God Speaks: Profitable for Rebuking

Words create reality

Around the holidays an Australian clothing company ran an ad for a new collection of running gear. But the ad created such a firestorm, they were forced to pull the ad within days and issue an apology. The problem had nothing to do with the clothing or the brand. It was all about what a company executive had said in the ad. The exec said, “This product is not for you if you do one parkrun a week and your 5k is over 35 minutes.,” instantly shaming women who don’t measure up to an elite standard. “You don’t belong here” was the message. Here’s what the company said in their apology:

“We failed to consider the impact of our words.”

We failed to consider the impact of our words. Words have impact. And in this instance, people who had felt “seen” now felt dismissed. Long time customers who were working hard on their health heard… try harder. You’re not doing enough… this isn’t for you until you can meet our standards.

Words have impact. They can include or exclude. They can bind up or break down. They can destroy. They can heal. They can point you in the wrong direction or they can turn you around. And that’s where we’re at today.

Last Sunday was the first Sunday in a four-week series called God Speaks: A 30-Day Challenge to Read Your Bible, in which we are exploring the Bible’s importance. We just spent the last week talking about the Scriptures being profitable for teaching. And now… in this coming week, we’re talking about the Bible being profitable for rebuking.

Profitable for Rebuking

Rebuking. That’s not a word we use much in our culture even though it is everywhere… especially in our cancel culture. To rebuke means:

to criticize or sharply disapprove of someone because of something they said or did in order to turn them from what they said or did.

When we hear the definition, we recognize how prevalent it is in our culture. In fact, the moment we hear, “All Scripture is profitable for rebuking,” we're all in. Now we're talking! Let's do some rebuking. Time for some TRUTH serum... Time for some "laying down the law." Let's use the Bible to fix all the behavior that doesn't compute with my worldview.

What Paul is not saying

Paul does tell Timothy that the Scriptures are profitable for rebuking. But we’re going to spend some time talking about what he’s not saying, because I’ve come to believe that Paul’s statement here is one of the most abused in the Bible, and certainly in our culture. I tend to think there is a very narrow window in the kind of rebuking Paul is talking about. Because I’ve spent 4 decades in ministry watching people camp out on this verse as if it is a biblical justification for keeping people in line and letting people know where they are missing the mark. I know people who have doctorates in rebuking because they see it as their job to make sure they’re obeying this verse… if the Scriptures are profitable for rebuking, then by all means, the Bible is a weapon for laying down the law and lowering the hammer. The Bible gets weaponized all in the name of “profitable for rebuking.” If we hear that through our American religious instincts, we’re going to get this all wrong very, very fast—because we’ll turn it into a program for correcting other people.

What Paul is also not saying

But even here we have to say one more thing, because of our rabid desire to rebuke people. Paul is not saying that the Scriptures are profitable to wage the culture wars. We hear Paul say “imposters and charlatans” and instantly translate that into “all those people with the bad behaviors” or “all those people who don’t agree with me”. We claim false teachers are “all those people who don’t share our moral standards.” “Can you believe what those people tolerate?” The whole conversation becomes behavioral… behavior, lifestyle, politics… you name it… we are so quick to slap the label “false teacher” onto people because of behavior.

And there’s another layer to it—one we’ve already named in our Junk Drawer Jesus series. Remember the ruler? All of us have internal rulers by which we measure other people. But the real question isn’t just whether we measure others. The real question is: who gets to hold the ruler? Who gets to decide what counts as a rebuke? Who gets to control the standard from which to rebuke? Because the temptation isn’t merely to say, “You don’t measure up.” The temptation is to say, “I get to define the measurement.” And then we dress it up with religious language: What would Jesus do?—as if Jesus spent his time rebuking the culture or even rebuking his friends any time they ran afoul of the Bible. We’re going to come back t this in a second.

What Paul IS saying

So what is Paul saying? Context is everything. Right before he says “All Scripture is God-breathed… profitable for rebuking,” Paul warns Timothy about imposters—people who traffic in counterfeit religion, who are “deceiving and being deceived.” People who get the Gospel all wrong. Because immediately after that he says “Continue in the Scriptures that give you wisdom for salvation.” The rebuking is all about the Gospel.

