|
This section of Chapter 3 consists of 4 verses.
2 Timothy 3:2-5
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves,
covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient
to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false
accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those
that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures
more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power
thereof: from such turn away.
We will begin in the Barclay commentary:
THE QUALITIES OF GODLESSNESS
2 Timothy 3:2–5
The section in paraphrase:
For men will live a life that is centered in self;
they will be lovers of money, braggarts, arrogant,
lovers of insult, disobedient to their parents,
thankless, regardless even of the ultimate decencies
of life, without human affection, implacable in
hatred, reveling in slander ungovernable in their
passions, savage, not knowing what the love of good
is, treacherous, headlong in word and action,
inflated with pride, lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God. They will maintain the outward form
of religion, but they will deny its power. Avoid
such people.
HERE is one of the most terrible pictures in the New
Testament of what a godless world would be like,
with the terrible qualities of godlessness set out
in a ghastly list. Let us look at them one by one.
It is no accident that the first of these qualities
will be a life that is centered in self. The
adjective used is philautos, which means
self-loving. Love of self is the basic sin, from
which all others flow. The moment anyone makes
self-will the centre of life, divine and human
relationships are destroyed, and obedience to God
and charity to other people both become impossible.
The essence of Christianity is not the enthronement
but the obliteration of self.
People would become lovers of money (philarguros).
We must remember that Timothy’s work lay in Ephesus,
perhaps the greatest market in the ancient world. In
those days, trade tended to flow down river valleys;
Ephesus was at the mouth of the River Cayster, and
commanded the trade of one of the richest
hinterlands in all Asia Minor. At Ephesus, some of
the greatest roads in the world met. There was the
great trade route from the Euphrates valley which
came by way of Colosse and Laodicaea and poured the
wealth of the middle east into the lap of Ephesus.
There was the road from north Asia Minor and from
Galatia which came in via Sardis. There was the road
from the south which centered the trade of the
Maeander valley in Ephesus. Ephesus was called ‘the
treasure-house of the ancient world’, ‘the Vanity
Fair of Asia Minor’. It has been pointed out that
the writer of the Book of Revelation may well have
been thinking of Ephesus when he wrote that haunting
passage which describes the cargo of the merchants:
‘Cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine
linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of
scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of
costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon,
spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive
oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep,
horses and chariots, slaves – and human lives’
(Revelation 18:12–13). Ephesus was the town of a
prosperous, materialistic civilization; it was the
kind of town where men and women could so easily
lose their souls.
Note:
Vanity Fair: a fair that goes on perpetually in
the town of Vanity and symbolizes worldly
ostentation [pretentious
or conspicuous show, as of wealth or importance;
display intended to impress others.]
and frivolity [self-indulgence,
irresponsibility].
There is peril when people assess prosperity by
material things. It is to be remembered that we may
lose our souls far more easily in prosperity than in
adversity; and we are on the way to losing our souls
when we assess the value of life by the number of
things which we possess.
THE QUALITIES OF GODLESSNESS
In these terrible days, people would be braggarts
and arrogant. In Greek writings, these two words
often went together – and they are both picturesque.
Braggart has an interesting derivation. It is the
word alazoŻn and was derived from the aleŻ, which
means a wandering about. Originally, the alazoŻn was
a wandering quack. Plutarch uses the word to
describe a quack doctor. The alazoŻn was someone
with no qualification at all who travelled round the
country with medicines and spells and methods of
exorcism which, he claimed, were remedies for all
diseases. He boasted of the virtues of these
medicines wherever he went. In time, the word went
on to widen its meaning until it meant any boastful
person.
The Greek moralists wrote much about this word. The
Platonic Definitions defined the corresponding noun
(alazoneia)
as ‘The claim to good things which a man does not
really possess’. Aristotle (Nicomachean
Ethics, 7:2) defined the alazoŻn as ‘the
man who pretends to creditable qualities that he
does not possess, or possesses in a lesser degree
than he makes out’. The Greek historian Xenophon
tells us how Cyrus, the Persian king, defined the
alazoŻn: ‘The name alazoŻn seems to apply to those
who pretend that they are richer than they are or
braver than they are, and to those who promise to do
what they cannot do, and that, too, when it is
evident that they do this only for the sake of
getting something or making some gain’ (Cyropoedia,
2:2:12). Xenophon in the Memorabilia
tells how Socrates utterly condemned such impostors.
