3:1 You must realize, however, that in the last days difficult times will come. |
3:2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, |
3:3 unfeeling, uncooperative, slanderous, degenerate, brutal, hateful of what is good, |
3:4 traitors, reckless, conceited, and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. |
3:5 They will hold to an outward form of godliness but deny its power. Stay away from such people. |
3:6 For some of these men go into homes and deceive foolish women who are burdened with sins and swayed by all kinds of desires. |
3:7 These women are always studying but are never able to arrive at a full knowledge of the truth. |
3:8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men oppose the truth. They are depraved in mind and their faith is a counterfeit. |
3:9 But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those two men, their stupidity will be plain to everyone. |
3:10 But you have observed my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love, my endurance, |
3:11 and my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. |
3:12 Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in union with Christ Jesus will be persecuted. |
3:13 But evil people and impostors will go from bad to worse as they deceive others and are themselves deceived. |
3:14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and found to be true, because you know from whom you learned it. |
3:15 From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures that are able to give you the wisdom you need for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. |
3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, |
3:17 so that the man of God may be complete and thoroughly equipped for every good work. |