But this know, that in [the] last days difficult times shall be there;
Paul tells Timothy to expect trouble, not improvement, as the Christian era draws to its close. Two questions decide what the verse means: how far "the last days" reach, and how strong the warning about "times of difficulty" really is.
One Greek verb carries the weight of the verse. The choice is between a threat drawing near and a state already here.
Here the English version renders it "shall come." But the meaning is certainly not "shall be at hand," which would have no point. It is "shall be present." To be only close at hand was a small thing. The serious point was that difficult times would actually be there in the last days.
Older translations used "perilous," a word that suggests danger. Kelly prefers "difficult," and traces the difficulty to evil dressed up as godliness.
Difficult or grievous times were to set in; not "perilous" merely, as in the Authorised and all the older English versions. The times are described this way because sin spreads widely under a fine Christian appearance — an outward form of godliness with a real denial of its power... He hates presumption. He seeks humility. He loves his brothers. He is bound to be faithful to Christ, and he cannot go on with evil, whether it is personal or shared by a group. It is a hard time truly for heart and conscience.
The phrase is not pinned to a few years just before Christ returns. It marks a whole period, and only the Lord's coming ends it.
The phrase plainly covers the closing days of the Christian era, however long God may be pleased to prolong them. It means the time in general before the coming of the Lord. Then God will end His present ways, and the kingdom will come in displayed power and glory.
If the span is that wide, the warning is not a distant forecast. The other apostles used the same words about their own time.
"The last days" began as soon as Paul was gone. John, who outlived him, could tell us, "Children, it is the last hour" (1 John 2:18). James says, "You have laid up treasure in the last days," and, "The Judge is standing at the door." Peter says, "ready to be revealed in the last time." He also says, "It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God," and, "Scoffers will come in the last days." So "the last days" is not merely the time in which we live... It is an expression used by all the apostles to describe the moral state that had come, or was just coming in.
Paul had written to Timothy about evil before. Kelly sets the two warnings side by side.
In the earlier letter (1 Timothy 4:1-3) a prophetic warning had been given, but about evil quite different in time, character, and extent from what we have here. Instead of "last days," the Spirit spoke specifically of later, or after, times — that is, times following the apostle's writing. Instead of a widespread condition of "men" in Christendom, he there spoke of "some" only. The language suits and supposes comparatively few.
Many expect the world to get better as the gospel spreads. This verse points the other way.
How different is the future of Christianity in this world from the pictures painted by its popular advocates! They love to sketch the gradual conversion of the world by the preaching of the gospel... What God reveals here about the course of Christianity dispels this illusion at once... He lifts the veil and lets us see that evil and corruption will increase. So, as the end comes near, we must expect difficult times, along with the corruption named here.
The chapter does not stop at describing the trouble. It sets out three things in order.
I know the path of the believer, and especially of the servant, is increasingly difficult in this evil day. But we have been forewarned, and our resource has been provided... If you examine the whole chapter you will find mainly three things. First, what marks these difficult times (vv. 2-9). Second, that persecution must be the lot of the godly (vv. 10-12). Third, that the word of God is our only resource (vv. 14-17).
- Told — Paul does not leave the future to guesswork. He says "understand this," so that no believer is caught off guard.
- Timing — "The last days" is a broad phrase. It covers the whole closing period of the Christian era, and the apostles used it of their own day.
- Texture — The word behind "perilous" means difficult or grievous. What makes the times hard is evil carried on under a fair Christian appearance.
- Trend — The path leads to more corruption, not to gradual improvement. Writers here reject the hope of a world converted before Christ returns.
- Tool — The same chapter also gives the answer. It marks out the times, warns of persecution, and points to the word of God as the only resource.
for men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, evil speakers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, profane,
Paul warns Timothy that the last stretch of this age will be hard. He then lists the moral traits that make it hard. The people wearing them still carry the name of Christ.
The list is not aimed at outsiders. It describes what goes wrong inside Christianity itself.
This does not describe something that has always existed outside Christianity. It describes the corruption of what began in such heavenly power and blessing at the start of the present age of grace. The world as such was always evil. But in the company described at the beginning of the book of Acts there was nothing of what we get here. Then men loved God, and not themselves, but one another. Then men were not covetous, but each man gave all he had for the good of his neighbour.