In other words, the danger Paul has in view isn’t first of all that someone has a messy life. The danger is that the Gospel is mischaracterized or even overtly denied. The danger is getting the Gospel wrong. The danger is religious fraud, religious oppression, spiritual manipulation, and false teaching that isn’t interested in Jesus and his forgiveness as the primary importance of the Gospel. The real imposter is any preaching that leaves sinners with themselves instead of giving them Christ. The real imposter is the kind of preaching that leaves people thinking that their behavior as Christians will somehow make them more holy or closer to God. The real false teacher is any kind of narrative that somehow diminishes the work of Christ on behalf of sinners-yet-saints.

This means then that the context for “profitable for rebuking” means Scripture is profitable for rebuking THOSE false narratives, the narratives that oppose the Gospel. Scripture unmasks the counterfeit preachers, and guards the Gospel; it’s protection for sinners who need Christ.

When Jesus Rebuked

Now, once we hear rebuke in Paul’s context, we realize that he’s getting this from Jesus. Because when Jesus rebukes in the Gospels, you’ll notice the same thing again and again: His rebuke isn’t against the culture, and it’s not primarily about keeping his friends on the straight and narrow. When Jesus rebukes, he’s aiming at whatever threatens His saving work—whatever would steal the Gospel, crush the weak, or turn mercy into something else. Probably the best example of this is found in Luke 9… which we read in our Scripture readings this morning. In Luke 9, you’ll recall that a boy is possessed by an evil spirit, and a father begs Jesus to do something for his son.

Luke 9:42–43 “As the boy was still approaching, the demon knocked him down and threw him into severe convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And they were all astonished at the greatness of God.

There’s no better example of what a false narrative is that opposes the Gospel than an unclean spirit, not because demons are ideas, but because demons are always preaching. They preach a story about God that is not true. They preach a story about you that is not true. They preach a story about your future that is not true. And their story always ends the same way: destruction, darkness, despair—God is not for you, and you are not going to be free.

How Jesus rebuked: The Word

And notice how Jesus fights it. Jesus uses his Word. He doesn’t negotiate with the demon. He doesn’t coach the boy into better behavior. He rebukes. He speaks. And by His Word, reality changes: the demon loses its claim, the boy is restored, and he’s given back to his father. That’s what the Word of Christ does—it doesn’t merely tell you what to do; it delivers what you cannot produce. It frees. It gives. It restores.

This is the same kind of warfare Paul and Timothy are engaged in. They might be identified as false teachers and imposters rather than unclean spirits in 2 Timothy 3, but make no mistake, the spirit and the lie are the same. The lie is always some version of “we don’t need the Gospel.” We don’t need Christ given to us. We just need better behavior. We need a program, a morality we can manage. Anything—absolutely anything—except a Savior who must be received as a Promise and an Unconditional Gift.

Lies exposed by the Gospel

So what does it mean for the Gospel to expose lies in my own life? The Gospel is our reality. If the Gospel is what we double down on when we think about rebuking, it means this: the Gospel keeps contradicting the stories I default to when I’m trying to live without Jesus. The Gospel is a contradiction of the lie of self-salvation… if I do enough, God’s going to be pleased with me. The Gospel says Jesus is enough. The Gospel says it is finished.

The Gospel is also a contradiction of control… if I can manage my life, if I can manage the people in my life, I’ll have the comfort and peace I need. The Gospel says, it’s out of your control… you need to rest in Jesus and leave the management to him.

The Scriptures are profitable for rebuking. When we read the Scriptures, we find that the Gospel is constantly challenging what we believe to be true about reality. The Gospel exposes the lies by out-preaching them—by replacing every counterfeit gospel, every “you must become”, with the only real one: the Jesus who died FOR YOU, rose FOR YOU and absolutely loves you. Rebuking always begins with Jesus rebuking sin, death, and the devil for you.

The greatest rebuke in the history of the world happened at the cross. And that rebuke of all things anti-Gospel is the last Word over you:

It is finished.

Let’s Pray

The Table

At the Table, Jesus is still doing what He did in Luke 9—only now the enemy He rebukes is even deeper. Here He rebukes sin, death, and the devil for you. Because the Supper is not your offering to God; it is Christ’s finished victory delivered to you. The One who was rebuked under the Law in your place—who bore the accusation, the curse, the sentence for you—now turns that very rebuke outward against your enemies. His cross is God’s “No” to everything that would own you, and His risen life is God’s “Yes” to you. And that means there is always forgiveness on the other side of His rebuke: His body given for you, His blood shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins. Here the verdict “It is finished” is not a slogan; it is a gift. Christ rebuked and Christ victorious—placed into your mouth—so that what condemns you is silenced and what saves you is given.