2 Timothy 2:14-26

Remind them of these things and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some, but God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

This morning I want to start with a question: what do you do when you know someone is wrong? Not about something small — something meaningful, something bigger than who we rooted for last night, even though all of our teams lost. What do we do when we know someone — maybe even more than that, someone who is a believer — is wrong? I think some of us are natural fighters. We like to make sure that people understand where we stand, but it's easy, while you're fighting for the truth, to have it quickly move from fighting for the truth to, hey, I want them to know that I'm right. I want them to admit it. Others of us avoid. When we know someone is wrong, we avoid it, and that can sound loving. But sometimes what we're doing is dressing up fear and calling it kindness. If we really believe something is true, then we can't pretend that it doesn't matter. But if we love the people that we're talking to, we can't treat them like an enemy to defeat either.

Big Question

What do you do when you know someone is wrong?

So what do we do when we know someone is wrong? Well, fortunately, the Bible tells us how to do that in this passage. Keep your Bibles open to 2 Timothy 2, as we will see three major movements within this passage. First, don't bend the truth. Second, don't write them off. And third, don't crush the person.

Outline

1. Don't Bend the Truth (2 Timothy 2:14-19)

2. Don't Write Them Off (2 Timothy 2:20-22)

3. Don't Crush the Person (2 Timothy 2:23-26)

1. Don't Bend the Truth (2 Timothy 2:14-19)

Let's look at this first section: don't bend the truth. Paul had just been encouraging Timothy as we lead into this section. Right above it are four lines that talk about God's character. They jut out from the letter because they're written differently — written poetically. In fact, this was likely an early church creed or confession that the church would have recited.

Verse 14 starts with this: remind them of these things. We're being called to look back at those four lines. Paul is telling Timothy to remind the faithful men he was supposed to entrust the gospel to — to remind them in their own suffering, in their own times of discouragement — and not only that, but to charge them before God. This was courtroom language, the language used in the imperial courtroom: to be charged before the judge, to be sworn in, to be asked to tell the truth before the highest authority there was. Paul is doing the same thing. Charge them not before a judge, not before a jury, not before people, but before God. Paul is telling Timothy: pastor, God is watching. And that's why he encourages him not to quarrel about words. There were false teachers running rampant in the church, spreading things that discouraged the members, troubling their faith. These men were not looking to debate; they wanted to argue. They wanted to quarrel about words.

This was probably some sort of contextual argument happening in the first century — possibly about the resurrection. They had nothing to build the church up with, so what they were doing was destroying it by attacking it, arguing about senseless things. In our context, we might not be arguing about words or fighting theological battles in our church, but my question for you would be this: are we fighting for things that allow the gospel to flourish, or to shrink? Sometimes we have preferences, things we believe the church should do — but are we fighting for things that bring the gospel forward? We don't need to win every fight, because our standing doesn't come from our ability to get our own way. It's one of the things I love about this church: no one gets to be a dictator in our council. We have a set of rules we've written and self-imposed that guard us from that — no one gets to dictate, gets his way every time. I love that rule, because I've seen too many churches fall prey to a pastor who gets comfortable being power-hungry, gets his own way, and is no longer seeking after what the Holy Spirit is telling him but after what he desires. The truth is, I am a sinful person. Our council has had to say no to me before, which is a really good thing, because I'm a sinful man. No one gets their way — and that's the beauty of how a church is supposed to operate. We're supposed to follow God's will and not the will of one man.

Paul continues in verse 15: do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Again Paul is using courtroom language, saying firmly: present yourself to God. Your audience is God — not your congregation, not the people in front of you, but God himself. I've seen far too often pastors preach to a room, believing the congregation is the person they're supposed to impress. God's word tells us that it is him, and him alone. To preach to the room is to preach to itching ears. Imagine if I could only tell you, as a congregation, the things you wanted to hear. Imagine how bad that would be for our lives — imagine if we had no one in our life willing to tell us we were wrong. We have to have, from some authority, someone who's going to correct us. The beautiful part of what Paul is telling Timothy here is that it is God's word. Imagine for a minute that we believed no one could hold us accountable, not even God's word — that nothing could tell us something uncomfortable. Essentially, God would have to be my size. He'd have to be my shape. He'd have to believe everything I believe. He couldn't have something better for me, couldn't bring me into any sort of growth, if his word can't confront me.

In some sense, for me to insist that God's word has to fit everything I already believe means that, in some sense, I'm already my own god — I'm already the highest authority and no one can correct me. That's not what Paul is telling Timothy. Paul's telling Timothy to teach the truth correctly, without distortion, and to pass that on to the next generation. Timothy's job isn't to make God's word interesting — and neither is any pastor's. It is not my job to get up here on Sundays and entertain you. It's not my job to be funny. My prayer is that at the end of my life, people would not remember my jokes but would remember that I taught them what God's word said. My job is to cut it straight. This is why the preaching of the word is the central thing in any of our worship services. Whenever we gather to worship, the word is central — it's why the pulpit is at the center of the stage. In a church that believes in God's word, grounded in God's word, you will see a pulpit at the center. It's not an accident.

