2 Timothy 3:5

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(5) Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.—Keeping up a show of observing the outward forms of religion, but renouncing its power and its influence over the heart and the life; shewing openly that they neither acknowledged its guidance or wished to do so. These, by claiming the title of Christians, wearing before men the uniform of Christ, but by their lives dishonouring His name, did the gravest injury to the holy Christian cause. Another dreary catalogue of vices St. Paul gives in the Epistle to the Romans (Romans 1:29, and following verses); but in that passage he paints the sins of Paganism. Here he describes the characteristics of a new Paganism, which went under the name of Christianity.

From such turn away.—These, daring to assume the sacred name, no doubt with the thought of claiming its glorious promises, without one effort to please the Master or to do honour to His name—these were to be openly shunned by such as Timothy. No half measures were to be adopted towards these, who tried to deceive their neighbours and possibly deceived themselves. The Pagan was to be courteously entreated, for in God’s good time the glory of the Lord might shine, too, on those now sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. The heretic, seduced by false men from the school of the Apostles, where the life as well as the doctrine of Jesus was taught, was to be gently instructed. Perhaps God would lead him once more home. But these, who, while pretending to belong to Jesus, lived the degraded life of the heathen, were to be shunned. No communion, no friendly intercourse was possible between the hypocrite and the Christian.

The command here is so definite—“from these turn away”—that any theory which would relegate the vices just enumerated to a distant future would require, as above stated, that a strained and unnatural meaning should be given to this positive direction to Timothy. The plain and obvious signification of the passage is: men committing the sins alluded to lived then in the Church over which Timothy presided; they were to be avoided by the chief presbyter and his brethren.

MacLaren's Expositions

2 Timothy

FORM AND POWER

2 Timothy 3:5IN this, his last letter and legacy, the Apostle Paul is much occupied with the anticipation of coming evils. It is most natural that the faithful watchman, knowing that the hour of relieving guard was very near at hand, should eagerly scan the horizon in quest of the enemies that might approach when he was no longer there to deal with them. Old men are apt to take a gloomy view of coming days, but the frequent references to the corruptions of the Church which occur in this letter are a great deal more than an old man’s pessimism. They were warnings, which were amply vindicated by the history of the post-apostolic age of the Church, which was the seed-bed of all manner of corruptions, and they point to permanent dangers, the warning against which is as needful for us as for any period.

The Apostle draws here a very dark picture of the corrupt forms of Christianity, the advent of which he tremblingly anticipated. I do not mean to enter at all upon the dark catalogue of the vices which he enumerates, except to point out that its beginning and the middle and the end are very significant. It begins with ‘lovers of self’ - that is the root of all forms of sin. In the centre there stands ‘lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God’; and at the end, summing up the whole, are the words of our text, ‘having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.’

I do not suppose that these words need much explanation. ‘Godliness,’ in the New Testament, means not only the disposition which we call piety, but the conduct which flows from it, and which we may call practical religion. The form or outward appearance of that we all understand. But what is the ‘denying the power thereof?’ It does not consist in words, but in deeds. In these latter epistles we find ‘denying’ frequently used as equivalent to abjuring, renouncing, casting off. For instance, in a passage singularly and antithetically parallel to that of my text, we read ‘denying ungodliness and worldly lusts,’ which simply means throwing off their dominion. And in like manner the denial here is no verbal rejection of the principles of the gospel, which would be inconsistent with the notion of still retaining the form of godliness; but it is the practical renunciation of the power, which is inherent in all true godliness, of moulding the life and character - the practical renunciation of that even whilst preserving a superficial, unreal appearance of being subject to it.

This, then, being the explanation, and the rough out. line of the state of things which the Apostle contemplates as hurrying onwards to corrupt the Church after his departure, let us look at some of the thoughts connected with it.

