2 Timothy 2:22

Flee also youthful lusts Here, as in 2 Timothy 2:16, and again below 2 Timothy 2:23, the article has a certain emphasis, bringing forward again and again the different parts of the old theme -the false teachers, their errors of doctrine, their viciousness of life." -Be a different man yourself, flee the lusts of the younger men." On Timothy's age see note 1 Timothy 4:12.

but follow Rather and, not because the conjunction does not express an opposite to the preceding clause; but because the verbsare placed so as to have the main emphasis together, and - but" here would draw us away from this. We may render: -Beware their bad life those lusts of life's prime flee from them, and follow after righteousness."

follow Add after, in order to give the proper force of active pursuit. The whole passage is a reminiscence of 1 Timothy 6:11, where see note on the virtues named. -Peace" seems added here to the three selected because the immediate context is different. Here the strife arising from the false teachers" words and ways is already in St Paul's mind, and suggests the turn given to what follows. The comma after -peace" of R.V. has been inserted rightly; its omission (as in A.V. of a.d. 1611, though many printed copies have inserted it,) unites -peace" entirely with what follows, and denotes, as Ellicott puts it, -not merely "peace" in the ordinary sense but "concordiam illam spiritualem" (Calvin) which unites together all who call upon (1 Corinthians 1:2) and love their Lord"; but it makes an unbalanced and ugly sentence; and loses the very significance of the clause as following on 2 Timothy 2:21. It is the whole, life of the man of God, in his pursuit of each virtue, which is to be lived apart from sinners and in the communion of saints. See also notes on 1 Timothy 1:5; Titus 1:15.