2:18a

who have deviated from the truth: Apparently these two men had at one time professed to believe the message about Jesus Christ. But the things they were teaching people at the time that Paul wrote this letter were not true.

deviated from: The Greek verb that the Berean Standard Bible translates as deviate from originally meant “to miss the mark.” Later it came to mean “to miss, fail, deviate, and depart.” This verb occurs in 1 Timothy 1:6 also.

2:18b

They say that the resurrection has already occurred: Here Paul specifically mentioned one of the teachings of the false teachers. They taught that the resurrection had already happened.

the resurrection: In the New Testament, the word resurrection can refer to:

(a) the specific, future, universal resurrection of human beings. This term is usually preceded by the definite article: “the resurrection” (John 11:24),

(b) the resurrection of Jesus from the grave three days after he was buried (Matthew 27:53).

Here it refers to (a), the resurrection of human beings. The teaching about the resurrection includes the ideas of eternal life, fellowship with God, and rewards for living in a way that pleases God.

has already occurred: Scholars do not agree about what the false teachers meant when they said that the resurrection had already occurred. However, most scholars say that these heretics taught the following: when people believed the good news about Jesus Christ, God “resurrected” them symbolically or spiritually. This heretical teaching implied that since the resurrection was symbolic only, believers could not look forward to life in a resurrected, physical body after they died.

Try to leave all this information implicit in your translation. You may want to consider putting it in a footnote.

2:18c

and they undermine the faith of some: Apparently some of the people in the congregation at Ephesus had believed this new teaching and now doubted what they had believed before.

undermine: The verb that the Berean Standard Bible translates as undermine means “destroy,” “to overthrow” or “to overturn.” This same verb is used in Titus 1:11 where the Berean Standard Bible translates it as “undermine.”

According to 1 Corinthians 15:12–19, a key element of the Christian faith is belief in the resurrection of the body. So when the false teachers convinced people that there would be no resurrection of the body, they were indeed “undermining their faith.”

The verb for undermine is in the present tense. This indicates that at the time Paul was writing this letter to Timothy, these false teachers were actively deceiving believers.

faith: Here, Paul used the word faith in the sense of the basic teachings that Christians believe and practice The false teachers were causing the believers to stop believing in Christ and his teachings.

© 2003 by SIL International®

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.