2 Timothy 2 Footnotes

2:8 Jesus’s descent from David does not contradict Matthew’s and Luke’s narratives of Jesus’s virginal conception (Mt 1:18-25; Lk 1:34). Jesus was Joseph’s legal, not biological, descendant and was thus of David’s line. Luke’s genealogy of Jesus possibly traces Jesus’s lineage back to David through Mary’s line, so that Jesus may have been a descendant of David both biologically and legally.

2:18 Arguing that the resurrection had already occurred meant that merely the spirit was resurrected, not the body (implying that death is victorious in the end). Some of Paul’s opponents excused immoral behavior. They reasoned that if the physical body had no place in God’s plan for the final redeemed state, then the body and its actions did not matter to God (1Co 6:13-20). Other opponents argued that if God did not resurrect the body, then he must regard the body as innately evil. They responded by embracing a lifestyle that avoided sex, food, and other blessings God meant for his people to enjoy within a proper context (1Tm 4:3).