³ For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.^(A) Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.^{(B) 4} They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.^(C)

¹⁰ and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing.^(A) They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.^{(B) 11} For this reason God sends them^(C) a powerful delusion^(D) so that they will believe the lie^{(E) 12} and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.^(F)

⁷ The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God;^(A) it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over^(A) to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.

²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. ²⁴ If I had not done among them the works no one else did,^(A) they would not be guilty of sin.^(B) As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father.

⁴⁵ Yet because I tell the truth,^(A) you do not believe me! ⁴⁶ Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? ⁴⁷ Whoever belongs to God hears what God says.^(B) The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”