In 2 Timothy 3:14-16 Paul outlines for Timothy two ways we can continue to be “people of the book.”.
1Vs. 14a Learn what the Bible says: “Continue in the things which you have learned.” Timothy is being exhorted to continue to read and study the Word of God. If we are going to be able to be victorious in these perilous times, we are going to need to be daily in his word, studying the scriptures. The Bible contains the thoughts of God about life, ourselves and others, morals, ethics, right and wrong. Reading the Bible will reveal to us that God is not in tune with the secular philosophy of the world. When we learn what the Bible says, three things begin to happen:
1Vs. 14b, “And have been assured of…”: The bible will change the way we think and the way we live. There is no area of human life that won’t be altered when we study the scriptures. The more I study the Word of God, the more I become convinced of its truths, and the more it makes sense to live the way it tells me to. The complaints against Christians don’t come from people who are living out the truths but against those who claim to be followers of the book but don’t live it out.
2Vs. 14c “Knowing from whom you have learned them.”We will see that the Bible has changed people we know and respect. A lot of people will tell you that they have read the Bible from cover to cover many times, and that’s quite a feat, but I’m far more impressed with a person who has practiced it from cover to cover. The Bible is easier to believe when we see what it has done to people we know. When Timothy was young, he learned the word from his mother Lois and grandmother Eunice, who were living examples of the truth. When Timothy was older, he learned from Paul, who taught him the same truths that his mother and grandmother had taught him.
3Vs. 15a: “..that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures.” We will be convinced of the need for the Bible to be taught at an early age. In times past, the Bible was the book children learned to read with; it was the book that children read stories from. People are the most impressionable as children, and it is the parent’s responsibility to train up a child in the way they should go.
1Vs. 15b Grow in what the Bible says: “…which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” The effect of the Bible in our lives is not knowledge but transformation; it is able to make us wise for salvation by trusting in Jesus. It was not the Bible that saved and transformed Timothy; it was the Person whom the Bible revealed, Jesus. I wouldn’t have known the Bible except for Jesus, but I wouldn’t have grown in that relationship with Jesus except for the Bible. Barnhouse described once the danger of merely reading the Bible and not hearing from Jesus, like a person who describes looking out their window at the ocean, but all they speak of is the window and not what it allows them to see, the Vast Ocean! The joy of the window and the book is what it enables you to see, Jesus. The most important aspect of the Bible is not what you believe, but who you believe!
The final two verses 3:16-17of this chapter Paul writes of why the Bible is able to do what it does in our lives as he speaks of the uniqueness of the word of God. There is an unfortunate translation here from the Greek to the English, as it says that “all Scripture is given by the inspiration of God.” The word that is mistranslated is the word “inspiration,” which is a compound Latin word that means to “breathe IN” or inhale,but that is not the Greek word as it means to “breathe OUT” or exhale.
All scripture is NOT given by “INHALE” of God, but rather, as the Greek says, all scripture is given by the “EXHALE” of God. Just as God breathed into the dust of the ground and made a living person, he breathed His Word and it transformed the dust because of His Words so that all who hear these words can move towards life!