The Field Guide to Godless Religion Text: 2 Timothy 3:1-9
Introduction: The Rot Within
We are frequently told that the great spiritual battle of our time is between the Church and the world, between the sacred and the secular. We picture the faithful remnant huddled inside the walls of the sanctuary while the pagan hordes of secularism, Marxism, and hedonism rage outside. But the Apostle Paul, in this sobering letter to his son in the faith, Timothy, corrects our vision. He warns that the most perilous threat is not the enemy battering the gates, but the impostor preaching from the pulpit, the traitor sitting in the pew.
Paul tells us that the "last days" will be characterized by "difficult times." Now, we must get this straight. The "last days" did not begin with the invention of the atomic bomb or the latest Supreme Court decision. The last days began with the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and will extend until He returns. This is the entire era of the new covenant. So Paul is not giving Timothy a far-off prophecy to be decoded with newspaper headlines; he is giving him a diagnostic manual for the church in every age, including our own.
And these times are not just "difficult" in the sense of being inconvenient. The Greek word here is chalepos, which means harsh, savage, fierce. It is the same word used to describe the two demon-possessed men in the country of the Gadarenes, who were so "exceedingly fierce" that no one could pass that way. Paul is warning that the end times will be characterized by a spiritual savagery, a moral breakdown that is demonic in its intensity. And the shocking thing is where he locates the epicenter of this outbreak. It is not in the pagan temples or the halls of Caesar. It is among those who maintain "a form of godliness." This is a description of corruption within the visible church. This is a field guide to identifying religious frauds.
The Text
But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Keep away from such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and take captive weak women weighed down with sins, being led on by various desires, always learning and never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, disqualified in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as theirs was also.
(2 Timothy 3:1-9 LSB)
The Diagnosis of Decay (vv. 1-5a)
Paul begins with a stark warning and then provides a detailed list of symptoms. This is not a random collection of vices; it is a tightly woven portrait of a single disease, which is apostasy from within.
"But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self..." (2 Timothy 3:1-2)
The entire cascade of corruption that follows flows from this one polluted fountainhead: love of self. When man dethrones God and enthrones himself, all of reality becomes distorted. This is the original sin of the Garden, the whisper of the serpent, "you will be like God." Every sin on this list is simply a different manifestation of this foundational idolatry.
From this self-love comes love of money, which is simply self-love applied to economics. It is the belief that my security and significance come from my possessions. Then comes the verbal expression of self-love: boastful, arrogant, blasphemers. We boast about ourselves, we are arrogant toward others, and we blaspheme the God who is our only rival. This rebellion then infects the most basic unit of society: the family. They are disobedient to parents, rejecting the first and most foundational authority structure God established. A society that despises parental authority will soon despise all authority.
The character sketch continues. They are ungrateful, because a self-worshipper believes he is entitled to everything. They are unholy, because holiness requires submission to a standard outside of oneself. They are unloving (literally, without natural affection), irreconcilable, and malicious gossips, because true fellowship is impossible for the pathologically selfish. They are without self-control, because the self cannot rule the self; it needs a master. They are without gentleness (or brutal), and without love for good, because the good is defined by God, not by their appetites.
The list culminates in a final flurry: treacherous, reckless, conceited. And then the summary that ties it all together: "lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." This is the fundamental choice that every human heart makes. It is a choice of worship. You will either worship the Creator or you will worship some aspect of His creation, usually your own appetites and comforts.
And now for the punch to the gut. After this horrifying catalogue of depravity, Paul tells us what these people look like on a Sunday morning. They are "holding to a form of godliness." They have the external apparatus of religion. They have their Bibles, their church buildings, their worship songs, their committee meetings, and their doctrinal statements. They have the form, the shape, the outline of Christianity. But they have "denied its power." The power of what? The power of the gospel to actually crucify the old man. The power of the Holy Spirit to produce genuine holiness. The power of God's grace to make a lover of self into a lover of God. Their religion is a hollowed-out shell, a museum piece. It is Christianity as a cultural habit, not a regenerating fire.
The Apostolic Prescription (vv. 5b-7)
Given this diagnosis, Paul gives Timothy a clear and direct command. It is not a suggestion to start a dialogue or to find common ground.
