation as a standard.

10. What is characteristic of all subjective knowledge?

11. What flashlight here on Old Testament history?

12. What the Egyptian mysteries?

13. What moral influence on its subjects?

14. Does it require purity of character to devise beautiful theories? Illustrate.

15. What law stated in 2 Timothy 3:13?

16. What pathetic appeal in 2 Timothy 3:14-15?

17. Why is it better to be trained in right ways from childhood than to sow wild oats?

18. What the "sacred writings" in 2 Timothy 3:15?

19. What the meaning of "every scripture" in 2 Timothy 3:16?

20. What the value of 2 Timothy 3:16-17?