³[Men will be] unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, ⁴treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God …

With twenty descriptions in total, the list represents a reasonably complete assessment of character traits that make life difficult in the church. It is quite popular today to criticize the church, and Christians often join nonbelievers in the slam. The church is full of sinners who fall short of God’s standard of behavior. And of course, the loudest criticism is to use the word “hypocrisy,” which is exactly what occurs when a person lives the way Paul describes here and yet goes to church and passes himself or herself off as a faithful follower of Christ.

On the one hand, what better place is there for people who live like sinners than in the church? We are all at various stages in our quest for holiness. In that sense, Paul’s list here provides a serious challenge to all of us to discern in ourselves the traits that cause difficulty for the church. The judgment begins with all of us; it starts with me.

On the other hand, Paul’s uses the word “men.” This is not a gender-specific word, but “anthropos,” which carries in this context a generic sense of “people” (ESV, NLT, NIV). There will be people like this in the church; it will be unavoidable. It never occurred to Paul to advise Timothy to leave the Ephesian church and find one with fewer problems. Every local church will have its share of difficult people.

What is helpful about this list is that it gives detailed descriptions of the attitudes or behaviors that cause problems, and it is good to name them. People can be unloving. The Greek word here has the sense of being hardhearted or lacking in good or affectionate feeling for others. Some people are simply irreconcilable, refusing to even consider getting right with others. Others are malicious gossips, obsessively stirring up others with personal information about people. Do we see a pattern here? All these are spinoffs from the first in the list, people being “lovers of self” (2 Tim. 3:2).

When one loves oneself, then there is no self-control in relation to our behavior towards others. Why? There is no desire to deny oneself in order to be gracious toward others, giving to them for their benefit. Actions turn brutal, treacherous, and reckless. All can be traceable back to replacing love of God and others with love of self. How contrary in the face of the popular saying that one must love oneself before he or she can love others.

Lord, search my heart to see if there is any hurtful way in me. (Ps. 139:23–24)