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 Survey of the Letters of Paul:  2 Timothy 2:18  
  
                                                                                                                                                                                    
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2 Timothy 2:18
Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.
 
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Editor's note:  Just a minor item but actually in the Barclay's commentary, Verse 14 is a one-verse section with the next section being verses 15-18.  We went with the correction in Verse 17.

This section has four verses:

2 Timothy 2:15-18
15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.
17 And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus;
18 Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.

We will begin with the Barclay's commentary:


THE WAY OF TRUTH AND THE WAY OF ERROR

2 Timothy 2:15-18
…paraphrased
15 Put out every effort to present yourself to God as one who has stood the test, as a workman who has no need to be ashamed, as one who rightly handles the word of truth.
16 Avoid these godless chatterings, for the people who engage in them only progress further and further into ungodliness. 
17 Their talk eats its way into the Church like an ulcerous gangrene.  Among such people are Hymenaeus and Philetus,
18 Who, as far as the truth is concerned, have lost the way, when they say that the resurrection has already happened, and who by such statements are upsetting the faith of some.

PAUL urges Timothy to present himself, amid the false teachers, as a real teacher of the truth. The word he uses for to present is paraste¯sai, which characteristically means to present oneself for service. The following words and phrases all develop this idea of usefulness for service.

The Greek for one who has stood the test is dokimos, which describes anything which has been tested and is fit for service.  For instance, it describes gold or silver which has been purified of all alloy in the fire. It is therefore the word for money which is genuine, or, as we would say, sterling. It is the word used for a stone which is fit to be slotted into its place in a building. A stone with a flaw in it was marked with a capital A, standing for adokimastos, which means tested and found wanting. Timothy was to be tested to be sure that he was suitable for the work of Christ and was therefore a worker who had no need to be ashamed.

Further, Timothy is urged in a famous phrase rightly to divide the word of truth. The Greek word translated as to divide rightly is interesting. It is orthotomein, which literally means to cut rightly. It is a word containing many pictures. The reformer John Calvin connected it with a father dividing out the food at a meal and cutting it up so that each member of the family received the right portion. The sixteenth-century Calvinist theologian Theodore Beza connected it with the cutting up of sacrificial victims so that each part was correctly apportioned to the altar or to the priest. The Greeks themselves used the word in three different contexts. They used it for driving a straight road across country, for ploughing a straight furrow across a field, and for the work of a mason in cutting and squaring a stone so that it fitted into its correct place in the structure of the building. So, the person who rightly divides the word of truth drives a straight road through the truth and refuses to be lured down pleasant but irrelevant byways; such a person ploughs a straight furrow across the field of truth or takes each section of the truth and fits it into its correct position, as a mason does a stone, allowing no part to take an inappropriate place and so knock the whole structure out of balance.

On the other hand, the false teacher engages in what Paul would call ‘godless chatterings’. Then Paul uses a vivid phrase. The Greeks had a favorite word for making progress (prokoptein). It literally means to cut down in front; to remove the obstacles from a road so that straight and uninterrupted progress is possible. Paul says of these senseless talkers that they progress further and further into ungodliness. They progress in reverse. The more they talk, the further they get from God. Here then is the test. If at the end of our talk we are closer to one another and to God, then all is well; but if we have put up barriers between one another and have left God more distant, then all is not well. The aim of all Christian discussion and of all Christian action is to bring people nearer to one another and to God.

THE LOST RESURRECTION
AMONG the false teachers, Paul numbers especially Hymenaeus [Hi may nay us] and Philetus [Phi-le-tus]. Who these men were, we do not know.  But we get a brief glimpse of their teaching in at least one of its aspects. They said that the resurrection had already happened. This of course does not refer to the resurrection of Jesus; it refers to the resurrection of Christians after death.  We do know of two false views of the resurrection of Christians which had some influence in the early Church.

(1) It was claimed that the real resurrection of Christians took place at baptism. It is true that, in Romans 6, Paul had written vividly about how the Christian dies in the moment of baptism and rises to new life. There were those who taught that the resurrection happened in that moment of baptism and that it was resurrection to new life in Christ here and now, not after death.

