Chapter 3

¹Understand this, that in the last days there are going to be hard times. ²People will be selfish, avaricious, boastful, arrogant, abusive, undutiful, ungrateful, irreverent, ³unfeeling, irreconcilable, slanderous, with no self-control, brutal, with no love for what is good, ⁴treacherous, reckless, conceited, caring more for pleasure than for God, ⁵keeping up the forms of religion, but resisting its influence. Avoid such people. ⁶They are the kind of men who make their way into people’s houses and make captives of poor, weak women, loaded down with their sins and under the control of all sorts of impulses, ⁷always ready to learn but never able to comprehend the truth. ⁸Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, these people in turn oppose the truth; they are men of depraved minds and counterfeit faith. ⁹But they will not make much progress, for everyone will perceive their folly, just as they did that of those others. ¹⁰But you have closely followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, ¹¹my persecutions, my sufferings—the things that happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, the persecutions I endured; yet the Lord brought me safely out of them all. ¹²But everyone who wants to live a godly life as a follower of Christ Jesus will be persecuted, ¹³and bad men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving others and deceived themselves. ¹⁴But you must stand by what you have learned and been convinced of, and remember from whom you learned it, ¹⁵and how from childhood you have known the Scriptures which can give you the wisdom that through faith in Christ Jesus leads to salvation. ¹⁶All Scripture is divinely inspired, and useful in teaching, in reproof, in correcting faults, and in training in uprightness, ¹⁷so that the man of God will be adequate, and equipped for any good work.