We have now to examine a still more numerous lint of qualities that follow— “Without natural affection, implacable, slanderous, uncontrolled, fierce, without love of good, traitorous, headstrong, puffed up, pleasure-loving rather than God-loving, having a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof; and from these turn away” (ver. 3-5).
It is singular that the Auth. Version, alone of the old English translations, gives the simple, full, and unambiguous meaning of ἄστοργοι.; which in Wiclif's V. and the Rhemish, following the Vulgate as usual, is rendered by the feebler “without affection.” Tyndale, followed by Crammer, has “unkinde,” as the Geneva “without charities” But beyond controversy these representatives lack precision.
Now, as to the characteristic itself, it is hard to exaggerate its gravity even among mere natural men: how much more among those who bear the Lord's name! For there is no human center and safeguard greater than home with its manifold affections and the duties which it involves. The light and the grace of Christ truly known give strength as well as a new object which puts each element in its trap relation to God and man. There may be occasions so peremptory for His glory that all must yield, and then the things that are, become as though they were not, rather than turn to His dishonor but such cases are rare, and His name ordinarily adds beyond measure to all that God has ever owned as His order here below. But here we learn of a dark and ominous change when Christendom in general not only exhibits indifference to all these ties of family life, but tramples them down as contemptible and would rid itself of them as unworthy nuisances. It affects cosmopolitanism as the true ideal, and as this is wholly unreal and inoperative, the issue is unmitigated selfishness, a barren waste without objects given of God for the heart, where self-will can run riot according to its own waywardness.
Very suitably next to this void of natural affection stands the quality “implacable,” which, springing from the same root of selfishness, flows into a far larger circle and indeed without limit. Some few authorities of all kinds invert their relative order; but this would seem strange disorder morally, compared with the true place of each as represented by the best witnesses, though the Sinaitic is not alone in omitting the first of the pair, nor the Peschito Syr. V. in dropping both: all these variations being plain errata. For as the lack of natural affection is a horrible result of spurious Christian profession, so the consequent but wider implacability is next pointed out as its companion, instead of that universal love which is loudest in theory when there is least exercise of it in practice. Nay, the fact is really worse; for ἄσπονδοι goes beyond the breaking of trace attributed to the word in the A. V. and other translations, and expresses rather the lawless state which refuses to incur any such obligation. It is bad enough to fail in keeping faith; it is much worse as here when glen's hearts say, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” In Rom. 1:3131Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: (Romans 1:31) we read that God gave up the heathen to be ἀσυνθέτους, ἀστόργους as the Text. Rec. adds ἀσπόδους against ample authority of the highest character. There the apostle comes from the more external “covenant breakers” or (more generally) “faithless,” to the want of family affection (ἀστ) and the more personal “unmerciful,” or pitiless; here as predicting the departure of Christendom he goes from within outwards—only for “covenant-breakers” he gives “implacable” or defiant of, bond. And what spiritual eye can fail to see how this impatience of obligation permeates men, who once were rigidly faithful in the observance not of promise only but of all the implied ties of the Mallet now is? Nothing dissolves more than grace despised; whereas even law is feebleness itself compared with grace reigning through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus, Christ our Lord. Optima corruptio peasima.
Then in joint order comes the character of “slanderous” or “false accusers,” as in the A.V., the same designation as is appropriated to the archenemy, the devil. Is it not a solemn issue that the Holy Spirit should have thus to describe not more heathen, but men bearing the Lord's name in the last days? It is easy to dissipate and whittle away the awfulness of these charges by the plea so natural for ignorance to make and to receive, that these evil characteristics have always been. In a sense it is so. But the word of the Lord cannot be broken; and, though enough rose up while the apostle lived to make it a practical question then, it is certainly true that, as the departure from the word and Spirit of God went on, these evils grew and spread apace; and that our own days look on an enormous increase of this harvest of shame and sorrow, which all the changes wrung on Eccles 7:10 are vain to get rid of. The universality of detraction and evil-speaking is as notorious in our day as is its virulence, and far worse in the religions than in the profane world, the endless divisions or acts giving it an incalculable impulse. Moral worth, Christian character, spiritual intelligence, known service, perhaps forever so long, wholly fail to disarm malicious criticism, if they do not rather furnish the incentive to activity for those moral levelers envious of all superior to themselves. It is the more base in those cases where the assailed would avail themselves of no natural resource, offensive or even defensive, following Him Who, when reviled, reviled not again when suffering, threatened not, but committed Himself to His care Who judges righteously.
“Uncontrolled” we have next, rather than “incontinent,” which usage limits to lack of self-restraint in uncleanliness, whereas the word really takes the fullest range in the indulgence of recklessness of action, as the preceding word in spirit and speech; so that the moral connection is evident.
This again seems the unforced precursor of “fierce,” without gentleness, and despising it, yea, its marked reverse. How heart-breaking to know that so it is, as the Holy Spirit declared it should be, among those who profess His name Who said in the fullness of truth, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart;” or as Isaiah said of Him, “He shall not, cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street.” But there alas! they walk, as if to suffer, and above all to suffer wrongfully, were the utmost, evil to be dreaded, and as if Christ, in His path of trial and rejection and all-enduring grace, were a beacon to shun rather than a model, that we should follow in His steps. Civilization boasts of its long and gradual rising up from a savage state, which certainly was not that of primeval man, nor of man under God's government throughout the ages. It is therefore most humbling to note the fall into a truly savage spirit of man after centuries, not of civilization only but, of Christian profession.