I. Observe the sad frequency of such a condition.

Wherever any great cause or principle is first launched into the world, it evokes earnest enthusiasm, and brings men to heroisms of consecration and service. And so when Christianity was first launched, there was less likelihood of its attracting to itself men who were not in earnest, and who were mere formalists. But even in the Apostolic Church there were an Ananias and a Sapphira, a Simon Magus, and a Demas. As years go on, and primitive enthusiasms die out, and the cause which was once all freshly radiant and manifestly heaven-born becomes an earthly institution, there is a growing tendency to gather round it superficial, half-and-half adherents. What. soever is respectable, and whatsoever is venerable, and whatsoever is customary will be sure to have attached to it a mass of loose and nominal adherents; and the gospel has had its full share of such. I was talking not very long ago to a leading man belonging to another denomination than my own; and he quietly, as a matter of course said, ‘Our communicants are so many hundred thousands. I reckon that a quarter of them, or thereabouts, are truly spiritual men!’ and he seemed to think that nobody Would question the correctness of the calculation and the proportion. Why, ‘Christendom’ is largely a mass of pagans masquerading as Christians.

And every church has its full share of such people; loose adherents, clogs upon all movement, who bring down the average of warmth like the great icebergs that float in the Atlantic and lower the temperature of the summer all over Europe. They make consecration ‘eccentric’; they make consistent, out-and-out Christian living ‘odd,’ ‘unlike the ordinary thing,’ and they pull down the spirituality of the Church almost to the level of the world. Every communion of so-called Christian men has its full share of these. The same thing applies to us, and every Church of God on the face of the earth has a little core of earnest Christians, who live the life, and a great envelope and surrounding of men who, as my text says, have the form of godliness, and practically deny the power thereof. Widespread, and all but universal, this condition of things is. And so let each of us say, ‘Lord! Is it I?’

II. Think, next, of the underground working of this evil

These people about whom Paul is speaking in my text were, I suppose, mostly, though by no means exclusively, conscious pretenders to what they did not possess. But the number of hypocrites, in the full sense of the word, is amazingly small, and the men whom you would brand as most distinctly so, if you came to talk to them, would amaze you to find how entirely ignorant they were of the fact that they were dramatising and pretending to piety, and that there was next to no reality of it in them. A very little bit of gold, beaten out very thin, will cover over, with a semblance of value, an enormous area. And men beat out the little modicum of sincerity that they have so very thin that it covers, and gives a deceptive appearance of brilliancy and solidity to an enormous amount of windy flatulence and mere pretence. Hypocrites, in the rude, vulgar sense of the word, are, I was going to say, as rare as, but I will say a great deal rarer than, thoroughgoing and intensely earnest and sincere Christians. These men, the precursors of Gnostic heresies and a hundred others, had no notion that their picture was like this, and if they had been shown Paul’s grim catalogue they would have said, ‘Oh! a gross caricature, and not the least like me.’ And that is what a great many other men do as well.

But it is an unconscious hypocrisy, an unconscious sliding away from the basis of reality on to the slippery basis of pretence and appearance that I want to say a word or two about. The worse a man is, the less he knows it. The more completely a professing Christian has lost his hold of the substance and is clinging only to the form, the less does he suspect that this indictment has any application to him. The very sign and symptom of spiritual degeneracy and corruption is unconsciousness, as the great champion of Israel, when his locks were cropped in Delilah’s lap, went out to exercise his mighty limbs as at other times, and knew not, till he vainly tried feats which their ebbing strength was no longer equal to perform, that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. The more completely a man’s limbs are frost-bitten the more comfortable and warm they are, and the less does he know it. If a man says, ‘Your text has no sort of application to me,’ he thereby shows that it has a very close application to him.

I need say little about the reasons for this unconsciousness. We are all accustomed to take very lenient views, when we take any at all, of our own character; and the tendency of all conduct is to pull down conscience to the level of conduct, and to vindicate that conduct by biased decisions of a partial conscience. And so I have no doubt that there are people thinking how well my words fit some other man from whom there has, without there knowing it, ebbed away, by slow, sad drops, almost all the lifeblood of their Christianity, like some great tree that stands in the woods, fair to appearance, with solid bole and widespread leafage, and expanded branches, and yet the heart is out of it; and when the tempest comes and it falls, everybody can look into the hollow trunk and see that for years it has been rotten.

Brethren, the underground enemies of our Christian earnestness are far more dangerous than the apparent and manifest antagonists; and there are many men amongst us who would repel with indignation a manifest assault against their godliness, who yield without resistance, and almost without consciousness, to the sly seductions of unsuspected evil. The arrow that flies in darkness is more deadly than the pestilence that wasteth at noonday.