The order is not accidental. The first item explains the rest — and points to its cure:
"For men shall be lovers of self." That is the opening characteristic, so grievous to the Lord and His own among those bearing His name. It rightly holds first place in this list of Christ-dishonouring professors. It is the very mother of evils. It goes straight against the will of God in Christ Jesus for His children. Christ did die for all. But the moral purpose was that those who live "might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised." … So the first condition of discipleship, if we listen to our Lord, is denying self — the exact opposite of loving it.
Some today treat self-love as healthy. This verse points the other way:
This is well worth stressing. Some people today speak about loving oneself as if it were a right thing. But Second Timothy names it as a feature that marks corrupt Christian profession in the last days.
"Lovers of money" is one word in the original language:
The word philargyria literally means 'love of money'. It is the miser's sin, and a man may indulge it while professing religion. So in Luke 16:14 it is applied to the Pharisees, and in 2 Timothy 3:2 to those who had a form of godliness but denied its power. This love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10). Those who chase it are liable to wander away from the faith and pierce themselves with many sorrows.
The connection is practical:
Loving self will lead to loving money, for with money men can buy what will feed the gratification of self.
The next trait shows what wealth does to a man's talk:
"Boasters." The love of money will turn men into boasters. Men boast in their skill at gaining wealth. And having piled up riches, they often take the chance to advertise their acts of charity. This is the opposite of the lowly grace of Christianity, which teaches us to give so that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
Smith takes the verse's "abusive" as speech against God. Where God is despised, the closest human bond gives way too.
"Disobedient to parents." If men are capable of blasphemy against God, it is little wonder that they are disobedient to parents. If they have little respect for divine Persons, they will have no respect for human relationships.
Ingratitude sounds mild next to blasphemy. It shows up in how a person reads good fortune:
The men of this age stand out for their ingratitude (see 2 Timothy 3:2). They see the hand of God in nothing. If things happen to go well with them, they only say, "My luck was in." It is our privilege to see the hand of God in all things. Walking in His fear, we trace His ways with us in a thankful spirit.
Darby sets this list beside Paul's description of the pagan world in Romans 1:
At the start of the letter to the Romans, Paul lists the sins and abominations of heathen life. They show the moral state of men in those times of darkness and demon-worship. Compare that list with the catalogue of sins that marks those who have the form of godliness. We shall find it is nearly the same, and in moral character quite the same. Only some of the open sins are missing — the ones that mark a man under no outward restraint. The form of godliness rules them out and takes their place.
- Self first. Love of self opens the list. It is the mother of evils, and the reverse of why Christ died. Its cure is self-denial.
- Then money. Loving self creates the appetite; money buys what feeds it. This sin sits easily under a religious profession.
- Then noise. Wealth breeds boasting, boasting breeds arrogance, arrogance breeds speech against God.
- Then the home. People with no respect for God will have none for parents. Ingratitude follows: they see God's hand in nothing.
- Then the mirror. The result nearly matches Paul's picture of paganism in Romans 1. The same nature, minus the worst open sins, with a form of godliness in their place.
without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, of unsubdued passions, savage, having no love for what is good,
Paul's list for "the last days" reads like a description of pagan society. Yet he writes it about people who carry the name of Christ. This verse sits in the middle of that list. It traces the collapse from home outward to every other relationship.
One writer sets this list beside Paul's account of pagan life in Romans 1. The same evils appear, now under a religious name.
Look at this passage. It is a very solemn and clear testimony of the Spirit of God. It speaks of professing Christendom going back to a state like that of the pagan world, which the Spirit describes in Romans 1. Here the Spirit is not saying that the pagan world would be like this in the last days. He had already proved that it was so. But in the last days it would be so of those who had the form of godliness while denying the power.
ESV calls it "heartless"; older translations say "without natural affection." One writer weighs what society loses when that love goes.
Human love is the greatest gift of the Creator, surviving the fall, yet spoiled by it. In this life, it is the one bit of cement that holds society together. Without it we would have the very uproar of hell about our ears.
