2 Timothy 2:16

“Of these things” points back to what Paul has just written in 2 Timothy 2:1–13: remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, endure hardship for the gospel, and work like the soldier, the athlete and the farmer who receive their reward. Timothy is to keep putting the church in remembrance of these truths, because foundational truths need repeating. Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome, very likely as his last, to his son in the faith, who was leading the church at Ephesus. That city was full of philosophies and religious ideas, and Paul had already warned Timothy about people who gave heed to myths and endless genealogies (1 Timothy 1:3–4) and told him to guard what had been committed to his trust (1 Timothy 6:20–21).

“Charging them” is diamartýromai, built from dia (“through, thoroughly”) and the verb for bearing witness. It means to testify earnestly or charge solemnly, and “before the Lord” places the charge under God’s own eye. Timothy speaks with God’s authority, and he and his hearers both answer to God for what is said.

What they are charged to avoid is logomachéō, from logos (“word”) and machomai (“to fight”): to fight about words. The verse gives two reasons. Such fighting is “to no profit”, building up nobody, and it leads “to the subverting of the hearers”. The word for subverting is katastrophḗ, from a verb meaning to overturn, and English has taken it over as “catastrophe”. Used figuratively it means ruin or demolition. The damage falls on the people listening, whose faith is unsettled and can be brought down altogether.

This well-known command sets the right handling of the word beside the fighting over words in verse 14. “Study” translates spoudázō, to make haste, to make an effort, to be prompt or earnest, which is why newer translations read “Be diligent”. The word carries urgency and wholehearted effort, given to understanding God’s truth and living by it. Paul presses the same earnestness on Timothy when he tells him to “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12).

“To shew thyself approved unto God” means to present yourself to God as one who has stood his test. Dókimos means acceptable after testing, and it was used of metal that had been assayed and found genuine. God is the one who examines, and his approval is the one that counts. Paul says the same of stewards, who are required to be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4:2).

The workman, ergátēs, is a labourer, one more picture beside the soldier, the athlete and the farmer earlier in the chapter. A worker’s job is inspected, and either it stands up or he has cause for shame. The workman “that needeth not to be ashamed” has handled the truth with integrity and lived in keeping with it, so his work holds up before God and before anyone who examines his life and teaching.

“But” is dé, a connective that can mark addition or contrast, and here it turns from the right handling of the word to what Timothy must avoid. “Shun” is periḯstēmi, literally to stand around, and in this use to turn aside from and keep clear of something. It calls for a deliberate step away from talk that does spiritual harm.

Paul describes that talk with two words. Bébēlos, “profane”, is what is common and unhallowed, as against what is set apart to God. It is said to come from a word for a threshold, so that it describes ground anyone may walk over. Speech of this kind treats sacred things with contempt or as trifles. Kenophōnía, “vain babblings”, joins kenos, “empty”, to phōnē, “sound” or “voice”: empty-sounding talk, idle chatter and fruitless speculation with nothing inside. Paul warns Timothy in the same terms against “profane and old wives’ fables” (1 Timothy 4:7).

The reason follows with gár, “for”: these babblings “will increase unto more ungodliness”. The verb prokóptō means to drive forward or advance, so this talk keeps gaining ground, and it carries people on to pleíōn, “more”, asébeia, ungodliness, a lack of reverence for God that shows in both thought and conduct. Talk like this grows and spreads like a disease, which is the very picture Paul reaches for next. The church is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15), and its leader has to guard it from this kind of speech.

“Their word”, lógos, is the teaching of the people Paul is warning against, and it is the message itself that destroys. The KJV “will eat” renders a phrase built on nomḗ, a pasture or feeding, used figuratively of a gangrene spreading as it feeds. “Canker” is gángraina, from a verb meaning to gnaw, and it gives English the word gangrene. In gangrene the flesh dies and the decay spreads quickly into healthy tissue, and left alone it can kill. False teaching works in the same way, eating its way through the body of believers, much as the little leaven of Galatians 5:9 works through the whole lump.

Then Paul names two men, Hymenaeus and Philetus. Naming them makes the danger concrete for Timothy and the church, marks their teaching publicly as false, and holds them responsible for it. Hymenaeus appears earlier in 1 Timothy 1:19–20, where Paul says he delivered him and Alexander “unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme”, which points to an error that had gone on for some time. Paul gives Titus the same charge about false teachers (Titus 1:10–11) and requires an elder to hold fast the faithful word (Titus 1:9), and John tells believers to try the spirits (1 John 4:1).

“Concerning the truth have erred” uses astochéō, built from a negative and a word for aim: to miss the mark. These men had missed the gospel at a central point. They said “that the resurrection is past already”. Anástasis means a standing up again, a coming back to life, and here it is the resurrection of the dead for which believers wait. Hymenaeus and Philetus most likely turned it into something spiritual, an awakening at conversion or an inner renewal already behind the believer, which left nothing bodily still to come. That fits an early form of the thinking later called Gnosticism, which counted the physical world worthless or evil and so had little room for a raised body.

The result was that they “overthrow the faith of some”. Anatrépō means to turn up or overturn, as a ship capsizes or a building is pulled down. Their teaching knocked away the hope on which those believers stood. Paul says “some”, and the next verse turns at once to what false teaching cannot touch.

“Nevertheless” sets this verse against all the instability before it. Teachers stray and the faith of some is overturned, and still “the foundation of God standeth sure”. Themélios is something laid down, the substructure of a building, used literally or figuratively. What God has laid down stays fixed whatever men teach.

Everything this passage asks of a teacher is seen perfectly in Jesus. He is the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1), the Word made flesh, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). He said that his words are spirit and life (John 6:63), and his hearers wondered at the gracious words that came from his mouth (Luke 4:22). He exposed the quibbles of the Pharisees and the speculative questions of the Sadducees and turned people to the weightier matters of the law and the kingdom of God. He handled the Old Testament rightly in his teaching (Matthew 5:17–48), and his food was to do the will of the Father who sent him (John 4:34).

He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) and the faithful and true witness (Revelation 3:14), so to err concerning the truth, as Hymenaeus and Philetus did, is to err concerning him. Those rooted in him are kept from being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine (Ephesians 4:14).

The approval of verse 15 rests on him as well. God made Christ to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21), and Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30). Study of the word of truth is in the end a pursuit of him, helped by the Spirit he promised would teach his people all things (John 14:26).

Paul wrote these verses to a young leader surrounded by quarrels, empty talk and men teaching error, and he gave Timothy two things to hold. One is work: the steady, careful labour of handling God’s word straight, under God’s eye, for the good of those who hear. The other is rest: God’s foundation stands, and its seal says that the Lord knows his own. Both belong to every believer who reads the Bible and speaks about it with others.

The passage shows God as the one whose approval matters and whose word is truth, who sees every dispute for what it is, and who keeps his people when the faith of some is overturned. The resurrection that Hymenaeus put in the past still lies ahead, as sure as Christ’s own rising. And the God who knows those who are his calls everyone who bears Christ’s name to turn from iniquity, so that the lives of his people carry the same seal as his foundation.