III. Further, notice the ever-operating causes that produce this condition.

I suppose that one, at any rate, of the main examples of this ‘form’ was participation in the simple worship of the primitive Church And although the phrase by no means refers merely to acts of worship, still that is one of the main fields in which this evil is manifest. Many of us substitute outward connection with the Church for inward union with Jesus Christ. All external forms have a tendency to assert themselves, and to detain in themselves, instead of helping to rise above themselves, our poor sense-ridden natures. How many of us are there whose religion consists very largely in coming to this place, standing up when other people sing, seeming to unite in prayer and praise, perhaps participating in the sacred rites of the Church; but having most of their religion safely locked up in their pews along with their hymn-books when they leave the chapel, and waiting for them quietly, without troubling them, until next Sunday! We need outward forms of worship. It is a sign of our weakness that we do, but they are so full of danger that one sometimes wishes that they could be broken up and made fluent, and, at least for a time, that something else could be substituted for them.

Seeing that the purest and the simplest of forms may become like a dirty window, an obscuring medium which shuts out instead of lets in the light, it seems to me that the Churches are wisest which admit least of the dangerous element into their external worship, and try to have as little of form as may keep the spirit. I know that simple forms may be abused quite as much am elaborate ones. I know that a Quakers’ meetinghouse is often quite as much a house of formal and not of real communion as a Roman Catholic cathedral. Let us remember how full of dangers they all, and always are. And let us be very sure that we do not substitute church membership, coming to church or chapel, going to prayer-meeting, teaching in Sunday-schools, reading devout books, and the like, for inward submission to the power.

Another cause always operating is the tendency which all action of every kind has to escape from the dominion of its first motives, and to become merely mechanical and habitual Habit is a most precious ally of goodness, but habitual goodness tends to become involuntary and mechanical goodness, and so to cease to be goodness at all And the more that we can, in each given case, make each individual act of godliness, whether it be in worship or in practical life, the result of a fresh approach to the one central and legitimate impulse of the Christian life, the better it will be for ourselves. All great causes, as I was saying a moment or two ago, tend to pass from the dominion of impulse into that of use and wont and mere routine, and our religion and practical godliness in daily life is apt to do that, as well as all our other actions.

And then, still further, there is the constant operation of earth and sense and daily duties and pressing cares, which war against the reality and completeness of our submission to the power of godliness. Grains of sand, microscopically minute in the aggregate, bury the temples and the images of the gods in the Nile Valley. The multitude of small cares and duties which are blown upon us by every wind have the effect of withdrawing us, unless we are continually watchful, from that one foundation of all, the love of Jesus Christ felt in our daily lives. Unless we perpetually tighten our hold, it will loosen, by very weariness of the muscles. Unless the boat be firmly anchored it will be drifted down the stream. Unless we take care, our Christian life and earnestness will ooze out at our finger-tips, and we shall never know that it is gone. The world, our own weakness, our very tasks and duties, the pressure of circumstances, the sway of our senses, and the very habit of doing right - all of these may tend to make us mechanical and formal participators in the religious life, and unconscious hypocrites.

IV. So, lastly, let me point you to the discipline which may avert this evil.

First and foremost, I would say, let us cherish a clear and continual recognition of the reality of ‘the danger Forewarned is forearmed. He that will take counsel of his own weakness, and be taught by God’s Word how unreliable he himself is, and how strong the forces are which tend to throw his religion all to the surface, will thereby be, if not insured against the danger, at least made a great deal more competent to deal with it. ‘Blessed is the man that feareth always,’ and that knows how likely he is to go wrong unless he carefully seeks to keep himself right.

Rigid, habitual self-inspection, in the light of God’s Word, is an all-important help to prevent this sliding of our Christian life into superficiality. If what I was saying about the unconsciousness of decline be at all true, then most eloquently and impressively does it say to us all, ‘Watch! for we know not what may be going on underground unless we have a continual carefulness of inspection.’ We should watch our own characters, the movement of our spiritual nature, and the effect and operation of our habits and of our participation in outward forms of Christianity; we should watch these as carefully as men in the tropics look into their beds and their clothing before they put them on, or get into them, for snakes and scorpions. In a country which is only preserved by the dykes from Being swallowed up by the sea, the minutest inspection of the rampart is the condition of security, and if there be a hole big enough for a mouse to creep through, the water will come in and make a gap wide enough to drown a province in a little while. And so, brethren, seeing that we have such dangers round about us, and that the most formidable of them all are powers that work in the dark, let us be very sure that our eyes have searched, as well as we can, the inmost corners of our lives, and that no lurking vermin lie beneath the unturned up stones.