What follows when those ties are cut is not a wider love but an empty one:
There is no human centre and safeguard greater than home, with its many affections and the duties it involves… But here we learn of a dark and threatening change. Christendom in general does not merely show indifference to these ties of family life. It tramples them down as contemptible and would throw them out as unworthy nuisances. It makes a show of world citizenship as the true ideal. That ideal is wholly unreal and does not work, so the result is pure selfishness — a barren waste with no objects given by God for the heart, where self-will runs riot as it pleases.
Older translations call the next word "trucebreakers", as though these people merely broke their promises. One writer says it means more.
The lack of natural affection is a horrible result of false Christian profession. The wider hardness that follows is its companion, in place of that universal love which is loudest in theory when there is least of it in practice. The word goes further than the breaking of a truce that the Authorized Version and other translations attach to it. It expresses the lawless state that refuses to take on any such obligation. It is bad enough to fail to keep faith. It is much worse, as here, when men's hearts say, "Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us."
The word for "slanderers" is also a title of the devil. The sting is who the Spirit gives it to.
Next in the list comes the character of "slanderers", or "false accusers", as the Authorized Version has it — the same title that belongs to the arch-enemy, the devil. Is it not solemn that the Holy Spirit has to describe men this way — not mere pagans, but men who bear the Lord's name in the last days?
One writer says the older translation of this word, "incontinent", is too narrow.
The next word is "uncontrolled", rather than "incontinent". Usage limits "incontinent" to a lack of self-restraint in impurity. The word here takes the fullest range: reckless indulgence in action, as the word before it does in spirit and speech. So the moral connection is clear.
This lack of restraint shows itself in temper:
"Fierce" or "savage". The man who slanders others in speech and has no restraint in his actions will show a savage temper. It wholly lacks the gentleness that marks the Christian spirit.
The verse ends with "not loving good." One writer ties this to the savage temper just named.
The savage temper always blinds men to what is good. Some in the Christian profession do not only love evil; they hate "what is good".
Paul does not tell Timothy to fix this. He tells him to step away. And that order is not held back for a future generation.
These moral features were already beginning to appear. They will show more and more clearly while the Lord Jesus waits, until at last they reach their full growth in the sins and corruptions described here. So when the Apostle adds, "from such turn away," he gives a direction that applies to every age. It shows that it is the Lord's mind for His people to be entirely separate from all this moral corruption.
- Form without power. These are not pagans but people who keep the name of Christ; the Spirit says Christendom goes back to what Romans 1 describes.
- Home falls first. Human love is the Creator's gift that holds society together. Where self rules, men trample family ties as nuisances.
- Then no bonds at all. The word here means more than broken promises. It describes men who refuse to take on any obligation.
- Then speech and temper. Slander borrows the devil's own title. Lost self-restraint hardens into a savage temper, with none of the gentleness that marks the Christian spirit.
- Then hatred of good. The chain ends not just in loving evil but in hating what is good. The believer's one instruction is to turn away and walk apart.
traitors, headlong, of vain pretensions, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God;
Paul is describing what people will be like in the last days. This verse gathers four ugly traits: betrayal, recklessness, conceit, and a heart that prefers pleasure to God. What makes the list so serious is where Paul puts it. These are not outsiders. They are people who carry the name of Christ.
The first word describes a particular kind of malice: harming the people who trusted you. One commentator points to where the Lord Himself met this, and warns that it would spread.
This adds another shade of wickedness: the "treacherous", or "traitors". It is the form of malice that betrays others to ruin without a second thought. The Lord tasted this bitter baseness among His twelve disciples as no one ever did or could. This verse warns us that it will be a mark of Christendom. The trait was there here and there even when the apostle wrote, but like the rest it will spread and deepen as the last days drag on.
The older word here is "heady" — headlong. It describes a person who has decided what he wants and lets nothing stop him.
"Heady" or "headlong". The man who can betray his friends is the man who will drive on with his own will. He does not care what it costs, and he gives no thought to others.
The next trait supplies the cover story. Self-will does not admit what it is. It claims to be serving everyone.
