Last week, I looked at the preceding verses that introduce 2 Timothy 2:24-26. This week, we will look at the verses immediately following this passage:
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!
~2 Timothy 3:1-5
The servant of the Lord must not quarrel and must be patient, gentle, and able to teach, so that those who oppose us may be granted repentance, that they may know the truth, come to their senses, and so they may be freed from the devil and his control of them. However, we must do so knowing that in our time, the days will grow more and more evil. Men will do all sorts of wickedness. But take notice in verse 5 that Paul really isn’t referring to the heathen. He’s referring to those in the church. These men will proclaim and boast a form of godliness, but they are going to deny the genuine. They will boast a counterfeit faith that makes them look good, but it won’t come at the cost of their sinful lifestyles.
Paul is warning Timothy that many of those whom he will try to preach to are going to oppose him and not listen. These people are not just sinful people who do their own pet sins, but they have a particular means of deception described in verses 6-9. They go through the churches and look for women, usually widows or single mothers, and use the command towards hospitality to take advantage of them. They come in as a good person who can help these women and then use the problems they face as blackmail and guilt trips, seducing them into their control and blaming them for their previous problems, all the while tricking them into thinking they are the solution to them. They are narcissists, and it would not be unjust to call such people sociopaths. Their agenda is to get power and to corrupt the church.
John warned Gaius of such a man: Diotrephes. Much of this I am getting from John MacArthur’s sermon on this text in 3 John. Diotrephes was a church leader, but he did not get there by genuine spirituality. He was someone who had an agenda and sought both power and pre-eminence. He didn’t need the head-pastorate position because then the spotlight would be on him. But he had a position of influence where he could direct all the affairs of the church, ultimately kick out any potential threat (those who spoke the truth), and prevent anyone who could bring truth from coming in. These are the kinds of people who proclaim a form of godliness, but they have an agenda; that agenda is self and self’s glorification.
These are the kinds of people who do not tolerate sound doctrine. Paul continues to warn about them later in 2 Timothy 4:3-4. These people will sound educated, but they will not hear truth, especially sin-piercing truth. But they will always be seeking truth, or rather knowledge. One of the key features of the Gnostics, whom Paul and the other Apostles faced in the early church, is the cult’s namesake: “Gnosis” or knowledge. These people search and seek knowledge but not truth. Paul dealt with these people directly in Athens when he went to preach on Mars Hill. The philosophers of his time loved to talk about all the newest theories, which is why Paul intrigued them. They thought he was crazy and brought him in for entertainment purposes, but weren’t exactly expecting what they got. They want to learn. They want knowledge. But they don’t want truth. I can’t think of a greater moment of this on display than with Bill Nye in his debate with Ken Ham in 2014. Nye mocked Creationists for stopping research when they found their answer and said we have to be always on the look for new answers. That is 2 Timothy 3:7 in a nutshell. If we found the answer, why should we keep looking? Solve that problem and move on to the next one.
In all their attempts to find knowledge and in all their attempts to silence the truth, they will fail. We don’t just serve a saving and merciful God; we serve a sovereign God who controls all circumstances. As the sinful heart is in such rebellion against God, we have to remember that we cannot pierce it. Only God can. There is no heart too strong for God to pierce. Just ask Paul himself. He was the worst of them all. He was the least savable person, yet God chose him and made him the best example of a Christian for all of us (besides Christ Himself). Remember that repentance is not merely a work we can do (not saving work, but action), not only is it a fruit of God’s work in our lives, but it is first and foremost a gift. So, it is not our job to convert the person. We can only operate with the standard forms of persuasion: logic, ethics, or pathology. But this can at best only reason someone into the faith. Anyone who is reasoned into the faith can be reasoned out. That’s one thing that I am shying away from in Christian apologetics in general – an over-reliance on logic and reasoning. We need them; don’t misread me on this. But logic etc. won’t save anyone. It takes the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit to do that. Our job is simply to preach the Word as given and let God take care of the results.
Jesus knows rejection better than any of us. He had 20,000+ people see His previous miracles and had just witnessed Him doing the feeding of the 5000, so Jesus took them to task and challenged their motives. When they began to get offended, Jesus didn’t back up and soften His tone. He only upped it even harder. They all left Him, and Jesus turned back to His disciples to see if they wanted to go, too. But Jesus said all this not with nonchalant apathy. Rather He likely said it with tears. He knew the crowds were uncommitted; He knew they just wanted the show and the free food. He knew they weren’t willing to give up what was needed to follow Him. And it grieved Him. But He did not let that grief stop Him nor let it get in the way of His message. Instead, He relied on the fact that the ones who would be saved were those His Father had chosen and let the rest walk away. When people don’t want to listen to us, we want to make sure they leave knowing what it is they are rejecting, but we don’t need them wasting our time either. At the same time, what if that person were to be saved? Would that not change our mindset? I’ll address that next week.
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