Scripture Daily

Context No. 318 of 4322 · 2 Timothy

Context · Reflection

2 Timothy 3:10-17: in context

10But you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, steadfastness, 11persecutions, and sufferings—those things that happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. I endured those persecutions. The Lord delivered me out of them all. 12Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. 13But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14But you remain in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. 15From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, 17that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Paul is near the end of his life, writing from prison to Timothy, the younger man he has mentored, and the letter is heavy with the awareness that Paul will not be around much longer. So he tells Timothy what to hold onto when he is gone, and it is worth noticing what he anchors it in.

First he is honest about the cost. Timothy has watched Paul's teaching and conduct and also his persecutions, the beatings and troubles at Antioch and Iconium and Lystra, and Paul states it flatly: everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted. He does not promise ease; godliness invites opposition, and meanwhile the impostors go from bad to worse. Then comes the charge: but you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it. That last phrase carries a lot. Timothy can hold onto his faith partly because of who handed it to him, people whose lives backed up their words, his mother and grandmother and Paul himself, from whom he learned the sacred Scriptures from childhood. And those Scriptures, Paul says, are God-breathed, and useful for teaching and correction and training, so that the person of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

The anchor in a confusing time is two-fold: the God-breathed word he has known since he was small, and the trustworthy people whose lives showed him it was true. Whose life, not just whose words, is the reason I can still hold onto what I believe, and have I let that matter as much as the argument?

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