Here we see Paul as a spiritual Father is instructing Timothy in how to shepherd the people of God using real life examples of quarreling and false teaching. Paul says that fighting about words is intended to whet the appetite for argument and seeks the victory of the speaker, not the victory of truth. This is a massive issue in our modern culture, especially with social media, where suspicion and defensiveness are the default mode. Therefore we are called instead to have a listening posture, assuming the best of one another, and inviting each other into our lives.

Paul charges Timothy to do his best to handle the Scriptures rightly, like an approved and unashamed workman. We can imagine this as the faithful shepherd using a machete to create pathways through the jungle of worldly ideas and bad theology and lies from the enemy, to remove any obstacle to people seeing God clearly.

Paul moves on to use the visceral image of gangrene to illustrate the false teaching infiltrating the church, those saying that the resurrection already happened. This is a dualistic theology that comes from a belief that physical matter is intrinsically evil. This must be refuted because in denies the goodness of God in calling his creation "good", it denies the promise of God to restore all things physically, it removes hope from those suffering physically now, and most importantly, it denies the resurrection power of Jesus.

In the modern world the heresy we face more frequently is the opposite issue, saying that the material world is all that matters, to the neglect of spiritual realities.

Paul closes the section by reminding Timothy that the hope we have is in the Lord who knows his people, he is the firm foundation that keeps us safe from false teaching and disunity and will glorify himself in his people.