"High-minded" or "of vain pretensions". The headlong man is full of self-conceit. He tries to cover his self-will with the empty pretence that he is acting for the general good.
The list begins and ends with the word "lovers". The items in between are the symptoms; the loves are the disease.
Love of self, love of money and love of pleasure are to mark the religious people of the last days. All the evil things listed between them show the different ways the proud, self-sufficient, lawless spirit of fallen man expresses itself. And all this, remember, is in people who call themselves followers of the meek and lowly Jesus. If we know anything of the present state of the so-called Christian nations, we may well conclude that we have reached the last days.
The phrase is not a mild preference. It sets two loves side by side and names the winner.
Who can deny how plainly and how strongly "pleasure-loving rather than God-loving" has grown? It is not new, of course, but it is stronger in our own day than ever. And it grows among people who would be deeply offended if they were not counted as Christians. When in this world's sad history was there ever such a constant, widespread whirl of excitement — travel and change, sweet sounds, pleasant pictures, and sensational tales? And that is to say nothing of lower kinds of bodily pleasure.
Another writer points to what this chase for pleasure ignores.
The clouds of coming judgment may be gathering. But Christendom is blinded by its own vanity and selfishness. It gives itself up to a whirl of excitement and looks for its pleasure in the senses. Too often the professed ministers of religion lead the way in every kind of worldly pleasure.
One commentator sets this list beside Paul's description of the pagan world in Romans 1. The difference is not in the sins but in the setting.
Compare Romans 1:29-31. You will see that the evil to be turned away from was as bad as the evil among the pagans. It was only worse here, because it stood in the place of light and under the pretence of light.
The verse is also a personal test. One writer traces how a believer drifts into this description.
Too often the amusements of the evening lead to the neglect of the Bible in the morning. This happens again and again, until the soul goes numb under the round of worldly fun and the lack of spiritual food. Then the life on show can only be described as "lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God". Surely all would shrink from such a brand!
- Betrayal — "treacherous" means harming those who trusted you. The Lord met it among His twelve disciples, and it would spread and deepen as the last days went on.
- Recklessness — the one who can betray a friend is the one who drives at his own will, whatever it costs anyone else.
- Conceit — self-will then hides behind the pretence that it is acting for everyone's good.
- Displacement — the list opens and closes with love: love of self, love of money, love of pleasure. Everything between is a symptom of those three.
- Aggravation — the same sins as in the pagan world, but worse here, because they stand in the place of light and under the name of Christ.
having a form of piety but denying the power of it and from these turn away.
Paul ends his list of last-day traits not with open godlessness but with religion — a shape of piety with the power taken out. The verse then turns from description to command: which side of that line does your own religion fall on?
The people in view are not outsiders. They carry the name of Christ.
It is Christendom that comes before us. Yet those bearing the Lord's name can only be called "men". In their morals they are as corrupt and violent as the heathen (compare Romans 1:29-31), if not as gross. They keep a form of godliness while they have denied its power.
A "form" is the outer shape with nothing living inside. (Older translations read "a form of godliness" where the ESV has "the appearance of godliness".)
Godliness is the one thing worth having. All else is corruption and evil. To have the form of what is good, and for it to be only a form, is sad beyond words. It is a form with none of the power that belongs to true godliness — a shell without a kernel.
Another writer names what they deny — the very things that make a person alive to God.
The "form of godliness" not only lacks what is real; it also denies the true power. Even the leaders of Christendom deny the need for the new birth and for conversion to God. They deny the need for a living faith in the Son of God to guide in the things of God. They have the outward forms of christening and confirmation and such things, and wrongly imagine the form is what God demands.
Religion added to sin does not soften it. It deepens the guilt.
In the closing days of Christendom the professing mass will give themselves over to every form of evil. They will try to cover their wickedness with the cloak of sanctity. So nominal Christians become more wicked than pagans. They indulge in all the evils of paganism, then add to their wickedness by hiding it under the form of Christianity. That form is empty of Christianity's spiritual power. What can be more desperately wicked than using the Name of Christ as a cloak for evil? This cloak of sanctity is what makes the last days "difficult times". The show of piety at times deceives even true Christians.