"Keep away from such men as these." (2 Timothy 3:5 LSB)
The command is to turn away. This is a call for ecclesiastical separation and church discipline. You do not tolerate this kind of godless religion in the camp. You mark it, you identify it, and you separate from it, lest the gangrene spread. The modern church, with its sentimental tolerance and fear of confrontation, finds this command deeply offensive. We would rather manage the rot than amputate it. But Paul understands that true love for the flock means protecting them from the wolves, especially the ones dressed in sheepskins.
He then describes the methodology of these spiritual frauds. They are cowards who do not operate in the open. "For among them are those who enter into households and take captive weak women weighed down with sins, being led on by various desires." Their method is infiltration and manipulation. They don't engage in robust theological debate in the public square; they creep into homes, into private conversations, into DMs.
Their targets are specific. He says they take captive "weak women." This is not a general statement about women, but a description of a particular spiritual and moral state. These are individuals, male or female, who are spiritually vulnerable because they are "weighed down with sins" and "led on by various desires." A guilty conscience and untamed passions make a person susceptible to any charlatan who comes along offering a therapeutic solution that avoids the hard demands of repentance and faith. The false teacher offers a gospel of affirmation, not a gospel of transformation.
The result is a state of perpetual spiritual confusion: "always learning and never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth." They are addicted to the process of seeking but allergic to the finality of finding. They love spiritual conversations, reading new books, and exploring different perspectives, but they recoil from the authoritative claims of Scripture. The truth is a destination, a rock to stand on. These people prefer to be perpetual sailors on the sea of spiritual possibilities, never making landfall. This is the spirit of our age, which prizes the open mind so much that it becomes a perpetual vacuum, refusing to ever close on the conviction of truth.
The Counterfeit and Its Collapse (vv. 8-9)
To show Timothy that this is an old pattern, Paul reaches back into the history of Israel's redemption.
"Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth..." (2 Timothy 3:8 LSB)
Jannes and Jambres are the traditional names of the Egyptian court magicians who opposed Moses and Aaron. When Aaron threw down his staff and it became a serpent, they did the same with their secret arts. They replicated the first few plagues. Their opposition was not a denial of the supernatural, but a counterfeit of it. They mimicked God's power to deceive Pharaoh and resist God's messenger. This is precisely what the false teachers in the church do. They don't just deny the truth; they oppose it with a counterfeit truth, a fraudulent spirituality.
These men are described as having a "depraved mind" and being "disqualified in regard to the faith." Their thinking is corrupt at the root, and when tested against the standard of true faith, they are found to be phonies, like a counterfeit coin.
But here is the great encouragement for Timothy, and for us. Paul gives a firm promise about the endgame of all such fraudulent religion. "But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as theirs was also." The magicians could only go so far. When the plague of gnats came, they could not replicate it, and they were forced to confess, "This is the finger of God." Their power had a limit. Their folly was exposed.
In the same way, Paul says, all heresy, all spiritual fraud, has a built-in self-destruct mechanism. It has a shelf life. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Eventually, the sham is exposed. The folly becomes manifest. The truth will out. This is a promise that should steel our nerves. We are not to panic when we see this kind of corruption in the church. We are to oppose it, separate from it, and trust that God in His providence will ultimately expose it for the foolishness that it is.
Conclusion: The Power of Godliness
This passage is a grim diagnosis, but it is not without hope. The antidote to a "form of godliness" that denies the power is to embrace the true power of godliness. And what is that power? It is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The list of sins in verses 2 through 5 is a perfect description of fallen humanity. It is who we are, left to ourselves.
But the gospel is the announcement that God has not left us to ourselves. The power of God is demonstrated in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the power to take a lover of self and, by grace, make him a lover of God. It is the power to take a man "weighed down with sins" and wash him clean. It is the power that takes a depraved mind and renews it. It is the power to bring the dead to life.
The great temptation is to settle for the form because the power is costly. The power demands crucifixion of the self. The power demands repentance. The power demands submission. The form allows us to keep our self-love, our love of money, and our love of pleasure, all while maintaining a respectable religious veneer.
We must therefore examine ourselves. Are we merely playing church? Are we content with the rituals, the language, and the appearance of faith? Or have we been genuinely apprehended by the power of God in the gospel? Have we been born again? Because it is only this power, the power that raised Jesus from the dead, that can save us from the savage times Paul describes, and from the judgment to come.