Socrates said that they were to be found in every
walk of life but were worst of all in politics.
‘Much the greatest rogue of all is the man who has
gulled his city into the belief that he is fit to
direct it.’
The world is full of these braggarts to this day –
the clever know-alls who deceive people into
thinking that they are wise, the politicians who
claim that their parties have a programme which will
bring in the Utopia and that they alone are born to
lead, the people who crowd the pages of
advertisements with claims to give beauty, knowledge
or health, the people in the Church who have a kind
of ostentatious [conspicuous
show in an attempt to impress others]
goodness. Closely allied with the braggarts, but –
as we shall see –even worse, are people who are
arrogant. The word is hupereŻphanos. It is derived
from two Greek words that mean to show oneself
above. The man who is hupereŻphanos, said
Theophrastus, the master of the character sketch,
has a kind of contempt for everyone except himself.
He is the man who is guilty of the ‘sin of the high
heart’. He is the man whom God resists, for it is
repeatedly said in Scripture that God receives the
humble but resists those who are proud,
hupereŻphanos (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5; Proverbs
3:34). The eleventh-century theologian Theophylact
called this kind of pride akropolis kakoŻn, the
stronghold of evils.
Quoted verses:
James 4:6
But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God
resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the
humble.
1 Peter 5:5
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the
elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another,
and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the
proud, and giveth grace to the humble.
Proverbs 3:34
Surely he scorneth the scorners: but he giveth grace
unto the lowly.
The difference between the braggart and the person
who is arrogant is this. The braggart is a
swaggering individual, who tries to bluster a way
into power and importance. No one can possibly
mistake someone like that. But the sin of the person
who is arrogant is in the heart.
The arrogant person might even seem to be humble;
but deep down there is contempt for everyone else.
People like that nourish an all-consuming,
all-pervading pride; and in their hearts there is a
little altar where they bow down before their own
images of self.
THE QUALITIES OF GODLESSNESS
THESE twin qualities of the braggart and the
arrogant person inevitably result in love of insult
(blaspheŻmia).
BlaspheŻmia is the word which is translated directly
into English as blasphemy. In English, we usually
associate it with insult against God, but in Greek
it means insult both against individuals and against
God. Pride always gives rise to insult. It
encourages disregard of God, thinking that it does
not need him and that it knows better than he. It
breeds a contempt for others which can result in
hurtful actions and in wounding words. The Jewish
Rabbis placed what they called the sin of insult
high in the list of sins. The insult which comes
from anger is bad but is forgivable, for it is
delivered in the heat of the moment; but the cold
insult which comes from arrogant pride is an ugly
and an unforgivable thing.
People will be disobedient to their parents. The
ancient world considered duty to parents very
important. The oldest Greek laws took away all
rights from the man who struck his parents; to
strike a father was in Roman law as bad as murder;
in the Jewish law, honour for father and mother
comes high in the list of the Ten Commandments. It
is the sign of a supremely decadent civilization
when youth loses all respect for age and fails to
recognize the unpayable debt and the basic duty it
owes to those who gave it life.
People will be thankless (acharistos).
They will refuse to recognize the debt they owe both
to God and to others. The strange characteristic of
ingratitude is that it is the most hurtful of all
sins because it is completely blind. The words of
Shakespeare’s King Lear remain true:
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
It is the sign of honour to pay one’s debts; and for
everyone there is a debt to God and there are debts
to others which must be remembered and repaid.
People will refuse to recognize even the ultimate
decencies of life. The Greek word is that people
will become anosios. Anosios does not so much mean
that they will break the written laws; it means that
they will offend against the unwritten laws which
are part and parcel of the essence of life. To the
Greeks, it was anosios to refuse burial to the dead;
it was anosios for a brother to marry a sister, or a
son a mother. The person who is anosios offends
against the fundamental decencies of life. Such
offence can and does still happen.