The imitation runs so close that no outward activity proves the thing is real.
Paul describes the last days, yet tells Timothy to act now. Why give Timothy this direction?
The answer is that these moral features were already beginning to appear. They will appear more and more clearly while the Lord Jesus delays. At last they will reach their full growth in the sins and corruptions described here. So when the Apostle adds, "from such turn away," he gives a direction for every age. It shows that it is the Lord's mind for His people to be in complete separation from all this moral corruption.
Turning away is not abandoning Christianity itself.
This was not to "go out" from the house of God but to be separate from the evil done in the Lord's name. Such separation is owed to Him. It is to depart from evil, but not to forsake the Christian profession… But no one is to slight fellowship: each is to seek out and cling to it with all who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Detecting the counterfeit does not come from studying counterfeits.
There is no need to know evil fully, for we do not escape evil simply by knowing about it. It is by knowing the truth that we can detect what is false and contrary to the truth. Having detected the evil, we should not dwell on it, but "turn away" from those who pursue it.
- Form. The shell remains; the kernel is gone. Piety keeps its outward shape, but denies the new birth, conversion and living faith.
- Cloak. The same form that looks like devotion works as cover. It hides the sins of the heathen world under the Name of Christ.
- Imitation. A formalist can copy every visible activity of a Christian. What he refuses is the power, because it costs self-denial.
- Command. "Turn away" is a duty for every age, not a prediction to wait for. It means separation from the evil, not desertion of the Christian profession or of fellowship.
- Safeguard. Knowing the truth exposes the counterfeit. Studying the error does not.
For of these are they who are getting into houses, and leading captive silly women, laden with sins, led by various lusts,
Paul has just described a mass of religious people who keep the shape of godliness while denying its power. Now he shows what such men do: they slip into homes and capture vulnerable people — so why the secrecy, and why are some caught so easily?
The phrase "of this sort" ties these deceivers back to the list in the verses just before:
The description of verses 2 to 5 applies generally to the men of the last days. In verse 6 two special classes come into view — first, those who are active deceivers, and second, those who fall an easy prey to their deceits. The deceivers, he says, are "of this sort," that is, of the kind described in verses 2 to 5. They carry on their work in a semi-private way, for they "creep into houses."
The way error travels is itself evidence about its source:
First, the manner of their procedure is given. They are of the kind "which creep into houses." Almost all false teaching begins in secret — at least the kind that claims a superior spirituality. It gathers a school of followers before it comes out into the open. Some of the saddest heresies that have ever troubled the Church of God started this way. They spread by private visits, or by passing "notes" around a chosen sympathetic few. This method carries its own condemnation; for whatever will not bear the light cannot be of God, and whatever is given by Him is for the Church.
Christ never asks for this kind of service:
Nothing can justify underhand manoeuvres: Christ does not ask such service from anyone; He refuses it. "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." It was to be like the lamp on the stand, shining for everyone in the house. How sad when those who profess Christ, the only true Light, are driven by the spirit of darkness! They creep into the houses of the saints and lead captive silly women.
These writers quote an older wording, "silly women, laden with sins," where the ESV has "weak women, burdened with sins." Commentators differ on whether Paul means women only, or a type of person found in both sexes:
The Apostle probably uses the contemptuous term "silly women" for a weak class of people, whether male or female. Their emotions and lusts govern them, rather than conscience and reason. Error leaves its victims in the darkness of uncertainty.
Nor is this about low intelligence. The trap catches the educated too:
It is a striking fact that this "silly women" class comes just as much from the refined and learned as from the rude and uneducated. It is often the highly educated who lose themselves in mazes of speculation. In the end they accept some pretentious nonsense that is the exact opposite of the truth.
Paul names the vulnerability in the same breath: sins that weigh people down, and desires that pull them along. That is what makes the false teaching welcome:
Those who adopt a religion that encourages moral corruption are quite content to live a lie. They are especially successful in making victims of women who are easily drawn by their emotions and have willingly ignored their consciences. "Laden with sins," having no desire to be rid of them, and "led away by their own lusts," they are glad of a religion that silences the serious voice of conscience.
