New Testament · Letter · book 55 of 66 · 1 min read
The book of 2 Timothy
The most personal and most final of the letters — a man in a cold cell asking for his cloak and his books, and telling somebody younger to keep going.
“Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness,”
At a glance
- Chapters
- 4
- Author
- Paul, though authorship is debated
- Written
- Around 64 to 67 AD if by Paul
- Written for
- The same colleague, from what reads like a final imprisonment
- Themes
- endurance, handover, Scripture, loneliness
What it is about
2 Timothy reads as a last letter. Paul is imprisoned, most of his companions have gone, and he asks Timothy to come before winter and to bring the cloak and the scrolls he left behind. Those details are what give the letter its texture.
Its instruction is to continue: guard what was entrusted, endure hardship, preach whether or not it is convenient. The tone is handover rather than argument.
It also contains the sentence most often quoted about Scripture itself, in a passage about what a young leader should rely on when everything else is unstable.
Where to start
Chapter 4, which is the closing section and the most human passage Paul wrote.
The chapters worth knowing
- 2 Timothy 2 — The images of a soldier, an athlete and a farmer, all of them about staying at it.
- 2 Timothy 3 — All Scripture is God-breathed, in a passage about what to rely on when everything is unstable.
- 2 Timothy 4 — The last chapter — bring the cloak and the scrolls, and come before winter.
What people get wrong about it
That the Scripture verse is making a claim about the New Testament. When it was written the New Testament did not exist as a collection; the immediate reference is the Jewish Scriptures Timothy had known since childhood.
From this book
Questions
What is 2 Timothy about?
A handover. Paul, imprisoned and largely abandoned, urges Timothy to hold on to what he has been taught, endure hardship and keep teaching — with unusually personal requests at the end.
What does God-breathed mean?
The Greek word appears only here in the New Testament and literally means breathed out by God. What it implies in detail has been debated for centuries; the passage's own emphasis is on usefulness for teaching and correction.