Paul continues in verse 16: but avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness. This irreverent babble is church-like talk — Christianese — that doesn't really mean anything, going through the motions to go through the motions. What it leads to is more and more ungodliness, or, put another way, it will make us better at being bad, because we'll have the right language to cover it up. In verse 17 he continues that this will get worse and worse, that it will spread like gangrene. That was a visceral image for them — a flesh-eating infection that slowly and painfully took over the body. In the first century it was a death sentence. What Paul is saying is that false teaching in the church is not just wrong information, not just people being factually wrong — it's a pathogen. It's infectious, and it leads to death. He names two people, Hymenaeus and Philetus, who had been speaking false doctrine in Timothy's church and leading people into discouragement or even away from their faith.

Notice at the end of this passage Paul quotes from the book of Numbers, and it's not just a random quote. It's a quote from Korah's Rebellion — a group of people who believed that Moses was no longer speaking for God, that Moses was leading God's people astray, and who said, we are going to separate ourselves and follow God our own way. Moses had warned them this was wrong, that God was still using him. What happened was these people were swallowed up in the desert — their rebellion against God and against the one God had chosen led them to disaster and to death. Paul uses this quote because what he's saying is: these two men are working against you, working against the church, but look at what happened in the Old Testament. Those men didn't get very far; that rebellion did not stick around. It starts in verse 19: but God's firm foundation stands. Korah did not destroy the tabernacle, and these two men will not kill the church. This is the encouragement Paul is giving to Timothy. The foundation doesn't hold because Timothy can successfully refute every heretic who walks into his church. The foundation holds because God laid it, and because God sealed it himself. There will be times people come against this church, but they will not win. So when someone is wrong, Paul says: do not bend the truth. Cut it straight.

2. Don't Write Them Off (2 Timothy 2:20-22)

But now Paul does something surprising, because the greatest danger to Timothy isn't only that people would believe something false in the church — Timothy needs to watch what happens to Timothy while he's correcting them. Which brings us to our second point: don't write them off. You'd expect Paul to say: here are two people speaking heresy, actively confronting the church — get them out. But he doesn't say that. Instead he uses an object lesson in verses 20 through 22: the example of vessels, or containers. Within the temple there were different types of containers — some used to house really important and valuable things, and others used for the byproducts of animal sacrifice, for gross stuff. So why is Paul bringing up containers in the middle of encouraging Timothy about two false teachers? He's not just bringing up vessels to bring up vessels; he's talking to Timothy about these men.

It would be easy to read this passage as being about Timothy himself — as if Paul is saying, Timothy, if you cleanse yourself from what's dishonorable, you'll be a vessel of honorable use. That's the easiest way to read it, but it isn't about Timothy. Timothy isn't a dishonorable vessel; that's not what's being talked about here, and it would be a strange and even offensive thing for Paul to say to him. What Paul is saying is that these two heretics, these two men teaching false things, are the dishonorable vessels — and God can cleanse them. God can lead them to repentance. That's why he says, in verse 22, so flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the name of the Lord from a pure heart. We often read “flee youthful passions” and immediately think it's about sex or lust, but that would be a strange way for Paul to write — talking about heretics, talking about vessels, and then suddenly talking about lust.

That's not what the youthful passions are here. He's talking about getting angry — about being a hothead and coming unglued on these two men. He's saying: look at these dishonorable men, these men working against the church, but you cannot fly off the handle at them, because God is able to make what is dishonorable honorable again. He's the one who cleanses. Notice the word “so” at the start of verse 22 — whenever you see the word “so” in a letter, that's the author telling you what to do. He's saying: look at these vessels, because there are false teachers; Timothy, you can't act this way. You can't lean into your youthful passions. Flee. Don't blow up at them, because God may restore them. So don't read this passage as a call to clean yourself up — you don't have the ability to cleanse yourself. What this is saying is that when you see someone who you know is saying the wrong thing, who is actively against your faith or against the church, you don't get to write them off.

You don't get to cut them out of your life. You don't get to say, I don't want anything to do with you anymore. You can't come unglued on them. This is an encouragement for a pastor not to get discouraged by false teaching, because God knows who are his, and he is the one who cleanses them.

3. Don't Crush the Person (2 Timothy 2:23-26)

That leads us into the last point in this passage: don't crush the person. If God can take what's dishonorable and make it honorable, then Timothy cannot treat these men as disposable. To blow up and fight these men would be a detriment to his ministry — it would be a soldier getting entangled in civilian affairs. So does this mean that if people are doing outright sinful things in our church, or teaching things that are outright wrong, we have no recourse, that we just let it happen? No. Look at verse 25: correcting his opponent with gentleness, God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

We absolutely are called to correct. In fact, this word “correct” is the same word used for discipline — this is what and why we practice church discipline. Church discipline is never done because elders or deacons like to meddle in people's business; it is the last thing we ever want to do. The reason we do it is because we desire to see people restored. We believe that sin is actually bad for us — that if we continue in the wrong thing over and over, our hearts will harden to it, and if there's no one walking alongside us to correct us, to bring us back, we can turn into that sin going on and on like a machine. Quarreling and correcting are not the same thing. Correction is desperately needed in all of our lives; we need it, we ought to submit to it. But look at what this all hinges on, in verses 25 and 26: this hinges not on them repenting, and not on Timothy having a clever argument. This hinges on God granting them repentance.