The bargain on offer explains the grip it gets:
Having many sins on their conscience, these women would be especially open to any teaching that promised both relief and freedom. It is what the flesh always craves — deliverance from past sins, and indulgence for present pleasures. Hoping to get both from the new teaching, they became the willing slaves of their evil teachers.
If the corruption is this open, how does anyone fall for it? It hides under a form of godliness:
All these evils are hidden under a form of godliness. It is the Spirit of God who, through the Apostle, drags them out into the light for our warning and guidance. Under such a cloak these men might outwardly pass, as the Pharisees of old did, for devout and devoted men.
Kelly asks whether any of this belongs only to the past:
Has the enemy given up these devices in our day? Are we to flatter ourselves that this same way of error, so successful in the past, will not be repeated again and again in the present while the Lord waits?
- Source — The deceivers are not outsiders. They come out of the very crowd of verses 2–5 — people who hold a form of godliness while denying its power.
- Method — They creep in. Error begins in private and gathers a following before it goes public. Secrecy is its own verdict: what will not bear the light cannot be of God.
- Contrast — Christ refuses underhand service. His people shine like a lamp on a stand, and what God gives is for the whole Church, not for a chosen few.
- Target — Those captured are ruled by feelings and desires, not by conscience and reason. That class is filled as often from the educated as from the uneducated.
- Reason — Weighed down with sins they do not want to lose, they welcome a religion that quiets conscience and promises freedom. The same tactic still works, so it still needs watching.
always learning, and never able to come to [the] knowledge of [the] truth.
Paul is describing the last days. He has listed what people will love and how their religion will look on the surface. Now he turns to those who fall for false teachers. Verse 7 gives their saddest mark: real effort, real appetite for teaching, and no arrival.
Verse 6 describes weak women captured in their homes by false teachers. One writer says their problem is not a slow mind.
These women are quick to understand, but they fail in spiritual mind. They confuse things that differ instead of telling them apart. Without that, no true progress and no real knowledge are possible. What is needed is Christ before the soul. The written word answers to Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. This alone opens the truth and gives courage to acknowledge it to God's glory. Without Him the mind may stay busy, proud of what it has picked up. But there is no growth. There is no separating power through the word. There is no joy in God through our Lord Jesus, and never the ability, as it says here, to come to full knowledge of truth.
Verse 6 says they are burdened with sins and led astray by various passions. One writer says that is why the learning never lands.
They always ask questions. They are always open to new ideas. Yet they never reach a settled conviction about anything. "What is truth?" is their perpetual cry. The words "burdened with sins and led astray by various passions" show the reason for this strange inability to reach definite knowledge. When a life is loaded with sins, and clashing desires and passions turn the heart into a battleground, no conviction from God is possible.
Another writer explains why the mind on its own is not enough.
The Spirit of God does act on the understanding and through it. But the truth lodged there speaks to the conscience and the heart. If the truth does not reach them, nothing is done. Nor indeed is anything really understood until they are... On the other hand, Satan fills the mind with error. In that way he shuts God out of it and leads the whole person captive, to do the will of that enemy of the soul.
Older translations call them "silly women". One writer says the label is not about gender.
The Apostle probably uses the scornful term "silly women" for a weak class of persons, male or female. Emotions and desires govern them, not conscience and reason. Error leaves its victims in the darkness of uncertainty.
More teaching is not the cure.
There was never such a day for religious books, sermons, and teaching. Yet "the truth" is unknown, and the Lord Jesus is still outside knocking at the door, unheard by most. People refuse the truth of Christianity and the present position of Christ in glory. Many "truths" may be taught and new ideas chased, but the learners are as far from it as ever.
One writer turns the verse on his own readers. Owning the Scriptures is no protection.
We may boast, as everyone does, that we have the Scriptures — and that is surely good... Or are we among those who are "always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth"? The truth has reached our mind and intellect, but without faith, and so it has no practical value in our lives. Of the truth we can say what is said of faith: "What profit, my brothers, if a man says he has the truth?" What profit, if he has not shown that he has faith in it, and so has not learned to act on it as something he believes?
If the failure comes from the motive, the cure lies there too.