And then, lastly, and as that without which all else is vain, let us make continual and earnest and contrite efforts day by day to renew and deepen our personal communion with Jesus Christ. He is the source of the power which godliness operates in our lives, and the closer we keep to Him the more it will flood our hearts and make us real, out-and-out Christians, and not shallow and self-deceived pretenders.

The tree that had nothing but leaves upon it hid its absence of fruit by its abundance of foliage. The Master came, as He comes to you and to me, seeking fruit, and if He finds it not He will perpetuate the barrenness by His blasting word, ‘No fruit grow upon thee henceforward for ever.’

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

3:1-9 Even in gospel times there would be perilous times; on account of persecution from without, still more on account of corruptions within. Men love to gratify their own lusts, more than to please God and do their duty. When every man is eager for what he can get, and anxious to keep what he has, this makes men dangerous to one another. When men do not fear God, they will not regard man. When children are disobedient to their parents, that makes the times perilous. Men are unholy and without the fear of God, because unthankful for the mercies of God. We abuse God's gifts, if we make them the food and fuel of our lusts. Times are perilous also, when parents are without natural affection to children. And when men have no rule over their own spirits, but despise that which is good and to be honoured. God is to be loved above all; but a carnal mind, full of enmity against him, prefers any thing before him, especially carnal pleasure. A form of godliness is very different from the power; from such as are found to be hypocrites, real Christians must withdraw. Such persons have been found within the outward church, in every place, and at all times. There ever have been artful men, who, by pretences and flatteries, creep into the favour and confidence of those who are too easy of belief, ignorant, and fanciful. All must be ever learning to know the Lord; but these follow every new notion, yet never seek the truth as it is in Jesus. Like the Egyptian magicians, these were men of corrupt minds, prejudiced against the truth, and found to be quite without faith. Yet though the spirit of error may be let loose for a time, Satan can deceive the nations and the churches no further, and no longer, than God will permit.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Having a form of godliness - That is, they profess religion, or are in connection with the church. This shows that the apostle referred to some great corruption in the church; and there can be little doubt that he had his eye on the same great apostasy to which he refers in 2 Thessalonians 2: and 1 Timothy 4:All these things to which he refers here have been practiced and tolerated in that apostate church, while no body of men, at any time, have been more zealous in maintaining "a form of godliness;" that is, in keeping up the forms of religion.

But denying the power thereof - Opposing the real power of religion; not allowing it to exert any influence in their lives. It imposes no restraint on their passions and carnal propensities, but in all respects, except in the form of religion, they live as if they had None. This has been common in the world. The most regular and bigoted adherence to the forms of religion furnishes no evidence in itself that there is any true piety at heart, or that true religion has any actual control over the soul. It is much easier for people to observe the forms of religion than it is to bring the heart under its controlling influence.

From such turn away - Have no contact with them as if they were Christians; show no countenance to their religion; do not associate with them; compare 2 John 1:10-11; see the notes at 2 Corinthians 6:17.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

5. form—outward semblance.

godliness—piety.

denying—rather as Greek, "having denied," that is, renounced.

the power—the living, regenerating, sanctifying influence of it.

turn away—implying that some of such characters, forerunners of the last days, were already in the Church.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Having a form of godliness: a form here is the same with a mask, or vizor, or appearance, an accidental form, opposed to substance and reality. It signifieth that in the latter times there should be many such as owned themselves Christians, and pretended to a right way of worshipping God, to be the church, the only church of God.

But denying the power thereof; but in practice, though not in words, denying all substantial godliness, which lieth not in assuming the empty name of Christians, and making a profession, but lies in truth, righteousness, love and peace, self-denial, mortifying our members; it being a thing attended with life and power, a man being no more a Christian than he acts and lives like a Christian.

