He Had Known Them Since He Was a Child, and Paul Still Tells Him Why

He knows all the stories and has never read one of them.

He can tell you about the ark and the whale and the lions and the fiery furnace and the boy with the sling, and he learned every one of them before he was nine, on a folding chair, from a woman named Miss Ardith who was very good at it.

What he has never done is read those chapters. He has never sat down with the actual account of the fiery furnace, the whole of it, at fifty-one years old, and found out what is in it that a seven year old would not have been given.

And because he knows the stories, he does not feel any lack. That is the specific problem here and it is different from ignorance. A man who knows nothing knows he knows nothing. A man who was well taught at seven has a complete set of furniture in the room and no reason to go looking for more.

So the Bible he has is the Bible he was given at seven, and it has been sitting in him for forty-four years, and it has never been opened by the man he actually became.

There is a letter written to somebody in exactly that position, by a man who knew he was in it.

The reminder, and why it needed making

Here it is, in the King James Version:

And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 3:15)

From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures.

Timothy is not a beginner. He was raised in it. Paul says elsewhere in the same letter that the faith dwelt first in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, which is a description of a boy taught early by women who meant it.

And Paul still writes him this. He still tells a man who has known the Scriptures since childhood what the Scriptures are.

Which means the knowing from childhood was not treated as the finished condition. It was treated as the starting condition, by the man who was closest to him, in a letter written near the end of his own life.

You are not finished because you started early and you were never meant to stop at what you were given. 2 Timothy 3:15 says Timothy had known them from a child and then keeps explaining, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a fresh start who makes an old familiarity turn into something else.

The four things named

Then the verse everybody half knows, and the four uses in it are worth counting.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16)

For doctrine. What is true.

For reproof. Where a man is wrong.

For correction. How he gets set right.

For instruction in righteousness. How to live afterward.

Only the first of those four is what a child gets. The stories on the folding chair are doctrine in the broad sense: they are what is true. The other three require a life to have happened first. You cannot reprove a seven year old about the things that a fifty year old needs reproving about, and nobody should try.

Which means three quarters of what that verse says the book is for has been sitting unused in a man who has known it since he was seven.

You have three uses waiting that you were never able to receive at nine, and you were not shortchanged then. 2 Timothy 3:16 lists doctrine and reproof and correction and instruction, and it is His Spirit who makes the last three land on a man who is old enough to need them.

What it is for at the end

And the purpose clause, which is one sentence and describes an outcome rather than a subject.

That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. (2 Timothy 3:17)

Throughly furnished. Furnished is a house word. It is what you do to a place so that somebody can live in it and work in it.

That is not the language of a curriculum. It is the language of equipping a man for what is actually in front of him, which changes as he ages, which is exactly why the childhood version cannot be the last version.

And Hebrews, bluntly, about people who had been in it a long time:

For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God. (Hebrews 5:12)

Which be the first principles. That is written to people who had been at it long enough that the writer expected more, and it is a rebuke, and it is also a plain statement that time in a thing does not automatically produce depth in it.

You have equipment waiting for the man you actually are and you were never limited to the furniture you were given at nine. 2 Timothy 3:17 says throughly furnished unto all good works, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old book fit the situation a man is actually standing in.

What the childhood version is not

It is worth being careful here, because there is an obvious wrong turn and this site does not take it.

Nothing about this says Miss Ardith was wrong or that what she gave was inadequate for what it was. She gave a seven year old the truth in the form a seven year old can hold, and Paul says the same thing happened to Timothy through his grandmother and his mother, and he names them with honor.

When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. (2 Timothy 1:5)

Unfeigned faith. Not simplified faith. Real faith, handed on by two women, to a boy.

The problem is not what was given. The problem is that nothing was added to it, and that the man carrying it has been treating a child's portion as a complete one because it is the only portion he has ever had.

And Peter uses the same image without contempt:

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. (1 Peter 2:2)

That ye may grow thereby. The milk is good and it is what growth runs on, and the sentence has a direction in it.

You have something real that was given to you and you were never meant to stop where it stopped. 2 Timothy 1:5 calls what was handed to Timothy unfeigned faith and 1 Peter 2:2 puts growth as the purpose of the milk, and it is His Spirit who does the growing that verse describes.