Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. — 2 Timothy 2:15
We’ve all heard it quoted many times to try to guilt us into studying the Bible more. And while careful Bible study is a worthy endeavour, is that really what 2 Timothy 2:15 means? Well, Bible study is definitely a method of discovering how to fulfill this exhortation of Paul today, but it isn’t quite what he was getting at in his instructions to Timothy back when he wrote them.
First things first, it’s important to know that the word “study” in 1611 when the KJV (the King James Version of the Bible) was translated is what’s known as a False Friend, which is a term that is sometimes used to refer to English words we still use today, but which can now mean something very different — in ways that the average reader is unlikely to be aware of — from what they could mean when the KJV was first translated (and while certain disingenuous types will try to distract from this fact by pointing out that the term “False Friends” has previously been described by saying, “In linguistics, false friends are words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning,” this — almost certainly purposely — misses the point entirely by ignoring the fact that the first two words of the explanation were “in linguistics,” not “in theology,” and also ignores the fact that the meaning of words and phrases can change over time, not to mention that words and terms can have multiple meanings, as is the whole point of the theological definition of False Friends in the first place).
You see, the word “study” could mean “to read something over carefully to learn its meaning” back then, but it also had the additional definition of “be diligent” or “endeavour” at the time the KJV was translated, and since that’s exactly what the Greek word σπουδάζω/“spoo-dad’-zo” that it’s translated from in this verse means, it should be clear that this word is indeed a False Friend in the KJV. That’s not to say the word is a mistranslation. It just means that the definition of words can change over time, and if we aren’t careful, we can end up completely misinterpreting the meaning of a passage containing such a word (that said, scriptural studying, as we use the word today, is still a good way to show our diligence, but it isn’t what Paul was getting at in this verse).
The word “study” isn’t the only thing that causes modern readers to misunderstand Paul’s intention for Timothy as being about studying Scripture, however. The phrase “the word of truth” does too. As I’m sure you know, most people assume this is a reference to the Bible, but the fact that the Bible hadn’t been compiled yet at the time Paul wrote this epistle should make it pretty obvious that he couldn’t have been referring to Scripture (or, at the very least, not to Scripture as a whole). And if you use a concordance to look up the various references to “the word of truth,” or “the word of the truth,” in the Greek Scriptures (meaning the books of the Bible that are generally referred to as “the New Testament”) you’ll quickly discover that it’s basically always a reference to a Gospel when it’s used in the Bible (compare the verse in question to Ephesians 1:13, Colossians 1:5, and James 1:18 and you’ll see why I say that).
And what does it mean to “rightly divide” the Gospel? Well, it means to properly differentiate which part of “the Good News (Gospel) of God” refers to the Gospel of the Circumcision vs the Gospel of the Uncircumcision. I’m not going to get into all the details of what these two Gospels are when they’re rightly divided from one another here, though, because I’ve already done that elsewhere more than once (in both my Things that differ article, as well as in the first 120 or so pages of my free free Rejecting Rome Bible study, so please go read one of those if you aren’t aware of this truth yet).
Of course, this is where some Christians will also (rightly) point out that the Greek word ὀρθοτομέω/“or-thot-om-eh’-o” — a variation of which “rightly dividing” is translated from in the KJV — can also be translated as “making straight” or “correctly handling” or some other similar term, in order to distract from the idea that the Good News about God needs to be divided. But as you read the aforementioned article or Bible study that I just linked to above, it should become pretty obvious to you why “rightly dividing” is indeed a better translation than those other options are when it comes to this verse, so I’m not even going to bother responding to that point here, because you’ll be able to see for yourself by the time you finish that article or Bible study.
So what was Paul instructing Timothy (and, by extension, any other readers of this epistle) to do, exactly? He was simply saying to be careful to make sure to rightly divide the Gospel into its two respective Gospels, and by doing so he’d end up a workman who did not to be ashamed because he’d prove himself to be approved by God because he’d understand what instructions were meant for the church called the Israel of God and what instructions were meant for the church called the body of Christ. And we should all endeavour to do the same as well, which is why, if you aren’t familiar with the scriptural proof that there is more than one Gospel in the Bible after the Good News of God has been rightly divided, please make sure to read that article or Bible study.