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19 thus accumulating as treasure a good foundation for the future, so as to win the life that is true life.(A)

VI. Final Recommendation and Warning[a]

20 O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid profane babbling and the absurdities of so-called knowledge.(B) 21 By professing it, some people have deviated from the faith.

Grace be with all of you.(C)

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Footnotes

  1. 6:20–21 A final solemn warning against the heretical teachers, with what seems to be a specific reference to gnosticism, the great rival and enemy of the church for two centuries and more (the Greek word for “knowledge” is gnōsis). If gnosticism is being referred to here, it is probable that the warnings against “speculations” and “myths and genealogies” (cf. especially 1 Tm 1:4; Ti 3:9) involve allusions to that same kind of heresy. Characteristic of the various gnostic systems of speculation was an elaborate mythology of innumerable superhuman intermediaries, on a descending scale (“genealogies”), between God and the world. Thus would be explained the emphasis upon Christ’s being the one mediator (as in 1 Tm 2:5). Although fully developed gnosticism belonged to the second and later centuries, there are signs that incipient forms of it belonged to Paul’s own period.