From such turn away; from such kind of professors as were before described, the apostle willeth Timothy to turn away, both as to having any church fellowship or communion, or any intimacy of converse with them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Having a form of godliness,.... Either a mere external show of religion, pretending great piety and holiness, being outwardly righteous before men, having the mask and visor of godliness; or else a plan of doctrine, a form of sound words, a scheme of truths, which men may have without partaking of the grace of God; and which, with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity, the church of Rome has; or else the Scriptures of truth, which the members of that church have, and profess to hold to, maintain and preserve; and which contains doctrines according to godliness, and tend to a godly life and godly edification:

but denying the power thereof; though in words they profess religion and godliness, the fear of God, and the pure worship of him, yet in works they deny all; and though they may have a set of notions in their heads, yet they feel nothing of the power of them on their hearts; and are strangers to experimental religion, and powerful godliness: or though they profess the Scriptures to be the word of God, yet they deny the use, the power, and efficacy of them; they deny the use of them to the laity, and affirm that they are not a sufficient rule of faith and practice, without their unwritten traditions; and that they are not able to make men wise, or give them a true knowledge of what is to be believed and done, without them; and that the sense of them is not to be understood by private men, but depends upon the infallible judgment of the church or pope:

from such turn away; have no fellowship with them, depart from their communion, withdraw from them, and come out from among them: this passage sufficiently justifies the reformed churches in their separation from the church of Rome.

Geneva Study Bible

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: {2} from such turn away.

(2) We must not tarry with those men who resist the truth not from simple ignorance, but from a perverse mind, (which thing appears by their fruits which he graphically displays here); rather, we must turn away from them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

2 Timothy 3:5. ἔχοντες (see note on 1 Timothy 1:19) μόρφωσιν, κ.τ.λ.: Habentes speciem quidem pietatis. We have an exact parallel in Titus 1:16, θεὸν ὁμολογοῦσιν εἰδέναι, τοῖς δὲ ἔργοις ἀρνοῦνται. They were professing Christians, but nothing more; genuine Christians must also be professing Christians. This consideration removes any difficulty that may be felt by a comparison of this passage with Romans 2:20, where it is implied that it is a point in the Jew’s favour that he has τὴν μόρφωσιν τῆς γνώσεως καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας ἐν τῷ νόμῳ. The μόρφωσις, embodiment, is external in both cases, but not unreal as far as it goes. The ineffectiveness of it arises from the coexistence in the mind of him who “holds” it of some other quality that neutralises the advantage naturally derivable from the possession of the μόρφωσις in question. In this case, it was that they of whom St. Paul is speaking had a purely theoretical, academic apprehension of practical Christianity (εὐσέβεια, see 1 Timothy 2:2), but a positive disbelief in the Gospel as a regenerating force. Compare what St. John says of the rulers who believed on Jesus but did not confess Him (John 12:42-43). They too were φιλήδονοι μᾶλλον ἢ φιλόθεοι. In Romans the case is similar: the possession of an admirable moral code did not make the Jew’s moral practice better than that of the Gentile (see Sanday and Headlam on Romans 2:20). There is therefore no necessity to suppose with Lightfoot that “the termination -ωσις denotes the aiming after or affecting the μορφή” (Journal of Class. and Sacr. Philol. (1857), iii. 115).

δύναμιν: the opposition between μόρφωσις and δύναμις here is the same as that between δύναμις and σοφία in 1 Corinthians 2:5, or λόγος, 1 Corinthians 4:19-20, 1 Thessalonians 1:5; see also Hebrews 7:16.

ἠρνημένοι: To deny a thing or a person involves always more than an act of the mind; it means carrying the negation into practice. See on 1 Timothy 5:8.

καί: perhaps refers back to 2 Timothy 2:22-23.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

5. having a form of godliness] The word for ‘form’ is strictly ‘formation,’ its ending implying process rather than result, the producing of the form; hence in Romans 2:20 ‘thou hast the ideally perfect presentation of knowledge and truth.’ ‘The Jew believed that he had in the law the sole embodiment, the forming, of knowledge and truth, that he could give to knowledge and truth their right form, and so was the proper teacher of the world.’ Gifford. So here holding to a presentment of godliness; full ‘profession’ though there is little enough of the substance; ‘still making out that there is the real nature of godliness.’ The stress lies on the making out, the representation, whether as here the inner reality is absent or as Romans 2:20 present. Similarly ‘a professor of divinity’ is credited with exhibiting real truth and knowledge; not so ‘a religious professor.’ Compare too our Lord’s ‘I will profess to you I never knew you,’ Matthew 7:23, with the account of ‘the defiled and unbelieving’ who ‘profess that they know God, but by their works they deny him,’ Titus 1:16. The Greek word for ‘form,’ of which our word is the causative process, means ‘embodied substance,’ standing between ‘unclothed essence’ and ‘unsubstantial appearance’; see Lightfoot, Revision of N.T. p. 77.

