Corruption Within
2 Timothy 3:8
Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.…


Men of corrupt minds. It is here that evil begins, though it does not end here. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." but he does not show in himself the development of evil at once. The hour of revelation, however, will surely come; for "they that be otherwise [than good] cannot be hid."

I. THEY RESIST THE TRUTH. For this reason the truth will not let them alone. It is an active searching power. It is "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," and men resent the intrusion of this all-discovering, all-judging power. Impurity hates purity. Falsehood hates truth. Worldly minds resist the claim of God's Word to supremacy over their hearts and lives. They resist its right to reign, and its claim to dominate thought and action too.

II. THEY BECOME REPRORATE. Reprobation is no hard decree of God's; it is man's own act and deed, and it is the result of the "corrupt mind." This breeding corruption spreads. The seeds of evil are scattered here and there till the soul is like a wilderness, and the mind which was made to be a garden of holiness becomes a graveyard of sin. Moral death ensues, and with death always comes corruption.

III. THEY BECOME REVEALED. "Their folly shall be made manifest" (ver. 9). The secret sin becomes a public shame. The thought incarnates itself in deed, and retribution takes the form of disgrace. - W.M.S.



Parallel Verses
KJV: Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.

WEB: Even as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so do these also oppose the truth; men corrupted in mind, who concerning the faith, are rejected.




Bounds Set to Spread of Error
Top of Page
Top of Page