2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 Commentary

Paul begins this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson by summoning Timothy to “Continue in [mene en*].” It is a call to persevere, in the paraphrase The Message offers, an invitation to “stick with.” If it were an American country western song, it might sound something like, “Keep on trucking.”

Verse 14a’s “But” [de] connects that summons to what Paul has just written. It, in fact, draws a contrast between verse 12-13 and verses 14ff. In verse 12-13 Paul warns Timothy, “Evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” In other words, people who are evil and deceptive won’t just go on being wicked. They will, warns Paul, become even worse, even more immoral. The Message paraphrases this warning as, “As long as they are out there, things can only get worse.” People’s evildoing will only make things worse, especially for Jesus’ adopted siblings.

In the face of that, the apostle encourages Timothy to mene en (“continue in”) “what you have learned [emathes] and have become convinced of [episthotes]” (14). The apostle summons his mentee in the faith to rather than deviating from the path the Spirit showed Timothy through people like his godly grandmother and mother (1:5), literally “live in,” that is, make his life’s home in the faith the Spirit has both taught him and assured him of. While evildoers may be pressuring him to swerve away from what Timothy has learned, Paul invites him to, in the words of The Message, “stick with it.”

Nearly every Christian knows and loves someone who, while they once loved the Lord, have now wandered off that road. God’s enemies may not have convinced them to deviate from it. In at least some cases circumstances knocked them off course. Among the laments of Christians whose children no longer love the Lord is, “We taught them to love Jesus, pray and go to church. Where did it go wrong?”

Those former Christians are, of course, neither the first nor the last to wander away. In fact, earlier in his letter Paul cites the examples of “everyone in the province of Asia … including Phygelus and Hermogenes” (1:15) who has not continued in what they’d learned and become convinced of.

Preachers can admit unbelief, particularly in those who have swerved away from faith and toward unbelief is profoundly mysterious. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson invites God’s people to refuse to take the faith of people we love or ourselves for granted. The Spirit can also use it to call us to do all we can by what we do and say to summon those loved ones back to a faithful relationship with Jesus Christ.

After all, the apostle continues in verse 15, many of us can join Timothy in knowing those from whom we first learned to love the Lord. While some of our mentors in the faith turned out not to be godly people, by God’s amazing grace through the work of the Holy Spirit many of the people who taught us to love Jesus deeply loved him themselves.

But, of course, Jesus’ friends don’t just learn about him from other friends of Jesus. “From infancy [brephous]” we “have known [oidas] the Holy Scriptures,” writes Paul, “which are able to make” us “wise [sophisai] for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ” (14b-15). The gift of salvation is something no human being is able to discern on his or her own. We rely on the Holy Spirit to work through the Scriptures in order to show us how God longs to rescue us by gracing us with faith in Jesus Christ.

Christians sometimes turn to the Scriptures first as a kind of moral advice manual. Since we rightly long to be better parents, spouses, family members, and friends, there is a place for turning to the Bible’s bottomless well of wisdom. In verse 16 Paul himself insists “All Scripture … is useful [ophelimos] for teaching [didaskalian], rebuking [elegmon], and correcting [epanorthosin] and training [paideian] in righteousness [dikaiosyne].”

God’s Word points us to the truth about our relationships, exposes our rebellion against God’s ways and purposes and shows us how to live gratefully in response to God’s amazing grace. The apostle echoes that in verse 17 when he insists God gives us the Scriptures “so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped [exertismenos] for every good work [ergon].”

But while preachers may long to preach about and hearers may long to hear about the Bible’s moral guidance, we always want to remember that the Scriptures are first of all, a handbook of salvation. They remind us of all the ways we’ve naturally made ourselves God’s enemies. The Bible, what’s more describes everything God did in order to adopt us as God’s children. It also points us to the Spirit’s work of deeply implanting faith in Jesus followers. On top of all that, the Scriptures describe the final outcome of God’s rescuing work in the new earth and heaven.

In fact, preachers might view verse 14’s ethical exhortations in the light of the most appropriate relationship with God in Christ. We might see the Scriptures as “teaching” us about the faithful reception of God’s grace, as well as “rebuking and correcting” our assumptions about our ability to rescue ourselves from our natural sinfulness. Jesus’ friends might even think of “training in righteousness” as receiving Christ’s righteousness that God imputes to us.

This is “the word” [logon] Paul in verse 2 “urges [diamartyromai]” Timothy to “preach [keryxon].” At all times (“in season and out of season”) we announce the good news: in and because of Christ, God saves God’s dearly beloved people. “With great patience [pase makromythia] and careful instruction [didache]” preachers as well as all Christians proclaim the greatest news ever: we only need to receive God’s grace with our faith that God has decisively acted to rescue us and place us on the road to eternal life.

Of course, as Paul reminds gospel heralds of all times and places, the opposition to that grace remains fierce. It’s not just that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted” (3:12). It’s also that, as the apostle warns Timothy in 4:3-4, “the time will come when people will not put up with [ouk anexontai] sound doctrine [hygianouses didaskalias]. Instead, to suit their own desires [epithymias], they will gather around them [episoreusousin] a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears [knethomenoi akoen] want to hear. They will turn their ears away from [apostrepsousin] the truth and turn aside [ektrapesontai] to myths [mythous].”

Here Paul reminds Timothy and his other brothers and sisters in Christ that while the gospel of God’s saving grace to us in Jesus Christ is the greatest news any person will ever hear, something in us naturally fiercely resists it. We don’t naturally like the idea that there is nothing we have to do or even can do to rescue our world or ourselves from the various messes we create.

So we naturally plug our ears to the claims that God has done all that’s needed to be done in order to save our world and us. Our ears “itch” to hear the “myth” that we can rescue ourselves and our world. We even gather around ourselves fellow “believers” and teachers who will confirm and echo our beliefs about relying on ourselves for our spiritual wellness.

In the face of all this and more that rejects the gospel of God’s saving grace, Paul begs Timothy in verse 5 to “keep your head [nephe] in all situations, endure hardship [kakopatheson], do the work of an evangelist [euangelistou], discharge [plerophoreson] all the duties of your ministry.” The opposition to the gospel and its proclaimers is fierce. But its good news is such a lifesaver that the apostle calls his mentee to persevere, to keep on keeping on, not just in the faith, but also in the privilege of proclaiming it to a world that’s dying to hear it.

Preachers could do worse than to end this Sunday’s message with the stirring paraphrase of verse 5 that The Message offers. Its message isn’t, after all, timely just for preachers, missionaries and other “Christian workers.” It offers a summons to all of Jesus’ friends and followers: “Keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant.”

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In her September 28, 2025, opinion piece in The New York Times section on “Believing,” Lauren Jackson reflected on a recent rumor that God would rapture God’s people on Wednesday, September 24, 2025. The rumor seemed to originate with a man in South Africa. Jackson notes that some Christians embraced the rumor of the imminent rapture by quitting their jobs, preparing to abandon their homes and writing notes on Bibles for people God had left behind.

The rumor, of course, turned out to be false. But among Jackson’s striking insights about the rumor is something that may relate to “itching ears.” She quotes Kim Haines-Etzen, a Cornell professor of religion, as asserting that apocalyptic predictions become more popular during periods of political and social unrest. Haines-Etzen notes, “It surfaces and resurfaces in times when there is some sort of crisis.”