Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Timothy 3:5

"holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power therefore. From these also turn away." — 2 Timothy 3:5 (ASV)

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.—Keeping up a show of observing the outward forms of religion, but renouncing its power and its influence over the heart and the life; showing openly that they neither acknowledged its guidance nor wished to do so. These, by claiming the title of Christians, wearing before men the uniform of Christ, but by their lives dishonoring His name, caused the gravest injury to the holy Christian cause.

Another dreary catalogue of vices Saint Paul gives in the Epistle to the Romans (Romans 1:29 and following verses); but in that passage he paints the sins of Paganism. Here he describes the characteristics of a new Paganism, which went under the name of Christianity.

From such turn away.—These, daring to assume the sacred name, no doubt with the thought of claiming its glorious promises, without one effort to please the Master or to do honor to His name—these were to be openly shunned by such as Timothy. No half measures were to be adopted towards these, who tried to deceive their neighbors and possibly deceived themselves.

The pagan was to be courteously treated, for in God’s good time the glory of the Lord might shine, too, on those now sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. The heretic, seduced by false men from the school of the Apostles, where the life as well as the doctrine of Jesus was taught, was to be gently instructed. Perhaps God would lead him home once more.

But these, who, while pretending to belong to Jesus, lived the degraded life of the heathen, were to be shunned. No communion, no friendly intercourse was possible between the hypocrite and the Christian.

The command here is so definite—from these turn away—that any theory which would relegate the vices just enumerated to a distant future would require, as stated above, that a strained and unnatural meaning should be given to this positive direction to Timothy. The plain and obvious meaning of the passage is: men committing the sins alluded to lived then in the Church over which Timothy presided; they were to be avoided by the chief presbyter and his brethren.