God’s Word for You
2 Timothy 3:14-15 from infancy
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, July 6, 2026
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed. You know who you learned it from, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
This verse shows the three parts of faith, which are knowledge (scientia), agreement that this knowledge is true (assentia) and finally trust or faith (fiducia). We differentiate between these three because faith is first of all based on what the Bible teaches about God and about what Christ has done for us. Without any knowledge of these things, faith will be easily choked by the thorns and stones of life, as Jesus warns in his great parable (Matthew 13:19-22). Little children, who trust without doubting, are far better able to believe in Christ because they have not been disturbed by so many distractions in this way. But faith in an adult begins with knowledge.
Knowledge, however, is not enough. One can have a fantastically detailed knowledge of a subject without ever believing that it is true. I know the stories of Homer and of Virgil and Tolkien but I do not concede that they are true in every detail. So faith must move beyond simple knowledge and also include assent or agreement that Holy Scripture is true.
But this assent is also not enough. For there are those people who do believe that the Bible is true and is the word of God, but they do not embrace it as their own, for their own salvation. If this has never occurred to you, don’t be afraid. The difference between “assent” and “faith” for you is perhaps only academic. But there are some people, usually quite terrified over a certain sin, or who have been taught false doctrine by a convincing voice, who wonder whether Christ really did die for their specific sins. They must be comforted that what the Bible says is what God truly means: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
Paul knows that Timothy knows the doctrines of the Scriptures. He even uses a special Greek tense, the aorist tense, which emphasizes that what is written or spoken is a firm fact. “You learned this” he says. In English we probably have to use the perfect tense, “You have learned this,” so that there isn’t any doubt over whether Timothy still believes what he learned. “You knew this from infancy.” We understand the idea. Timothy’s mother and grandmother were believers, and the Word of God was never silent in their home. They would have talked about what they heard each week in worship, and they would have been singing hymns and psalms around the house. I wanted to translate, as almost everyone does, that these wonderful words were “the Holy Scriptures.” But the Greek word is not graphai, “scriptures,” but grammata, “letters, writings.” It is more of a schoolboy word, “the ABCs of God.” It is how we teach the letters of the alphabet to little children: “A is for apple. Let me tell you a Bible story about an apple while you practice that letter. B is for Baptize, C is for Calf,” and so on. Timothy had known his Bible stories from his earliest days; since before he could even remember. As I have.
Knowledge and faith in the Scriptures makes us “wise for salvation,” which means that young Timothy knew about his salvation all his life. When we touch on deeper subjects in Bible Class because of the Book of the Bible we happen to be reading, people will sometimes not know how to answer what should be an easy question. This is when I encourage them, “Trust your Sunday school faith!” The way we are saved by Christ on the cross does not change as we progress in our knowledge of the Word of God. We will simply find that this is the message all along; this is why we keep studying the word of our holy God.
The great things that God has done—creation, the flood, the rescuing of Israel from out of Egypt, and so on—are impressive to everyone who trusts that they are true. But unless someone recognizes that God has done these things and more because he loves us, because he loves me, personally, will they fall into place as the plan that God has had all along for mankind. Everything he has done, he has done because he loves us. So we encourage one another: “May the Lord direct your heart into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance” (2 Thessalonians 3:5), with the desire that this will lead each one of us to say, “I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever” (Psalm 52:8). Then we will know the comfort and the joy in the words of Paul, that “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). “God does not want you to doubt. He wants you to be sure, sure that he loves you, not lumped together with a general group of people, but you specifically. And he wants you to be sure that you are forgiven, not just of the sins for which you deserve forgiveness, but for all your sins, yes, even those that especially haunt you and trouble you.”
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.