¹Those who are being held as slaves should treat their masters as if they were worthy of full respect. That way people won’t say bad things about God’s name and about what we teach.

²Slaves whose masters are believers shouldn’t treat them with less respect just because the masters are believers. Instead, they should serve them even better. They should love their masters because they’re believers too and because they’re committed to caring for them.

People Who Teach Lies or Love Money

These are the things you are to teach and insist on.

³If someone teaches something different and doesn’t agree with the healthy instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and with godly teaching,

⁴then that person is proud and doesn’t understand anything. They like to argue more than they should, and they’ll always be fighting about what words mean. This results in jealousy, fighting, harmful talk, and bad suspicions.

⁵It causes trouble all the time between people whose minds are twisted by sin. They once knew the truth, but it has been taken away from them. They think they can get rich by being godly.

⁶You do gain a lot when you live a godly life. But you have to be happy with what you have.

⁷We didn’t bring anything into the world, and we can’t take anything out of it.

⁸If we have food and clothing, we should be happy with those.

⁹People who want to get rich are tempted, and they fall into a trap. They start to have many foolish and harmful desires that drag them down into ruin and destruction.

¹⁰Love for money causes all kinds of evil. By trying to get rich, some people have wandered away from the faith and been hurt by many sad things that have happened to them.

Paul Gives a Final Command to Timothy

¹¹But you’re a man of God, so run away from all those things. Instead, develop righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

¹²Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you openly told others what you believed in front of many witnesses.

¹³In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and in the sight of Christ Jesus, who told the truth when he was a witness in front of Pontius Pilate, I give you a command.

¹⁴Obey it without fault or failure until our Lord Jesus Christ appears.

¹⁵God will bring him back at the time he has chosen. God is the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

¹⁶God is the only one who can’t die. He lives in light that no one can approach. No one has seen him and no one can see him. Honor and power belong to him forever. Amen.

¹⁷Command people who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to put their hope in riches, which are so uncertain. Tell them to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

¹⁸Command them to do what is good and to be rich in doing good things, to give freely, and to be willing to share.

¹⁹That way they will store up true riches for themselves. This will provide a firm basis for the next life so that they can take hold of the life that really is life.

²⁰Timothy, guard what God has trusted you with. Stay away from godless chatter and from the opposing ideas that are falsely called knowledge.

²¹Some people believe them, and by doing that they’ve turned away from the faith.

May God’s grace be with you all.