Lessons from Childhood
Yesterday our Wednesday morning Ladies Bible Class was ready to start the third chapter of 2 Timothy, which begins:
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money,
boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents,
ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable,
malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal,
haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited,
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power;
Avoid such men as these.
2 Timothy 3:1-6
Whew! That’s quite a depressing list of traits. It is obvious from verse six that Paul and Timothy were already living in those last days because Paul told Timothy to avoid men with those characteristics. It’s obvious that we are living in those days, too.
When I was thinking about our class beforehand, I thought about the characteristic of being disobedient to parents. Notice that at the beginning of the passage, Paul describes these folks as men (not little boys) and yet he condemns them for disobeying their parents.
I thought about our class of older women. In the class of sixteen women yesterday, only one woman was younger than I am. Her mother and my mother were in the class, too, but none of the other ladies’ parents are living, and most have probably been gone for a long time.
I realized though that these women still obey their parents by following the teachings their parents instilled in them when they were children. So, I asked them what their parents taught them. The number one answer involved respect for others, especially for their elders.
None of them mentioned this, but now that these ladies are those elders, I wonder how much respect they receive.
The list of negative characteristics in 2 Timothy 3 teaches us what to avoid and what to train our children to avoid. Instead, God wants the characteristics of our lives and the lives of our children to be the opposite of those. We should be: lovers of others, givers of money, modest, humble, encouraging, obedient to parents, grateful, holy, loving, forgiving, careful in our speech, self-controlled, gentle, lovers of good, trustworthy, careful, meek, lovers of God, and godly.
Later in the chapter, Paul tells Timothy:
You, however, continue in the things
you have learned and become convinced of,
knowing from whom you have learned them,
and that from childhood you have known
the sacred writings which are able to give you
the wisdom that leads to salvation
through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy 3:14
