Monday, April 14, 2025

PT-12 "Lovers of Self" (2 Tim. 3:2-4)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/14/2025 9:27 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                           Focus:  PT-12 “Lovers of Self”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  2 Timothy 3:2-4

 

            Message of the verses:  2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3  unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God;”

 

            I desire to finish this section from 2 Timothy 3:2-4 in today’s SD, and I think that it is best that I quote what John MacArthur has written in his commentary so that all of us can best understand these important truths.

 

            “It goes without saying that the self-lover is conceited, having a much higher view of himself that is justified.  Tuphoo (conceited) has the root meaning of being enveloped in smoke, or beclouded, so that what is outside one’s circumscribed world of self cannot be seen.

 

            “Paul advised Timothy in his first letter that an elder, or overseer, should ‘not [be] a new convert, lest he become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil’ (1 Tim. 1:6).  Later in the same letter the apostle states that conceit is a sure mark of a false teacher, again certifying the inescapable connection between wrong doctrine and wrong living.  A false teacher who ‘advocates a different doctrine, and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness,…is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions (1 Tim. 6:3-4).

 

            “The final sinful characteristic of dangerous false teachers given in this extensive but not exhaustive list is their being lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.  Lovers of pleasure translates the single Greek word philedonos, a compound of philos (loving) and hedone (pleasure), from which we get ‘hedonist’ and ‘hedonism.’  Along with all his other sins, the false teacher is a self-loving, pleasure mad hedonist.

 

            “It should be noted that pleasure, especially in this context, is not limited to the desire for comfort, fine food, sexual satisfaction, and other indulgences normally associated with hedonism.  As already mentioned, a self-centered person also derives perverse pleasure from such things as malicious gossip, brutality, and treachery.  His satisfaction comes, in part, from the pain and misery he sadistically inflicts on others, including parents and supposed friends.

 

            “This depraved pleasure is not loved more than God, but rather than…God.  In other words, the true God has no place at all in the thinking and living of a false teacher or of anyone who is self-centered.  Jesus told Nichodemus, ‘And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil’ (John   3:19, emphasis added).

            “Those who love pleasure rather than…God cannot possibly obey either the first or the second great commandments.  They cannot truly love God or their neighbors, and have no genuine desire to do so.  Jesus made clear that a person can have only one god, and for the self-lover, self is god.  Satan has never had a shortage of false gods with which to tempt man, and by far the most useful to his cause is the god of self.  Lucifer fell from his exalted and magnificent state in heaven because he became his own god, and since that time he has endeavored to entice fallen mankind into the same form of idolatry.”

 

Spiritual Meaning for my Life Today:  I suppose that because I did not become a believer until I was almost 27 years old that those first 27 years of living a sinful life because of being a person who was not a believer that those years still have an effect on my life even today some 51+ years later. Life is a battle, but the Lord desires me to win those battles through His Word, His Church, and His Spirit.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I desire for the Lord to continue to give me peace as I walk with my wife through the issues of taking care of her cancer. 

 

4/14/2025 10:06 AM

 

 

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