None can wonder that this is followed by “without love for good,” which appears more exactly and completely to represent ἀφιλάγαθοι than “despisers of those that are good,” as in the A. V. It is indeed a very decisive advance in evil; for many, whose unbroken will carries them away passionately, are sincerely ashamed of their intemperance and deplore the excesses of these short fits of madness, as they value and admire those who in patient continuance of good work seek for glory and honor and incorruption, with eternal life—the end. A heathen could say, I see and approve of what is better, I follow the worse; and an apostle gives as the last degree of evil in such that they not only practice things deserving of death, but take pleasure in (or consent with) those who do them. Here in Christian professors it is the kindred enormity of a total disrelish for good. Just as among the Jews, impiety destroys the moral landmarks: “woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Surely the Lord's name is blasphemed on their account who misrepresent His name.
This introduces another shade of wickedness, the “traitorous,” or “traitors,” that form of malice which betrays others to ruin without scruple. Of this bitter baseness among the twelve the Lord tasted as none ever did or could; and here we are warned of it as a characteristic to prevail in Christendom, existing then here and there when the apostle wrote, but like the rest to spread and deepen as the last days linger out more and more. So it was and will be among the Jews before the end comes; as here among those who corrupt the gospel.
“Heady,” or “headstrong,” again describes those who rush inconsiderately and determinedly in pursuit of their own will, whatever it may cost to gratify it, rather than the habit of abandoning even to destruction others who confide in them. We can easily understand that the gospel, in an unexampled way and measure, imparts knowledge to the, most unlettered; and that this acts as powerfully as injuriously on those who, really ignorant of themselves and of God, have no living sense of grace toward others, any more than they feel the need of it for themselves. From some such source as this appears to flow the “headstrong;” as these are hard by the “puffed-up,” or high-minded souls, besotted with self-conceit: no less cruel than contemptible evils in those who, as ostensible heirs of the kingdom, ought to know the blessedness of being poor in spirit, of mourning, of meekness, of hungering and thirsting after righteousness, of being merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers, as well as counting it all joy when persecuted for righteousness, and above all, for Christ's sake. Alas! headiness and high-mindedness leave no room for any one of those precious qualities which our Lord forms in all that are His. Do not both now prevail wherever you look in Christendom?
And who can deny the manifest and extraordinary development, not now for the first of course, but more than ever in our own day, of “pleasure-loving rather than God-loving,” among those who would be deeply offended if they were not owned as Christians? For when in this world's sad history was ever known such an incessant and wide-spread whirl of excitement, in change and travel, in sweet sounds, pleasant pictures, and sensational tales, to speak of nothing lower in sensuous enjoyment? No doubt, steam and telegraph have circumstantially helped on this eager and universal pursuit of pleasure, rather than care for God and doing His will, but in this closing indifference remarkably confirming His word. Time was when superstition allied to liking for adventure undertook pilgrimages, and organized crusades, neither of these in the least expressing the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ, but either of them nobler naturally than pleasure-trips, private or common, to the most renowned, strange, or distant lands, perhaps round the world even, craving after some new and piquant fillip for minds jaded and listless: Need we add the love of gain and even sometimes of gambling brought into bazaars, &c., in aid of avowedly Christian objects, with every natural or worldly attraction, to swell the funds? What shall we say, if we may say anything, of the pleas for “muscular Christianity,” a phrase which to pious ears may seem a mere worldly, jest, but which others take in sober seriousness as a right thing and commendable, though only to be defended by the sheerest perversion of God's word?
For as the Holy Spirit here says of all these characters of evil, “having a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof.” In this lies the peculiar heinousness of it all. None can wonder that the unrighteous should do unrighteously still, or that the filthy should make himself filthy still. The horror is that those who under the name of the Lord put forth the highest claim should neither practice righteousness, nor be sanctified still. For it were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, A dog turning back to his own vomit, and a washed sow to wallowing in mire. If you wish to find all these unchristian evils in a plain and concentrated form, without a blush, nowhere can they be so readily found as in that which arrogates to itself the name of “Christian.” Yet those who in our own land as well as over the world have the evidence of this before them habitually, can see nothing that defiles, but claim to be undefiled, because both their mind and conscience are defiled.
But God is not mocked, and the apostle exhorts to faithfulness. He had already called Timothy to know what the mass of Christians now refuse to learn. But this is not enough: “And from these turn away.” It was then the duty, when such persons appeared, to have nothing to do with them; now that the evil is incomparably more developed, that duty is still more imperious. Yet I am grieved to notice the strange error of one who has written on the subject with surpassing ability. He will have it that the apostolic injunction, rightly translated, means that Timothy was to— “turn these away.” How any one with any real, however moderate, knowledge of the Greek tongue could so misunderstand a very simple phrase, it is hard to explain or conceive; but such is the fact. No version known to me sustains any such view. The A.V. is substantially, the R.V. quite, correct, unless it be in giving “also” for “and,” ver. 5, as is done here in connection with “know” in ver. 1. It is not authoritative action, still less ecclesiastical dealing, but apostolic direction for the conscience of Timothy (or in principle of any “man of God “.) who would not endorse what is hateful to the Lord and corrupting for souls.