2 Timothy 3:3

3 without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, of unsubdued passions, savage, having no love for what is good,

2 Timothy 3:3 Meaning and Commentary

2 Timothy 3:3

Without natural affection
To parents, or children, or wife; parents thrusting their children into religious houses, cloisters against their wills; children leaving their parents without their knowledge or consent; married bishops and priests being obliged to quit their wives, and declare their children spurious; with many other such unnatural actions.

Trucebreakers;
or covenant breakers; stirring up princes to break through their treaties and covenants with one another; dissolving the allegiance of subjects to their sovereigns, and moving them to rebellion against them; loosing the marriage bond between husband and wife; making void all oaths, contracts, and agreements, among men, which stand in the way of their designs; teaching that no faith is to be kept with heretics.

False accusers;
or devils, being like Satan, the accuser of the brethren, charging all that depart from their communion with schism and heresy.

Incontinent;
though they pretend to the gift of continency, yet give themselves up to all lasciviousness, and work all uncleanness with greediness; or "intemperate" in eating and drinking, indulging themselves in rioting and drunkenness: "she hath lived deliciously", ( Revelation 18:7 ) .

Fierce;
like beasts of prey; such was Rome Pagan, in the times of the ten persecutions; and such has been Rome Papal, exercising the greatest cruelties and barbarities on the saints, being drunk with their blood.

Despisers of those that are good;
or without love to good; both to good works, to which they are reprobate, notwithstanding all their pretensions to them, and bluster about them; and to good men, whom they hate.

2 Timothy 3:3 In-Context

1 But this know, that in [the] last days difficult times shall be there;
2 for men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, evil speakers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, profane,
3 without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, of unsubdued passions, savage, having no love for what is good,
4 traitors, headlong, of vain pretensions, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God;
5 having a form of piety but denying the power of it: and from these turn away.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Or 'the good' (persons).
The Darby Translation is in the public domain.