We must study and investigate truth with the intention to obey, not to speculate. "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God." Every student of the truth takes the place of a disciple, not of the Master... Suppose the secret aim is to feed the imagination, or to satisfy the craving to know. Then know this: you shall be "always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth"... The heart's value of the truth is what stirs diligence in pursuing it. This, and not the mind's dry activity, sets the rate and measure of progress.
- Cause — The block is not a weak head but a loaded life. Sins carried and desires indulged make settled conviction impossible.
- Capture — Truth speaks to the conscience and the heart. Where it only fills the mind, error can take that mind and lead the whole person captive.
- Condition — The learner keeps asking and welcomes each new idea. Yet all the teaching he collects leaves him in the darkness of uncertainty.
- Caution — Having the Scriptures is no defence. Truth that reaches the mind without faith changes nothing in the life.
- Cure — Study in order to obey, take the disciple's place, and keep Christ before the soul. That is what turns learning into arrival.
Now in the same manner in which Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, thus these also withstand the truth; men corrupted in mind, found worthless as regards the faith.
For his picture of the last days, Paul reaches back to Egypt. He names two men who fought Moses by copying his miracles, not by denying them.
The Exodus story never names Pharaoh's magicians. Writers identify these two as their leaders, and follow their story to the end.
Jannes and Jambres were no doubt the leaders of the Egyptian magicians who imitated the first plagues before Pharaoh. But when it came to the question of creating life, they had to admit that the finger of God was there. The judgement of God fell on them too, for they were struck with boils and sores. As their folly was shown up when they contended with the God of Israel, so will the folly be of those who oppose the truth.
So how did Paul know their names? One writer suggests two ways.
Some details not mentioned in the Old Testament we learn only in the New. For example, here we come to know the names of the Egyptian magicians. Jewish oral tradition preserved not only tales but also various true events of earlier days. The writers of the New Testament could refer to such events under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But was it not also possible that they received direct revelations from God?
These men never argued that Moses was a fraud.
The way Jannes and Jambres "opposed Moses" was simply by copying, as far as they could, whatever he did. We do not find that they said his actions came from a false or evil power. Instead, they tried to cancel out the effect of those actions on the conscience by doing the same things themselves. One was as good as the other. A miracle is a miracle. If Moses worked miracles to get the people out of Egypt, they could work miracles to keep them in — so where was the difference?
Mackintosh shows what came before the copying:
If you trace the forms of Satan's opposition to the truth of God, you find his method has always been the same. First he opposes it by open violence. Then, if that does not work, he corrupts it by producing a counterfeit. So he first sought to kill Moses (Ex. 2:15), and having failed in that, he sought to imitate his works.
The copying had a ceiling. The plagues themselves showed where it was.
They could only make the trouble worse by what they did; they could not relieve it. They could bring frogs up out of the river, but they could not take them away. So they could not possibly loosen the grip of judgement on themselves or on their false gods... After all, no one can imitate the fruit of God's blessed word or the power of His Spirit. That has its own unmistakable evidence for everyone who has eyes to see.
Kelly compares Egypt then with Christendom now.
These opponents worked by imitating Moses as far as possible. They could only do this within limits. In the end the power of God rose in such display that it was hopeless for them to follow. In Christendom imitation is easier, because it is not a question of miracle but of the appearance of truth. It is striking that the enemy's newest and most destructive lures are typically imitations of truth. They come so close that they would deceive even God's chosen, if that were possible.
The copy can reproduce every visible action:
People of this kind can do the same things as others. They take up the same habits and forms, use the same language, and hold the same opinions. Think of the true Christian, moved by the love of Christ. He feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits the sick, hands out Bibles and tracts, supports the gospel, prays, sings praise and preaches. The man who keeps only the outward form can do every one of these things. And notice: this is the special way people resist the truth "in the last days." This is the spirit of Jannes and Jambres.
The verse ends by naming what is underneath the imitation. "Reprobate" in older translations renders a word meaning tested and refused.
The outward dress of these resisters of the truth will look Christian, but the opened eye will see it is not the real thing — it is an imitation. More than that, the Holy Spirit exposes their true character. They are men of corrupt minds. They are reprobate — tried and found worthless — regarding the faith.
