The Word Made Fresh
1Understand that the last days will be a terrible time. 2People will love money and love themselves. They will be arrogant, abusive braggarts who disobey their parents. They are ungrateful and unholy, 3and are disrespectful and opinionated. They slander, tell lies, and act like heartless fiends. They hate that which is good. 4They cheat recklessly, and swell with conceit. They are pleasure lovers rather than God lovers. 5They cling to the outward appearance of godliness without its power. So, stay away from them! 6Some of them weasel their way into families, taking advantage of gullible women who are overwhelmed by their sinfulness and easily swayed by desires. 7These are the ones who can’t be taught and will never come to acknowledge the truth. 8Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, these people oppose the truth because they are corrupt and have faith that is faked. 9But they won’t be successful because their foolishness will be there for everyone to see.
10You have heard my teaching and have seen my conduct. You know my purpose in life and my patience and love and how steadfast I have been. 11You know how I have been persecuted, and how I suffered through what happened to me in Antioch and Iconium and Lystra, but also how I endured all of it because the Lord rescued me in every case. 12Yes, everyone who seeks to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted, 13while evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse. They will deceive others, but they themselves are being deceived.
14You, however, must cling to what you have learned and to what you believe, because you know from whom you have learned it. 15From the time you were children you have been taught the sacred writings that tell about salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All the scriptures are inspired by God and can be used for teaching, for correction, and for training in how to live right, 17so that all who belong to God will know how to live, and will be able to do good work.
Commentary
1-9: Paul sees distressing days ahead. From his extensive catalogue of ills, the kind that he is fond of listing, we see that the cause of those distressing days will be that many people will love everything but God. Jannes and Jambres were the magicians in Pharaoh’s court who, through their arts, were able to copy several of the miracles Moses cast against the Egyptians (see Exodus 7:11, 8:7 and 9:11). Their names are not in the Old Testament; Paul gets them from other popular Jewish literature, works that sought to fill in some of the missing details of the Biblical texts.
10-17: Paul begs Timothy to recall what he has seen Paul go through and how he has conducted himself in difficult situations. (The persecutions he suffered in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra are described in Acts 13:48-14:20. But Paul also had much success in those places — remember that Timothy is from Lystra.) God can be trusted, he says, to come to the rescue of the godly people who are destined to come under persecution. Wicked people will grow in wickedness, but Timothy is to grow in knowledge of the scriptures and in his devotion to teaching others the way of salvation.
Takeaway
Perhaps nothing in our society is more convincing of the need for a steadfast faith than our political battles and the desperate desire among some of our “leaders” to attain and wield power over others. Faith does not wield power. Faith wields goodwill and love for all, even our enemies.