(2) There were those who taught that the meaning of individual resurrection was nothing more than that people lived on in their children.

The trouble was that this kind of teaching found an echo in both the Jewish and the Greek side of the Church. On the Jewish side, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the body but the Sadducees did not. Any teaching which did away with the concept of life after death would appeal to the Sadducees; the trouble with the Pharisees was that they were wealthy materialists who had so big a stake in this world that they were not interested in any world to come.

On the Greek side, the trouble was much greater. In the early days of Christianity, the Greeks, generally speaking, believed in immortality but not in the resurrection of the body.  The highest belief was that of the Stoics. They believed that God was what might be called fiery spirit. The life in human beings was a spark of that spirit, a spark of God himself, a scintilla – a hint – of deity. But they believed that, when someone died, that spark went back to God and was reabsorbed in him. That is a noble belief, but it clearly does away with personal survival after death. Further, the Greeks believed that the body was entirely evil. They had their play on words as a slogan: ‘So¯ma Se¯ma’, ‘The body is a tomb.’  The last thing they wanted or believed in was the resurrection of the body, and therefore they, too, were open to receive any teaching about the resurrection which fitted their beliefs.

It is obvious that Christians do not believe in the resurrection of this body. No one could conceive of someone smashed in an accident or dying of cancer reawakening in [The Kingdom] with the same body. But Christians do believe in the survival of personal identity; they believe most strenuously that after death you will still be you and I will still be I. Any teaching which removes that certainty of the personal survival of each individual person strikes at the very root of Christian belief.

When Hymenaeus [Hi may nay us] and Philetus [Phi-le-tus]. and others like them taught that the resurrection had already happened, either at the moment of baptism or in a person’s children, they were teaching something which Sadducean Jews and philosophic Greeks would be by no means averse to accepting, but they were also teaching something which undermined one of the central beliefs of the Christian faith. ~Barclay commentary

Now to the other commentaries. We will begin with the general and go to the specific.

First the Matthew Henry Main which covers verses 16-18

He must take heed of that which would be a hindrance to him in his work, 2 Timothy 2:16. He must take heed of error: Shun profane and vain babblings. The heretics, who boasted of their notions and their arguments, thought their performances such as might recommend them; but the apostle calls them profane and vain babblings: when once men become fond of those they will increase unto more ungodliness. The way of error is down-hill; one absurdity being granted or contended for, a thousand follow: Their word will eat as doth a canker, or gangrene; when errors or heresies come into the church, the infecting of one often proves the infecting of many, or the infecting of the same person with one error often proves the infecting of him with many errors.

Upon this occasion the apostle mentions some who had lately advanced erroneous doctrines: Hymenaeus [Hi may nay us] and Philetus [Phi-le-tus]. He names these corrupt teachers, by which he sets a brand upon them, to their perpetual infamy, and warns all people against hearkening to them. They have erred concerning the truth, or concerning one of the fundamental articles of the Christian religion, which is truth. The resurrection of the dead is one of the great doctrines of Christ. Now see the subtlety of the serpent and the serpent's seed. They did not deny the resurrection (for that had been boldly and avowedly to confront the word of Christ), but they put a corrupt interpretation upon that true doctrine, saying that the resurrection was past already, that what Christ spoke concerning the resurrection was to be understood mystically and by way of allegory, that it must be meant of a spiritual resurrection only. It is true, there is a spiritual resurrection, but to infer thence that there will not be a true and real resurrection of the body at the last day is to dash one truth of Christ in pieces against another. By this they overthrew the faith of some, took them off from the belief of the resurrection of the dead; and if there be no resurrection of the dead, nor future state, no recompence of our services and sufferings in another world, we are of men the most miserable, 1 Corinthians 15:19. Whatever takes away the doctrine of a future state overthrows the faith of Christians. The apostle had largely disproved this error (1 Corinthians 15), and therefore does not here enter into the arguments against it.

Quoted verse:
1 Corinthians 15:19
If in this life only we have hope in Christ [meaning no resurrection], we are of all men most miserable.

