There can be no reasonable doubt what is meant by the sacred writings with which Timothy had been familiar from his infancy. His mother, Eunice, was "a Jewess which believed," and the first care of a devout Jewish mother would be to instruct her child in the knowledge of those "oracles of God," the charge of which was one of the chief glories of her nation, and to fulfil the Divine precept: "These words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children." The term "sacred writings" which St. Paul employs here is a peculiar one. It is found nowhere else in the New Testament. It designates the Old Testament scriptures as a collection of writings clearly defined and separated by an acknowledged line of demarcation from ordinary secular books, a collection round which the tradition of the Jewish Church had, so to speak, erected a fence, enclosing them like the hallowed precinct of a consecrated building.
I. The Old Testament is a trustworthy historical record. This is repeatedly implied, though not directly asserted, in the discourses of our Lord. He stamps with His own authority the essential truth contained in the account of man's creation in the book of Genesis, when He appeals to the primeval order as the basis of the sanctity of the marriage bond, and quotes as the ordinance of the Creator Himself words which we read there as the historian's comment upon the facts which He records.
II. No less full is the Lord's own testimony to the prophetic and typical character of the Old Testament scriptures. He blames the Jews who searched them, because they failed to learn the lesson which they were intended to convey. They thought that eternal life lay in the letter, not in Him of whom the letter testified. A true insight would have made them recognise in Jesus the Messiah for whom they waited. But while they boasted of their trust in Moses, they failed to believe his writings, and missed the sight of the Prophet of whom he wrote. Our Lord teaches that the Old Testament is full of types. Actions and events, and ordinances therein recorded, held concealed within them a deep significance of spiritual or prophetic meaning.
III. Our Lord deduces from the Scriptures authoritative rules of conduct and far-reaching moral principles. "The two commandments, on which hang all the law and the prophets," form an epitome of religion and morality, which is of universal application, and they are the sum and substance of the Old Testament teaching. The Old Testament supplies a principle of conduct, yet withal it is not in every respect a perfect director. For IV. Its rules require expansion. The law was the lesson given for man's childhood, and childhood requires clear and definite rules for its guidance. But now, in the full age of the new kingdom, the principles which underlay and animated the old rules must take their place. The more we study the New Testament, the more we are convinced that the Old Testament is a part and parcel of the same Divine revelation, and that the two cannot be divorced or sundered. In the words of St. Jerome, "Those who banish the doctrine of the Old Testament from the commonwealth of God, while they reject the Old Testament do not follow the New, for the New is confirmed by the testimonies of the Old.
A. F. Kirkpatrick, Oxford Undergraduates' Journal,Jan. 31st, 1878.
References: 2 Timothy 3:14-17. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 27; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vi., p. 171. 2 Timothy 3:15. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1866; J. N. Norton, The Kings Ferry Boat,p. 81; Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 267; H. W. Beecher, Forty-Eight Sermons,vol. i., p. 165; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,3rd series, p. 256; Church of England Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 39; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 72; A. Saphir, Ibid.,vol. xix., p. 305; W. Braden, Ibid.,vol. xxxii., p. 250; R. F. Horton, Ibid.,vol. xxxvi., p. 56; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 159.