3:10–17 · Third appeal, part one: Stay with what you know: The false teaching being circulated among the Ephesians is that the resurrection is entirely “now.” In his controversy with the Corinthians over whether there was still a resurrection to come, Paul pointed to his own sufferings as proof that “we have not yet begun to reign” (1 Cor. 4:8–13). Here in 2 Timothy, Paul reminds Timothy of the normalcy of suffering by taking him back to the events of Acts 13–14, when Paul ministered in Lystra, Timothy’s hometown. After being stoned and left for dead, Paul insisted on returning in order to teach: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Timothy must courageously recommit himself to living and to teaching the same pattern, regardless of an increasingly …