Observe,
1. The babblings Timothy was to shun were profane and vain; they were empty shadows, and led to profaneness: For they will increase unto more ungodliness.
2. Error is very productive, and on that account the more dangerous: it will eat like a gangrene.
3. When men err concerning the truth, they always endeavour to have some plausible pretence for it. Hymenaeus [Hi may nay us] and Philetus [Phi-le-tus] did not deny a resurrection, but pretended it was already past.
4. Error, especially that which affects the foundation, will overthrow the faith of some. ~Matthew Henry Main

Let us now go to the Biblical Illustrator.

Saying that the resurrection is past already.

Error concerning the resurrection
The resurrection of the body, always a difficulty in ancient modes of thought, was especially so to those who, with the Essenes amongst the Jews, the Neo-Platonicians, and most of the early sects which afterwards expanded into Gnosticism, had adopted the dualism of the East, and held matter to be evil— sometimes the Evil Principle or his embodiment. Hence they were ready to avail themselves of the other sense of resurrection, the rising of those who were baptized into Christ to newness of life (Romans 6:3; Romans 6:5; Colossians 2:12); and they denied that any further revelation was to be believed. This error had been early taught in the Corinthian Church (1 Corinthians 15:12). (Speaker’s Commentary.)

Quoted verses:
Romans 6:3
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

Romans 6:5
For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

Colossians 2:12
Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.

1 Corinthians 15:12
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

And overthrow the faith of some. [...notice the story-like narrative here to make its points]

Overthrowing the faith of others
After an infidel had succeeded in sapping the foundation of his mother’s faith in the Christian religion, he received a letter from her one day, informing him that she was near death. She said that “she found herself without any support in her distress; that he had taken away that only resource of comfort upon which in all cases of affliction she used to rely, and that she now found her mind sinking into despair. She did not doubt that her son would afford her some substitute for her religion; and she conjured him to hasten to her, or, at least, to send her a letter containing such consolations as philosophy could afford to a dying mortal.” He was overwhelmed with anguish on receiving this letter, and hastened to Scotland, travelling day and night; but before he arrived his mother expired.

Unreliable ministers
A misplaced buoy caused the wreck of a steamer worth [$250,000], the loss of a valuable cargo and peril to many lives recently. The steamer, which was called the City of Portland, left Boston on her voyage to St. Johns, N.B., with seventy passengers on board and considerable freight. The night was clear, and as the steamer passed the Owl’s Head just before daybreak, the captain saw a striped buoy indicating the presence of a sunken rock. The course was altered in accordance with the position of the buoy, but in a few minutes the steamer struck a ledge. The pumps were started at once, distress colours set, and the boats cleared. The officers and crew retained their presence of mind, and despatched a boat for help. In a short time a steamer arrived, and took off the terrified passengers, but the steamer and cargo were a total loss. The captain of the ship was in no way blameable. The buoy, which was put there to be a means of safety, was by its displacement the cause of disaster. It had drifted. Similarly some preachers drift from orthodox positions, and their change of position may cause the wreck of the souls of those who flock to hear them [See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_(shipwreck)  ]. ~ Biblical Illustrator

Now to the specific commentaries.

This verse is primarily in three parts:

1] Who concerning the truth have erred.
2] Saying that the resurrection is past already.
3] And overthrow the faith of some.


1] Who concerning the truth have erred.

Who concerning the truth have erred - To what extent they had erred is unknown. Paul mentions only one point - that pertaining to the resurrection; but says that this was like a gangrene. It would certainly, unless checked, destroy all the other doctrines of religion. No man can safely hold a single error, any more than he can safely have one part of his body in a state of mortification. ~Barnes Notes

Who concerning the truth have erred. - Their speculation is stated. They preached, as some do in our own times, that the resurrection which Christ teaches is only a moral resurrection, a resurrection of the soul to a better life. This error was taught also in Corinth (1 Corinthians 15:12), and found some currency in the second century. ~People's New Testament

Quoted verse:
1 Corinthians 15:12
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

Who concerning the truth have erred - They had the truth, but erred or wandered from it, saying the resurrection was already past, and thus denying the resurrection of the body, and, by consequence, future rewards and punishments; and this necessarily sapped the foundation of all religion: and thus the gangrene had, in reference to their unhappy votaries, a rapid and unchecked operation. ~Adam Clarke

