Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Timothy · About this commentary
From Infancy You Have Known
2 Timothy 3:13-15
13 But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. · WEB
Things will get worse, and the anchor offered is a body of writing Timothy has known since before he could read.
Evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. The last clause is the one worth pausing on: the deceivers are themselves deceived, so this is not a picture of cynics manipulating dupes but of a decline that carries its own leaders down with it.
But you remain in the things which you have learned. Against a worsening current, the instruction is to stay put.
Two grounds are given for staying, and the first is personal: knowing from whom you have learned them. Timothy had watched the teachers as well as the teaching — his grandmother, his mother 2 Timothy 1:5, and the man now writing from a cell.
The second ground is the writings themselves. From infancy you have known the holy Scriptures. A Jewish household taught children the Scriptures from the earliest age, and Timothy's mother was a believing Jewess Acts 16:1, so this began long before Paul arrived.
And what they do is stated precisely: they are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Not wise generally. The wisdom has an object, and it is reached through faith rather than through the reading alone.
settled What this mark means