2 Timothy 3:10 to 12 · Passage · Persecution
All Who Desire to Live Godly
In his last letter Paul recalls what he suffered in three cities of Asia Minor and makes it the pattern for every believer.
The Greek adverb rendered godly in 2 Timothy 3:12 stands in only one other verse, Titus 2:12.
Indeed, all who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
- The passage
- 2 Timothy 3:10 to 12
- Book
- 2 Timothy
- Hold in memory
- 2 Timothy 3:12
Summary
Paul tells Timothy that persecution comes to everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ, while deceivers go from bad to worse. He sets that rule beside his own sufferings, which Timothy had watched, and he gives Timothy two things to hold, the life he had seen in Paul and the Scriptures he had known from childhood.
- Paul wrote 2 Timothy as a prisoner who expected to die soon (2 Timothy 1:8 and 2 Timothy 4:6).
- At Antioch, Iconium and Lystra Paul was driven out, threatened with stoning and stoned (Acts 13 and 14).
- Paul says the Lord rescued him from all of those persecutions (2 Timothy 3:11).
Paul's Last Letter
The letter's first and last chapters show where Paul was when he wrote.
Paul's second letter to Timothy tells his younger helper what to expect from the world. Timothy had followed Paul's life closely, and Paul uses that life to teach him that hostility is the normal lot of those who belong to Christ.
This study asks what Paul means when he says that the godly in Christ will be persecuted, and how the rescue he names in the verse before fits with the stones of Lystra. It sets the three cities of Acts in a table, follows the chapter from the men of the last days to the Scriptures, and gives two questions on which readers differ. It is a passage study of the trial of persecution.
Paul calls himself the Lord's "prisoner" (2 Timothy 1:8), suffering "to the extent of being chained like a criminal" (2 Timothy 2:9). He prays for mercy on the household of Onesiphorus, who "was unashamed of my chains" and searched for him in Rome (2 Timothy 1:16 to 17).
Antioch, Iconium and Lystra
Acts tells what happened to Paul in each of the cities he names in 2 Timothy 3:11.
In each city the opposition grew, from being driven out of Antioch to being stoned at Lystra.
| City | Acts | What was done to Paul | How he left |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antioch | Acts 13:50 to 51 | They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and drove them out of their district. | they shook the dust off their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium |
| Iconium | Acts 14:5 to 6 | the Gentiles and Jews, together with their rulers, set out to mistreat and stone them | they found out about it and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe |
| Lystra | Acts 14:19 to 20 | They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, presuming he was dead. | he got up and went back into the city. And the next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe. |
Two Ways of Life
The chapter sets the men of the last days against the life Timothy saw in Paul.
The chapter opens with a long list of the vices of men in the last days, from love of self and of money to love of pleasure.
having a form of godliness but denying its power. Turn away from such as these!This verse's word godliness, eusebeia, is the noun of the adverb Paul uses in 2 Timothy 3:12, here for a godliness that is only outward.
Against them Paul sets nine things Timothy had observed in him, his teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love and perseverance, and then his persecutions and sufferings (2 Timothy 3:10 to 11).
my persecutions, and the sufferings that came upon me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.This verse names sufferings Timothy knew, so the rule of 2 Timothy 3:12 rests on what he had seen.
Paul found Timothy at Lystra, and the brothers in Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him (Acts 16:1 to 2). Timothy may have known of the stoning there as a disciple of that town.
In 2 Timothy 3:12 the word for desire is a present participle, those desiring, so Paul speaks of everyone who wants to live that way. Its verb of persecution is diōkō.
while evil men and imposters go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.Paul sets the deceivers' growth in evil beside the persecution of the godly, so both run on until the end.
The next verses call all Scripture God-breathed and useful for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16 to 17).
Yet the Lord Rescued Me
The rescue Paul names stands beside a psalm of deliverance and beside his own hope at the end of the letter.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him from them all.David's psalm pairs many afflictions with a rescue from them all, the pairing Paul makes of his own persecutions.
Paul's last words of rescue in the letter look past death, for he writes that the Lord will rescue him from every evil action and bring him safely into His heavenly kingdom (2 Timothy 4:18).
John Bunyan, in the preface to Grace Abounding (1666), gave 2 Timothy 3:11 to readers in despair and doubt, "remember it was thus with your father; but out of them all the Lord delivered me."
Where Readers Differ
Readers differ on how far the rule of 2 Timothy 3:12 reaches and on what the rescue of 2 Timothy 3:11 was.
Every believer in every placeJohn Wesley; Albert Barnes; Leo the Great; Nicolae Mosoiu, 2019
John Wesley wrote that the godly suffer persecution "More or less", and Albert Barnes said Paul "has put his remark into the most general form, as applicable to all periods". Leo the Great counted as persecution "nonconformity of practice and persistent disobedience and the barbs of ill-natured tongues". Nicolae Mosoiu, writing in 2019 from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, called persecution and martyrdom "a permanent condition of the Church, the Body of Christ".
The strongest objection is 1 Timothy 2:2, where Paul asks for prayer so that believers "may lead tranquil and quiet lives in all godliness and dignity". A godly life may also be a quiet one.
What the rescue wasAdam Clarke; John Chrysostom
Adam Clarke read the rescue at Lystra as a rescue from death itself and wrote, "The historian informs us that his life was miraculously restored". The objection is that Acts says only that the crowd presumed Paul dead (Acts 14:19).
John Chrysostom read the rescue as God's keeping Paul through the suffering, "It cannot be said, that God abandoned me, but He rendered my crown more radiant."
The objection is that Paul names the rescue as a separate act of the Lord, after the persecutions he endured.
Continue in What You Have Learned
Two verses after the rule, Paul turns Timothy back to his teachers.
But as for you, continue in the things you have learned and firmly believed, since you know from whom you have learned them.Paul's answer to persecution rests on people Timothy knew and could trust.
The faith Timothy learned had first dwelt in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5).
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (TAGNT), Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible, the Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek based on Abbott-Smith (1922), Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0.
- OpenBible.info cross references (CC BY)
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on Second Timothy, Homily 8, on 2 Timothy 3:10 to 11.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on 2 Timothy 3:12.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832 to 1869), on 2 Timothy 3:12.
- Leo the Great, Letter 167, to Rusticus, Bishop of Gallia Narbonensis.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 2 Timothy 3:11.
- John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), the preface.
- Nicolae V. Mosoiu, "'All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted' (2 Tm 3:12): an Eastern Orthodox perspective on persecutions and martyrdom", HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 75(4), a5576 (2019)
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