Who concerning the truth have erred - That is, the two persons just mentioned; they fell from the truth, wandered and departed from it; they did not keep to the Scriptures of truth, but deviated from them; they missed that mark, and went astray into gross errors and mistakes; rejected the Gospel, the word of truth, in general, and particularly in [see next phrase]. ~John Gill

Who concerning the truth have erred - More exactly, men who concerning the truth erred by maintaining. For the compound relative indicating the class see on Titus 1:11; for the verb 1 Timothy 1:6; 1 Timothy 6:21. ~Cambridge

Quoted verses:
Titus 1:11
Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.

1 Timothy 1:6 [See Lesson]
From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling;

1 Timothy 6:21 [See Lesson]
Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.

2] Saying that the resurrection is past already.

Saying that the resurrection is past already - It is not known in what form they held this opinion. It may have been, as Augustine supposes, that they taught that there was no resurrection but that which occurs in the soul when it is recovered from the death of sin, and made to live anew. Or it may be that they held that those who had died had experienced all the resurrection which they ever would, by passing into another state, and receiving at death a spiritual body fitted to their mode of being in the heavenly world. Whatever was the form of the opinion, the apostle regarded it as a most dangerous error, for just views of the resurrection undoubtedly lie at the foundation of correct apprehensions of the Christian system. ~Barnes Notes

Saying, that the resurrection is past already - and no other is to be expected; or that there was no future resurrection of the dead: their error was, as some think, that there is no other resurrection than that of parents in their children, who, though they die, live in their posterity; or than the resurrection of Christ, and of the saints, that rose at the same time; or rather, that there is no other resurrection than the spiritual one, or regeneration, which is a quickening of dead sinners, or the resurrection of them from the death of sin, to a life of grace; which seems to be the truest account of their principle, seeing this is what has been received and propagated by others since; though some have thought that they gave into the Palingenesia of the Pythagoreans, who supposed that when men die, their souls go into other bodies; and that these men imagined, that this is all the resurrection that will be: and others have been of opinion, that their notion was, that whereas the deliverance of the Jews out of the Babylonish captivity is signified by a resurrection of them, in Ezekiel 37:1 that this is the resurrection they meant was past, and no other to be looked for; but that which has been fixed upon seems to be the truest account: ~John Gill

Quoted verse and I will read the first nine verses:
Ezekiel 37:1-9
1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,
2 And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.
3 And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.
4 Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.
5 Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:
6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.
8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.
9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

3] And overthrow the faith of some.

And overthrow the faith of some - That is, on this point, and as would appear on all the correlative subjects of Christian belief. ~Barnes Notes

And overthrow the faith of some - the Ethiopic version reads, "of many"; that is, of nominal professors of religion; not of true believers, for true faith cannot be overthrown. Hence it follows [verse 19]. ~John Gill

And overthrow the faith of some - trying to subvert “the foundation” on which alone faith can rest secure (2 Timothy 2:19). ~Jamieson, Fausset, Brown

Quoted verse:
2 Timothy 2:19
Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

Recap:

1] Present yourself for service.
2] Firstfruits drive a straight road through the truth and refuse to be lured down irrelevant byways.
3] False teachers engage in 'godless chatterings'.

4] Firstfruits caught up in false doctrine make progress in reverse.
5] Firstfruit test: If in fellowship with brethren we get closer to each other and to God, all is well.
6] Firstfruit test: If one erects barriers between brethren and gets further from God, all is not well.

7] There are those in the world holding differing ideas of the resurrection and what that means.
8] The non-converted or acting in a non-converted way tend to enter into strife.
9] Strifes of words destroy the things of God in the individual.

10] None can overthrow the faith of a firstfruit moving forward in the Salvation Process.
11] We must see to it that we are holy vessels.
12] The way of error is downhill.

13] Embrace one false doctrine and a thousand will follow.
14] Shun profane and vain babblings.
15] Whatever takes away the doctrine of a future state overthrows the faith of Christians.



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