Hamilton Smith traces false teaching to its source:
Every false system in Christendom can be traced back to men whose minds have been corrupted by evil and who are found worthless as regards the faith.
- Copy — Jannes and Jambres fought Moses by doing what he did, not by calling him false. That is the pattern Paul names for the last days.
- Cloak — the copy keeps the same habits, the same language and the same good works as the real thing.
- Ceiling — copying can bring frogs up but never take them away. It cannot give life; the finger of God is where the copy stops.
- Core — under the copy lie corrupt minds; tested by the faith, these men are found worthless.
- Collapse — their folly was shown up in Egypt, and the folly of those who oppose the truth will be shown up too.
But they shall not advance farther; for their folly shall be completely manifest to all, as that of those also became.
Paul has just compared these false teachers to Jannes and Jambres, the magicians who copied Moses in Egypt. Does such a counterfeit keep spreading, or does God stop it?
God did not stop the magicians at the first sign. He let them match Moses step for step, right up to a line they could not cross.
A moment will come when the leaders of this bold imitation are suddenly checked and stopped. Their folly will be shown to everyone, as the folly of Jannes and Jambres was. God allowed them to keep pace with every step Moses took. Then the simplest fact of all showed that their power had reached its limit. They could not go on.
There was one thing the magicians could not produce: life. Their own words, "This is the finger of God," admitted where their power ran out.
Notice that last triumph of God. He drew the words from the mouths of Satan's instruments: "This is the finger of God!" Their folly is plain to all. Satan's deceiving power and his plausible counterfeits are worthless in the presence of life. Living realities speak for God more than anything else. They could go no further than this. The imitation might be so good that no one could match it. The counterfeit might be so near the truth, so alike, that everyone was fooled. But there is the life of Christ lived out on earth. Christ lives in His own people and produces a deep reality that no imitation can ever reach. Beside that, the folly of them all is plain, as theirs also was.
God does not leave His people without warning. Once the imitation is unmasked, it loses the very thing that made it dangerous.
So God does not fail to raise up a standard against the enemy, and His endangered saints profit by the warning. The comparison holds true for the dazzling counterfeit, which was made to confuse and mislead. It holds true just as much for the exposure of the trap itself. Once that happens, the counterfeit can do no more harm. The folly of those who invented and pushed it is too plain to injure anyone further. Have we not seen the enemy defeat himself in this way under the mighty hand of God? Let us not forget how much we owe to the watchful grace of our Lord, who vindicates His word and Spirit after man has misused both.
Commentators differ on the timing. Some see it as something God does again and again, before a watching world.
Yet God, in the way He governs the world, often lets these false teachers be fully exposed before the eyes of "all". Again and again the world has seen the folly of these religious systems and the evil lives of many of their leaders. They have become objects of contempt to everyone except their deluded victims.
Others expect only partial exposure now, and the full display at the end.
These men resist the truth, and their folly will be shown up. God may show it up wherever there is faithfulness, to save His own from it. But in general their evil work will go on. The deception will grow worse and worse until the end. Then God will make plain the folly of those who have departed from Him. They gave themselves up to the errors of the human mind, and they worked to keep those errors alive and spread them.
The magicians did not just run out of tricks. They ended up inside the judgment they had resisted. That is the warning in this verse.
The folly of Jannes and Jambres was plain to all. They not only failed to imitate what Moses and Aaron did next; they were caught up in the judgments of God themselves. This is a solemn point. The folly of everyone who has only the outward form will be shown up in the same way. They will be quite unable to imitate the full and proper effects of divine life and power. More than that, they will fall under the judgments that come from rejecting the truth they have resisted.
- Imitation. The enemy's method is copying. He fights the truth by wearing its outward form.
- Limit. God lets the counterfeit keep pace only to a fixed line. At the simplest test its power runs out.
- Life. The line it cannot cross is life — Christ living in His own produces a reality no imitation reaches.
- Exposure. Once unmasked, the deception can do no more harm. The enemy defeats himself under the mighty hand of God.
- Judgment. Like the two magicians, those who resist the truth do not just fail. They fall under the judgment they resisted.