Paul gives Timothy three things in this section: cut it straight, keep clean, and say the hard thing gently. And yet none of this is dependent on Timothy — God is the one who grants repentance. So what do we do when we know someone is wrong? This passage tells us three things: don't bend the truth, don't write them off, and don't crush the person. Our errors, the other person's errors, really do matter — we must not bend the truth. We must not write them off, because their story isn't finished. And we don't crush the person, because their repentance belongs to God. And then, after doing those three things, we trust God to do what only God can do. What we see in this passage, and our main idea, is this: grace makes a worker who handles truth cleanly, stays clean, and corrects gently. This teaches us something about what it means to have a pastor, and what a pastor ought to be: a pastor must be both doctrinally precise and gentle relationally.

You can't have one without the other. When you have one or the other, it leads to a pastor abusing his power. If you have a pastor who isn't theologically sound but is just really kind and gentle, it allows false teaching to run rampant through the church — and false teaching doesn't just stay out there, it affects our lives, it changes who we are. To believe something wrongly about God shapes our perception and hurts us. On the other side, to have men preach who are brilliant, who are smart, but whose lives lack the integrity to model the same values they preach, is a huge detriment to a church. This is why pastors need real training — we don't just let anyone with passion preach, and we can't just let smart men be elders. If you look at the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy, you'll see mostly a list of character qualifications. There are only two qualifications that are competency-based: know the right doctrine, and be able to correct false doctrine. The rest are about the kind of man you must be. Having one without the other will hurt the church. We should never be impressed with a pastor's ability to defend the truth if he consistently violates that truth in the way he treats people — and we should never be impressed by a pastor's ability to love people well if he consistently bends the truth to keep people happy.

That leads us into our first point of application: do not quarrel. Our culture has turned disagreement into a spectator sport. Online, the highest compliment a rebuttal can receive is that it destroyed or totally owned the other side. Debate no longer means we're pursuing truth together; it's become a way to exert dominance over people. But you don't need social media to be quarrelsome — this happens at the dinner table, in your marriage, in the car with your kids. You can be completely right about an issue and completely wrong in the way you've treated the person. Some of us need to learn that not every wrong statement we encounter in the world needs our enlightened perspective. Paul tells Timothy that there are controversies he must simply not participate in. So when you disagree with someone, what do you actually want? Do you want them to know the truth, or do you want them to know that you were right?

That leads us into our second point of application: correct false teaching. Some of us hear “don't quarrel” and think, great, I'll just keep my mouth shut — that's probably the easier temptation for most of us. But Paul won't let us do that either. Verse 25 does not say ignore his opponents with gentleness; it says correcting his opponents with gentleness. Some of us hate conflict so much that we've renamed cowardice kindness. Our therapeutic culture has come to treat all confrontation or disagreement as a form of violence — we say conflict is bad, we say let people just believe what they believe. That flatters itself as gentleness, but it's often simply cowardice, unwilling to say the hard thing to someone. Verse 25 will not permit that. We need to correct things when we see them — when your child is beginning to believe something that isn't true, when a Christian friend is walking into deeper sin, when someone tells you something about God that Scripture simply does not say, when your spouse is developing a pattern that is hurting your marriage. Gentleness in this text is never the absence of confrontation; it is confrontation conducted in a certain way. Love does not always say, that's okay, I agree with you. Sometimes love says, I love you enough to tell you this isn't true. I love you enough to risk making this conversation uncomfortable, to risk our relationship, for you. As Christians, we're not allowed to simply stand on the sidelines.

As we come to a close, how can we read this section of Scripture and not walk away thinking, I need to work harder, I need to try better, I need to start handling the truth better, correct more gently? That would be the wrong way to walk away from this passage. There are a lot of imperatives, a lot of commands in this section, but we have to look at how this whole letter is constructed. Paul spends the first half of this letter explaining the gospel, commanding that the gospel be followed and passed on. The second half is how we respond to that gospel. It is always gospel then law, grace then obedience. We don't lead with what would Jesus do — we lead with what has Jesus done. So how can you hold tightly to the truth without crushing the person who is wrong? Because on the cross, the truth was crushed for us. God sent his Son — truth itself. What did Jesus say? I am the way, the truth, and the life. He climbed up on the cross and was crushed for our iniquities. We no longer have to prove something before others; we have nothing left to prove. Christ has already secured our standing before God. We do not need to win the argument. We do not need them to admit that we're right. We don't need to change their heart — in fact, we're incapable of doing so. God does that. So, church, remember this: grace makes a worker who handles truth cleanly, stays clean, and corrects gently.