2 Tim 4:3-5 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound (or healthy) teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Stott noted in BST:-
Notice the word ‘for’ or ‘because’ (gar) which introduces this paragraph. Paul is giving a second basis on which to ground his charge. It is another future event, not now the coming of Christ but, before that end point, the coming of dark and difficult days. Although the apostle seems to be anticipating that the situation will deteriorate, it is also plain from this paragraph and from what he has written earlier that such a time has already begun for Timothy. It is in the light of this contemporary scene that he issues further directions.
What are these times like? One characteristic is singled out, namely that people cannot bear the truth. Paul expresses it negatively and positively, and states it twice: They ‘will not endure sound teaching, but … accumulate … teachers to suit their own likings’ (3). They ‘will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths’ (4). In other words, they cannot stand the truth and refuse to listen to it. Instead, they find teachers to suit the speculative fancies into which they are determined to wander. It all has to do with their ears, which (in the Greek sentence) are mentioned twice. They suffer from a peculiar pathological condition called ‘itching ears’, ‘an itch for novelty’.1 AG explain that the expression is a figure of speech for that kind of curiosity which ‘looks for interesting and spicy hits of information’. Further, ‘this itching is relieved by the messages of the new teachers’. In fact what the people do is stop their ears against the truth (cf. Acts 7:57) and open them to any teacher who will relieve their tickle by scratching it.
Notice that what they reject is ‘the sound teaching’ (3) or ‘the truth’ (4), and what they prefer is ‘their own likings’ (3) or ‘myths’ (4). They thus substitute their fancy for God’s revelation. The criterion by which they judge teachers is not (as it should be) God’s word but their own subjective taste. Worse still, they do not first listen and then decide whether what they have heard is true; they first decide what they want to hear and then select teachers who will oblige by toeing their line.
How is Timothy to react to this? One might guess that such a desperate situation should silence him. If men cannot bear the truth and will not listen to it, surely the prudent course will be for him to hold his peace? But Paul reaches the opposite conclusion. For the third time he uses those two little monosyllables su de, ‘but as for you’ (5; cf. 3:10, 14). He repeats his call to Timothy to be different. He must not take his lead from the prevailing fashions of the day.
Now follow four staccato commands which seem to be deliberately framed in relation to the situation in which Timothy finds himself and to the kind of people to whom he is called to minister.
1. Because the people are unstable in mind and conduct, [2 Timothy, Page 112] Timothy is above everything else always to ‘be steady’. Literally, neœphoœ means to be sober, and figuratively to ‘be free from every form of mental and spiritual drunkenness’ and so to ‘be well-balanced, self-controlled’ (AG). When men and women get intoxicated with heady heresies and sparkling novelties, ministers must keep ‘calm and sane’ (NEB).
2. Although the people will not listen to the sound teaching, Timothy must persist in teaching it and so be prepared to ‘endure suffering’ on account of the truth he refuses to compromise. Whenever the biblical faith becomes unpopular, ministers are sorely tempted to mute those elements which give most offence.
3. Because the people are woefully ignorant of the true evangel, Timothy is to ‘do the work of an evangelist’. It is not clear whether the reference is to a specialist ministry such as is implied in the only other New Testament passages where the word occurs (Acts 21:8; Eph. 4:11). The alternative is to interpret it of anybody who preaches the gospel and witnesses to Christ. In either case Paul is bidding Timothy: ‘make the preaching of the Good News your life’s work’ (JB). The good news is not just to be preserved against distortion; it is to be spread abroad.
4. Even if the people forsake Timothy’s ministry in favour of teachers who tickle their fancy, Timothy is to ‘fulfil’ his ‘ministry’. The same verb is used when Paul and Barnabas had completed the relief work which they went to Jerusalem to do. ‘They had fulfilled their mission’, Luke writes (Acts 12:25). Just so Timothy must persevere until his task is accomplished.
Thus Paul’s four words of command, although different in detail, convey the same general message. Those difficult days, in which it was hard to gain a hearing for the gospel, were not to discourage Timothy; nor to deter him from his ministry; nor to induce him to trim his message to suit his hearers; still less to silence him altogether; but rather to spur him on to preach the more. It should be the same with us. The harder the times and the deafer the people, the clearer and more persuasive our proclamation must be. As Calvin puts it, ‘the more determined men become to despise the teaching of Christ, the more zealous should godly ministers be to assert it and the more strenuous their efforts to preserve it entire, and more than that, by their diligence to ward off Satan’s attacks’.1
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