denying the power thereof] The power lies in the production of ‘works’ as in Titus 1:16. Cf. Bp Bull ‘to deny the power of godliness is for a man by indecent and vicious actions to contradict his outward show or profession of godliness’ Serm. xv. p. 376 (Oxf. 1846). The force of the perfect pass, participle is noted 2 Timothy 2:25 living in denial of its power.

from such turn away] The conjunction emphasises the ‘such,’ but not without affecting also the verb turn away,’ cf. 2 Timothy 3:9; ‘offenders of the first degree try to win back; but from these men, hardened in error, make it your habit to turn away,’ see 2 Timothy 3:1. In harmony with this direction is the conduct of St John at Ephesus some 10 or 15 years later, according to the tradition. ‘John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bathhouse without bathing, crying out, “Let us fly, lest even the bathhouse fall on us, because Cerinthus the enemy of the truth is within” (Iren. iii. iii. 4). Epiphanius substitutes Ebion for Cerinthus. Both Cerinthus and the Ebionites denied the reality of the Incarnation.’ Plummer, St John (Gosp.), Introduction, p. 15.

Bengel's Gnomen

2 Timothy 3:5. Μόρφωσιν) the outward appearance, not without some internal rudiment of godliness.—ἀποτρέπου) Τρέπεται is said of one who, when he is forced, flees: ἀποτρέπεται, of one who ἀναχωρεῖ, withdraws, and spontaneously shuns any one.—Eustath.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 5. - Holding for having, A.V.; hating denied for denyiny, A.V.; these also for such, A.V. Holding (ἔχοντες). There is no reason to change "having." Perhaps "indeed" after "having" would give the emphasis conveyed by ἔχοντες preceding the object. A form (μόρφωσιν). It should be the form; i.e. "the outward semblance," i.q. μόρφωμα, form, shape, figure (Liddell and Scott), here in contrast with δύναμις, the reality. In Romans 2:20, the only other place in the New Testament where μόρφωσις occurs, there is no contrast, and so it has the sense of a "true sketch" or "delineation." Having denied (ἠρνημένοι); possibly more correct than the A.V. "denying," though the difference, if any, is very slight. The meaning is that by their life and character and conversation they gave the lie to their Christian profession. Christianity with them was an outward form, not an inward living power of godliness. From these also does not give the sense at all clearly. The A.V. does, though it omits the καὶ, which is not wanted in English. In the Greek it marks an additional circumstance in the case of those of whom he is speaking, viz. that they are to be turned away from as hopeless. Turn away (ἀποτρέπου); only here in the New Testament, or, at least in the middle voice, in the LXX.; but frequent in classical Greek in different senses. St. Paul uses ἐκτρέπομενος in the same sense in 1 Timothy 6:20. "This command shows that the apostle treats the symptoms of the last times as in some respects present" (Alford). With this catena of epithets comp. Romans 1:29-31; and, though of an opposite character, the string of adjectives in Wisd. 7:22, 23. 2 Timothy 3:5

Vincent's Word Studies

A form (μόρφωσιν)

Only here and Romans 2:20. Μορφὴ Form (for the want of any other rendering) is the expression or embodiment of the essential and permanent being of that which is expressed Μόρφωσις, lit. forming or shaping. Yet the meaning differs in different passages. In Romans 2:20, μόρφωσις is the truthful embodiment of knowledge and truth as contained in the law of God. Here, the mere outward semblance, as distinguished from the essential reality.

The power (τὴν δύναμιν)

The practical virtue. Comp. 1 Corinthians 4:20. It is impossible to overlook the influence of Romans 1:29-31 in shaping this catalogue.

Turn away (ἀποτρέπου)

N.T.o. Comp. παραιτοῦ avoid, 2 Timothy 2:23; ἐκτρεπόμενος turning away, 1 Timothy 6:20; and ἐκκλίνετε turn away, Romans 16:17.