People who are ruled by their passions will gratify
them in the most shameless ways. Those who have
exhausted the normal pleasures of life and are still
unsatisfied will seek their thrills in any new
pleasures which are on offer. People will be
without human affection (astorgos).
StorgeŻ is the word used especially of family love,
the love of child for parent and parent for child.
If there is no human affection, the family cannot
exist. In the terrible times, men and women will be
so centered on self that even the closest ties will
be nothing to them.
People will be implacable [im-plak-uh-buh]
[not to be appeased
or mollified] in their hatreds (aspondos).
SpondeŻ is the word for a truce or an agreement.
Aspondos can mean two things. It can mean that
someone is so bitter as to be completely unable to
come to terms with the person with whom he or she
has quarreled. Or it can mean being so dishonorable
as to break the terms of an agreement. In either
case, the word describes a certain harshness of mind
which separates people from their neighbors in
unrelenting bitterness. It may be that, since we
are only human, we cannot live entirely without
differences with one another; but to perpetuate
these differences is one of the worst – and also one
of the most common – of all sins. When we are
tempted to do so, we should hear again the voice of
our blessed Lord saying on the [stake]: ‘Father,
forgive them.’
THE QUALITIES OF GODLESSNESS
IN these terrible days, people will be slanderers.
The Greek for slanderer is diabolos, which is
precisely the English word devil. The devil is the
patron saint of all slanderers, and of all
slanderers he is chief. There is a sense in which
slander is the most cruel of all sins. If our
possessions are stolen, we can set to and build up
our fortunes again; if our good name is taken away,
irreparable damage has been done. It is one thing to
start an evil and untrue report on its malicious
way; it is entirely another thing to stop it. As
Shakespeare had it in Iago’s words to Othello:
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something,
nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to
thousands:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
Many men and women, who would never dream of
stealing, think nothing of – even find pleasure in –
passing on a story which ruins someone else’s good
name, without even trying to find out whether or not
it is true. There is slander enough in many churches
to make the recording angel weep as he records it.
People will be ungovernable in their desires (akrateŻs).
The Greek verb kratein means to control. It is
possible to reach a stage when, far from controlling
a habit or desire, a person becomes a slave to it.
That is the inevitable way to ruin, for no one can
take control of anything without first taking
control of self.
People will be savage. The word is aneŻmeros and
would be more fittingly applied to a wild animal
than to a human being. It denotes a savagery which
has neither sensitivity nor sympathy. People can be
savage in rebuke and savage in pitiless action. Even
a dog may show signs of being sorry when it has hurt
its owner; but there are people who, in their
treatment of others, can be lost to human sympathy
and feeling.
In these last terrible days, people will come to
have no love for good things or good persons (aphilagathos).
There can come a time in life when the company of
good people and the presence of good things is
simply an embarrassment. Those who feed their minds
on cheap literature can in the end find nothing in
the great classics. Their mental palate loses its
taste. Finding even the presence of good people
something which is best avoided is a true sign of
having reached the very depths.
People will be treacherous. The Greek word (prodoteŻs)
means nothing less than a traitor. We must remember
that this was written just at the beginning of the
years of persecution, when it was becoming a crime
to be a Christian. At this particular time in the
ordinary matters of politics, one of the curses of
Rome was the existence of informers (delatores).
Things were so bad that the Roman historian Tacitus
could say: ‘He who had no foe was betrayed by his
friend.’ There were those who would revenge
themselves on an enemy by informing against him.
What Paul is thinking of here is more than
faithlessness in friendship – although that in all
truth is wounding enough – he is thinking of those
who, to pay back an old score, would inform against
the Christians to the Roman government.
People would be headlong in words and action. The
word is propeteŻs, precipitate or reckless. It
describes the person who is swept on by passion and
impulse to such an extent that he or she is totally
unable to think sensibly. Far more harm is done from
lack of thought than by almost anything else. Time
after time, we would be saved from hurting ourselves
and from wounding other people if we would only stop
to think.
People will be inflated with conceit (tetuphoŻmenos).
