God’s Word for You

2 Timothy 2:23-24 foolish and ignorant

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, June 29, 2026

23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and ignorant arguments. You know that they breed quarrels. 24 The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, putting up with evil without resentment,

“Foolish and ignorant arguments” are those questions or disputes that are so often raised by people who completely fail to see what is important in religion, which is the salvation of souls. Instead, they confuse simple Christians and want to argue about the most useless things. Ancient and modern Jews alike could and still can spend countless hours debating about genealogies, about the wives of the patriarchs, and about the useless pursuit of gematria (the supposed hidden meaning of names based on an arbitrary assignment of numerical values to letters of the Hebrew alphabet). The good minister should, on the one hand, never bother with such things, and on the other hand, carefully steer his people away from these things. There will always be people who are not really interested in the gospel but who only want to argue about religion (as they put it). There is no reason to have anything to do with them.

There was a time when every summer I would find myself physically and intellectually caught in between two men whose goal always seemed to be to bait me concerning our church and its school. They were especially appalled that a Christian school would be allowed to teach any subjects from a Christian perspective, and a familiar “foolish and ignorant argument” on those August afternoons was whether our school taught creationism or evolutionism. I learned to avoid this useless argument with those particular men by asking about what their churches taught about repentance and the forgiveness of sins through Christ alone. They were sometimes willing to talk about this (neither of them actually belonged to a Christian church) and I hope later on that the side-tracked argument would be beneficial to their souls.

When Luther was asked about what the Lord was doing before the creation of the world, he was said to have replied, “He was cutting willow rods to whip the backs of those who ask such idle questions.” Letting ourselves get caught up in such useless nonsense won’t do any good, and will end up doing harm. But Paul guides Timothy to another position: “Be kind to everyone, able to teach, putting up with evil without resentment.” Being kind is Paul’s point in Romans 12: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head” (Romans 12:20).

There are at least two places where the Scripture points out that the main qualification that sets a minister apart from any godly man, apart from the divine call itself, is that he should “be able to teach” (see 1 Timothy 3:2, and notice Titus 2:7). But here Paul adds another qualifier. The minister of Christ must also teach with kindness, and putting up with evil. He must, in the words of one of my professors, “contend for the faith without being contentious.” Whether with Christians or with outsiders, he must strive not to get in the way of the gospel. For it is not only what we do, but how we do it that matters. There is no room for sarcasm in the way we approach people; that’s bred by pride (Proverbs 13:10), “the desires that battle within us” (James 4:1). When a minister sinks to those depths, he is “a friend who changes into an enemy.” Instead, the servant of God should not be afraid “to instruct the stupid or the foolish or the old man who quarrels with the young, for then they will be truly instructed, and you will be approved before all men.”

How will a minister be able to teach? Firstly, he must pay close attention to his teachers. Whatever ways of teaching, turns of phrase, quizzing, testing, affirming, encouraging that they used, he should be ready to use on others for their benefit. Second, he must study and know the subject he teaches. When he preaches a sermon, this means the text he is preaching on. When he teaches a class of young people or adults, this means the subject matter or chapter of the Bible he is teaching. When someone asks him a question at random, a matter of Christian living, he must be ready to apply the Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the other parts of the Catechism as well as the important chapters of the Bible on that subject. If he doesn’t know the answer, he must admit that out loud and tell the questioner that he needs to study about it and pray, and then return with an answer as soon as he can.

And thirdly, he must remember his own demeanor, and be willing to take a meek attitude so that the Gospel will be able to work without tripping over his own sour disposition. His goal, after all, is to rescue people from the devil’s camp. This will not always be easy. Sometimes the person whose soul needs rescuing might be unpleasant, argumentative, provocative, irritating, rude, or be guilty of too many sins to count. This is where the virtue of putting up with evil without resentment is a gift, a necessary gift. It is even something to pray earnestly for. The soul we are trying to win back is too precious—bought with Christ’s own blood on the cross—to be given up on, out of frustration or anger or pride, or because that sinful man’s sinful nature is as corrupt as it is. Paul says elsewhere: “We never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else. We were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children” (1 Thessalonians 2:5-7).

Even when the arguments of the straying are “foolish and ignorant” (the Gothic translation has dwalons jah untalons, “dull and unlearned”), that isn’t a reason to abandon them to the flames. How much better to gently but firmly instruct them in the truth so that they can be “like a burning stick snatched from the flames” (Amos 4:11; Zechariah 3:2)? The servant of God must be more than ready for this work; he must also be willing to do it. Jacob on his deathbed still spoke law and gospel to his twelve sons. He did not make the day about himself or his death, he made it about their future, and that of their families, with wise words, well chosen (Genesis 49:1-27). And Jesus said to his Apostles: “Do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:19-20).

May God prepare us with the right words to speak and the right attitude to be willing to jump in when the opportunity comes. May God bless us in this work, today and always.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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