What Does 2 Timothy 2:13 Mean in the King James?
If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he can not deny himself.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Your trust can fail without making God’s steadiness depend on it, because his faithfulness belongs to his own nature.
THE MEANING
When your trust fails, the one spoken of here remains firm and steady. His steadiness comes from who he is; he does not break from himself. The verse holds your wavering and his constancy together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that your failure to trust makes God unreliable or turns his character against you.
THE ROOT
πιστός
pistos
GROWS FROM
πείθω (peithō), expressed through πιστ- (pist-)
To persuade or win confidence; across this word family, trust and the reliability that can be leaned on.
The verse places “believe not” beside “faithful,” words from the same family of trust: your distrust does not produce his steadiness or take it away. Here, “faithful” carries the sense of remaining firm and steady, because he does not act against his own nature.
ALSO GROWS
apisteō: distrust, fail to trust
ἀπιστέω
This is the verb behind “believe not,” so the verse sets human distrust beside God’s firmness within one word family.
pisteuō: trust, lean one’s weight on
πιστεύω
This is the verb for believing or trusting, showing the shared seed beneath the verse’s contrast.
pistis: trust, reliance
πίστις
This noun makes the family’s central idea visible: trust is something that can be placed, while God remains steady.
THE PATTERN
God’s reliability rests in God’s own nature and commitment, not in human steadiness.
Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations;For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)THE THREAD
For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?Romans 3:3 makes the same tension explicit: human failure to trust does not cancel God’s faithfulness. In Greek, “did not believe” and “faith” belong to the same trust word family that underlies “firm and steady” here.
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