The word is almost exactly the English
swollen-headed. They will be inflated with a sense
of their own importance. There are still church
officials whose main thought is their own dignity;
but Christians are the followers of the one who was
meek and lowly in heart.
They will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers
of God. Here, we come back to where we started:
such people place their own wishes in the centre of
life. They worship self instead of God.
The final condemnation of these people is that they
retain the outward form of religion but deny its
power. That is to say, they go through all the
correct movements and maintain all the external
forms of religion, but they know nothing of
Christianity as a dynamic power which changes the
lives of men and women. It is said that, after
hearing an evangelical sermon, the
nineteenth-century statesman Lord Melbourne once
remarked: ‘Things have come to a pretty pass when
religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private
life.’ It may well be that the greatest handicap to
Christianity is not the most notorious sinner but
the sleek devotee of a faultless orthodoxy [belief,
practice] and a dignified convention, who
is horrified when it is suggested that real religion
is a dynamic power which changes an individual’s
personal life. ~Barclay
commentary
Let us look at the Matthew Henry Concise on verses
1-9:
Even in gospel times there would be perilous times;
on account of persecution from without, still more
on account of corruptions within. Men love to
gratify their own lusts, more than to please God and
do their duty. When every man is eager for what he
can get, and anxious to keep what he has, this makes
men dangerous to one another. When men do not fear
God, they will not regard man. When children are
disobedient to their parents, that makes the times
perilous. Men are unholy and without the fear of
God, because unthankful for the mercies of God. We
abuse God's gifts, if we make them the food and fuel
of our lusts. Times are perilous also, when parents
are without natural affection to children. And when
men have no rule over their own spirits, but despise
that which is good and to be honoured. God is to be
loved above all; but a carnal mind, full of enmity
against him, prefers any thing before him,
especially carnal pleasure. A form of godliness is
very different from the power; from such as are
found to be hypocrites, real Christians must
withdraw. Such persons have been found within the
outward church, in every place, and at all times.
There ever have been artful men, who, by pretences
and flatteries, creep into the favour and confidence
of those who are too easy of belief, ignorant, and
fanciful. All must be ever learning to know the
Lord; but these follow every new notion, yet never
seek the truth as it is in Jesus. Like the Egyptian
magicians, these were men of corrupt minds,
prejudiced against the truth, and found to be quite
without faith. Yet though the spirit of error may be
let loose for a time, Satan can deceive the nations
and the churches no further, and no longer, than God
will permit. ~Matthew
Henry Concise
We have time to look at one of the specific
commentaries on this one. It will breakout each
word of the verse.
For men shall be -
The description in this and the following verses the
Papists apply to the Protestants; the Protestants in
their turn apply it to the Papists; Schoettgen to
the Jews; and others to heretics in general. There
have been both teachers and people in every age of
the Church, and in every age of the world, to whom
these words may be most legitimately applied. Both
Catholics and Protestants have been lovers of their
own selves, etc.; but it is probable that the
apostle had some particular age in view, in which
there should appear some very essential corruption
of Christianity.
Lovers of their own selves
- Φιλαυτοι· Selfish, studious of their own interest,
and regardless of the welfare of all mankind.
Covetous - Φιλαργυροι·
Lovers of money, because of the influence which
riches can procure.
Boasters - Αλαζονες·
Vain glorious: self-assuming; valuing themselves
beyond all others.
Proud - Ὑπερηφανοι·
Airy, light, trifling persons; those who love to
make a show - who are all outside; from ὑπερ,
above, and φαινω, to show.
Blasphemers -
Βλασφημοι· Those who speak impiously of God and
sacred things, and injuriously of men.
Disobedient to parents
- Γονευσιν απειθεις· Headstrong children, whom their
parents cannot persuade.
Unthankful -
Αχαριστοι· Persons without grace, or gracefulness;
who think they have a right to the services of all
men, yet feel no obligation, and consequently no
gratitude.
Unholy - Ανοσιοι·
Without piety; having no heart reverence for God.
~Adam Clarke
With this first of 4 verses, we better understand
verse one, which again says, “This know also, that
in the last days perilous times shall come.”
|