2 Timothy 4.4-Apostate Christianity Will Stop Listening to the Truth and Instead Embrace Myths
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Wednesday August 26, 2015
Second Timothy: Second Timothy 4:4-Apostate Christianity Will Stop Listening to the Truth and Instead Embrace Myths
Lesson # 89
2 Timothy 4:1 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (NASB95)
Second Timothy 4:1 I solemnly charge in the presence of God (the Father) as well as the Christ who is Jesus, who is inevitably going to judge the living as well as the dead and in addition by His appearing as well as by His kingdom: 2 to make it your top priority of publically proclaiming with authority as a herald the message. I solemnly charge you to make it your top priority of always being prepared to perform this task whether the circumstance is favorable or unfavorable. I solemnly charge you to make it your top priority to convict. I solemnly charge you to make it your top priority to rebuke. I solemnly charge you to make it your top priority to exhort with a patience which is absolute as well as by means of instruction. 3 The reason for this is that the time will come when they will no longer tolerate sound doctrine. But rather, they will, as a certainty accumulate for themselves teachers because of their own sinful desires because they will as a certainty want to have their ears tickled. 4 Consequently, on the one hand, they will, as a certainty turn their ears away from the truth while on the other hand, they will, as a certainty be turned away from the truth because of myths. (Author’s translation)
Second Timothy 4:4 is a result clause which is composed of a correlative clause and is presenting the result of the previous statement in the adversative clause in Second Timothy 4:3.
This verse contains two assertions.
The first is that apostate Christians living during the church age will as a certainty turn their ears away from the truth and the second assertion in this verse specifies the reason for this defection from the truth.
So this correlative clause expresses a contrast between rejecting the truth and embracing myths.
“The truth” refers of course to Paul’s apostolic teaching which Paul and the other apostles proclaimed to the churches everywhere in the Roman Empire.
The word refers to the truth of God in an objective sense as a body of knowledge containing the revelation that is directed toward the church age believer and specifically, “truth” is a synonym for the gospel.
The first assertion in Second Timothy 4:4 states that these apostate Christians will as a certainty turn their ears away from the truth which simply means that they will stop listening and obeying the truth or in other words, they will reject the truth.
The apostle is teaching that they will dissociate themselves from the truth.
Paul is emphasizing in this assertion that this will as a certainty take place.
In the second assertion, he states that these apostate Christians living during the church age will as a certainty be turned away from the truth because of myths.
He is emphasizing with Timothy that this is certain to take place.
Paul’s statement here in Second Timothy 4:4 would at first glance appear to indicate that this apostasy among Christians was still yet future to the time of writing this epistle to Timothy or had not taken place when Paul wrote to Timothy.
However, Paul is simply emphasizing with Timothy that the situation of apostasy in the church will continue to occur in the future during the church age.
Also, the context indicates that this rejection of sound doctrine was already present in the days of Paul and Timothy.
Paul in Second Timothy 4:5 commands Timothy to be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist and fulfill his ministry in contrast to those who he describes as no longer tolerating sound doctrine.
Thus, these individuals he describes in Second Timothy 4:3-4 were living in Timothy’s day.
Secondly, the same group of people Paul describes in Second Timothy 4:3-4 are described by him in First Timothy 3:1-9 who were living in Timothy and Paul’s day.
So there is the same implication of time.
In fact, Paul orders Timothy in Second Timothy 3:5 to continue to make it his habit of disassociating himself from the people he describes in Second Timothy 3:2-5.
He would never say this in relation to a non-Christian but only a Christian according to his teaching in First Corinthians 5:9-13 where he orders the Corinthians to disassociate themselves from a fellow Christian living an ungodly immoral lifestyle.
Now what are these “myths” that Paul mentions in Second Timothy 4:4?
A comparison of First Timothy, Second Timothy and Titus would indicate that these myths originate with the Judaizers who were influencing pastors in the Roman province of Asia in Timothy and Paul’s day.
As was the case in Second Timothy 4:4, the plural form of the noun muthos, “myths” appears in First Timothy 1:4 and 4:7 where it is used to describe the content of the teaching of these unidentified pastors in Ephesus as falsehood in contrast to Paul’s gospel.
The gospel is absolute truth since it is inspired by the Holy Spirit as well as rooted in historical events (crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ) and an historical individual (Jesus of Nazareth).
It has nothing to do with Gnosticism since the phrase “teachers of the Law” in First Timothy 1:7 and Titus 1:14 describes these myths as Jewish.
In Titus 1:14, the plural form of the noun muthos means “myths” and is used to describe the content of the teaching of these unidentified apostate pastors in Crete as falsehood in contrast to Paul’s gospel.
The gospel is absolute truth since it is inspired by the Holy Spirit as well as rooted in historical events (crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ) and an historical individual (Jesus of Nazareth).
This word is modified by the dative masculine plural form of the adjective Ioudaikos, “Jewish” indicating that the apostate pastors were influenced by the Judaizers or in other words, these myths were “Jewish” in nature.
In Second Timothy 4:4, the noun muthos describes the teaching of the false teachers from the perspective that it is unhistorical and not based upon truth or fact.
The false teachers are unrepentant apostate pastor-teachers who adhered to the false doctrine of the Judaizers.
That these myths originated with the Judaizers is indicated by the fact that the nature of the heresy in Ephesus where Timothy was stationed when Paul wrote Second Timothy was Jewish.
It is also indicated by the fact that the word in Titus 1:14 is modified by the adjective Ioudaikos, “Jewish.”
It is also indicated by Paul’s statements in First and Second Timothy (cf. 1 Timothy 1:3-11; 4:1-5; 6:3-5, 20; cf. 2 Timothy 2:16-17, 23).
The gospel is absolute truth since it is inspired by the Holy Spirit as well as rooted in historical events (crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ) and an historical individual (Jesus of Nazareth) and stands in contrast to the myths propagated by the Judaizers.
Therefore, in Second Timothy 4:4, the apostle Paul asserts that apostate Christians living during the church age will be turned away from the truth, the gospel because of these Jewish myths.
Paul’s statements in First Timothy, Second Timothy and Titus all make clear that this was taking place when Paul wrote Second Timothy.
Interestingly, in 1 Timothy 1:4, these myths are mentioned along with “endless genealogies.”
Then, in Titus 3:9, Paul does not mention these myths but rather “genealogies.”
Within Judaism, genealogies played the key role of establishing a person’s bloodline and link to a particular family and tribe.
Rights by birth determined in this way allowed, for example, entrance into the priesthood.
These genealogies could also refer to the accounts of people in the early parts of Genesis.
This usage opens up the possibility that Paul is identifying the practice among the Judaizers of speculating on stories about the early biblical characters as well as actual genealogical lists such as occur there or in other more speculative noncanonical Jewish writings (e.g. Jubilees).
Speculation fitting roughly into this category was known to have been practiced in Jewish communities.
The reference in Titus 3:9 to the disputes about the Law helps to locate the source of this practice within the repository of Jewish literature.
Thus, it appears likely that these Jewish myths are related to the stories related to the genealogies taken from those provided in the Old Testament.
Jewish “myths” would especially be haggadot, stories amplifying or explaining biblical narratives. Pharisees and others who tried to expound and apply biblical law for their own times were forced to surround it with case law, detailing how the Old Testament rules addressed specific situations; Paul apparently dismisses such legal traditions here.