2 Peter 2

2 Peter 2:1

III. THE RISE OF FALSE TEACHERS PREDICTED (Chap. 2) 2:1 At the close of chapter 1 Peter referred to the prophets of the OT as men who spoke, not by their own will, but as moved by the Holy Spirit. Now he mentions that in addition to the true prophets in the OT period, there were also false prophets. And just as there will be bona fide teachers in the Christian era, there will be false teachers as well. These false teachers take their place inside the church. They pose as ministers of the gospel. This is what makes the peril so great. If they came right out and said they were atheists or agnostics, people would be on guard. But they are masters of deception. They carry the Bible and use orthodox expressions though using them to mean something entirely different. The president of a liberal theological seminary acknowledged the strategy as follows: Churches often change convictions without formally renouncing views to which they were previously committed, and their theologians usually find ways of preserving continuity with the past through re-interpretations. W. A. Criswell describes the false teacher as follows: … a suave, affable, personable, scholarly man who claims to be the friend of Christ. He preaches in the pulpit, he writes learned books, he publishes articles in the religious magazines. He attacks Christianity from within. He makes the church and the school a lodging place for every unclean and hateful bird. He leavens the meal with the doctrine of the Sadducees. Where are these false teachers found? To mention perhaps the most obvious places, they are found in: Liberal and Neo-Orthodox Protestantism Liberal Roman Catholicism Unitarianism and Universalism Russellism (Jehovah’s Witnesses) Mormonism Christian Science Unity School of Christianity Christadelphianism Armstrongism (The Radio Church of God) While professing to be ministers of righteousness, they secretly bring in soul-destroying heresies alongside true Bible doctrine. It is a deliberately deceptive mixture of the false and the true. Primarily, they peddle a system of denials. Here are some of the denials which can be found among certain of the groups listed above: They deny the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, and His death as a Substitute for sinners. They are especially vehement in their denial of the value of His shed blood. They deny His bodily resurrection, eternal punishment, salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the reality of miracles in the Bible. Other false teachings common today are: The Kenosis theorythe heresy that Christ emptied Himself of the attributes of deity. This means that He could sin, make mistakes, etc. The God is dead fantasy, evolution, universal salvation, purgatory, prayers for the dead, etc. The ultimate sin of false teachers is that they even deny the Master who bought them. While they may say nice things about Jesus, refer to His divinity, His lofty ethics, His superb example, they fail to confess Him as God and as unique Savior. Nels Ferre9 wrote, Jesus never was or became God. … To call Jesus God is to substitute an idol for Incarnation.Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy agreed: I am frank to confess that the statement (that Christ is God) does not please me and it seems far from satisfactory. I would much prefer to have it say that God was in Christ, for I believe that the testimony of the New Testament taken as a whole is against the doctrine of the deity of Jesus, although I think it bears overwhelming witness to the divinity of Jesus. In this and in many other ways, false teachers deny the Lord who bought them. Here we should pause to remind ourselves that while these false teachers to whom Peter refers had been bought by the Lord, they had never been redeemed. The NT distinguishes between purchase and redemption. All are purchased but not all are redeemed. Redemption applies only to those who receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, availing themselves of the value of His shed blood (1Pe_1:18-19). In Mat_13:44 the Lord Jesus is pictured as a man who sold all He had to buy a field. In verse 38 of that same chapter, the field is distinctly said to be the world. So by His death on the cross, the Lord bought the world and all who are in it. But He did not redeem the whole world. While His work was sufficient for the redemption of all mankind, it is only effective for those who repent, believe, and accept Him. The fact that these false teachers were never truly born again is indicated by their destiny. They bring on themselves swift destruction. Their doom is eternal punishment in the lake of fire. 2:2 Peter predicts that they will attract a large following. They do this by scuttling the biblical standards of morality and encouraging the indulgence of the flesh. Here are two examples: Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson wrote: … nothing can of itself always be labeled as wrong. One cannot, for instance, start from the position sex relations before marriage or divorce are wrong or sinful in themselves. They may be in 99 cases or even 100 cases out of 100, but they are not intrinsically so, for the only intrinsic evil is lack of love. In the book Called to Responsible Freedom, published by the National Council of Churches, young people are counseled: In the personal, individual sense, then, what justifies and sanctifies sexuality is not the external marital status of the people before the law but rather what they feel toward each other in their hearts. Measured in such a way, holding hands can be very wrong indeed while intimate sex-play can be right and good. As a result of this type of behavior, taught and practiced by false teachers, the way of truth is maligned. Unbelievers develop a deep contempt for Christianity. 2:3 These false teachers are greedy, both in the sexual and financial realms. They have chosen the ministry as a lucrative profession. Their great aim is to build up a large following and thus to increase their income. They exploit people with false words. Darby said, The devil is never more satanic than when he carries a Bible. So these men, with Bible in hand, pose as ministers of righteousness, give out well-known evangelical hymns, and use scriptural expressions. But all this is camouflage for heretical teachings and corrupt morals. An awful condemnation awaits these religious fifth-columnists. Their judgment has not been idle; it has been arming itself for the slaughter. Their destruction has not been nodding its head in sleep; it has been wide awake, ready to pounce like a panther. 2:4 In verses 4-10, we have three OT examples of God’s judgment on apostasythe angels, the antediluvians, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. We assume that the angels who sinned are those also mentioned in Jud_1:6. There we learn that: (1) They did not keep their position. (2) They left their proper dwelling. Though we cannot be certain, there is strong reason to believe that these are the same as the sons of God mentioned in Gen_6:2 : The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. Angels are called sons of God in Job_1:6; Job_2:1. The inference in Genesis 6 is that these sons of God left the angelic position assigned to them, exchanged their dwelling in heaven for one on earth, and intermarried with human wives. The children born to them were nephilim, which means fallen ones (Gen_6:4). It seems clear from Gen_6:3 that God was extremely displeased with these abnormal sexual unions. Against this view it is generally argued that angels are sexless and therefore cannot marry. But the Bible does not say this. All it says is that in heaven they do not marry (Mar_12:25). Angels often appeared in human form in the OT. For example, the two angels whom Lot entertained in Sodom (Gen_19:1) are described as men in verses 5, 10, 12. They had feet (v. 2) and hands (v. 10); they could eat (v. 3); they had physical strength (vv. 10, 16). It is obvious from the perverted desires of the men of Sodom that these angels had bodies that were capable of sexual abuse (v. 5). God was outraged by this gross apostasy of the angels from His established order. Their doom was to be thrown down to hell, committed to pits of utter gloom until the final judgment. 2:5 The second illustration of God’s direct intervention in punishing sin relates to the people who perished in the flood. Their wickedness had been great. Every imagination of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually (Gen_6:5). In God’s sight the earth was corrupt and filled with violence (Gen_6:11-13). The Lord was sorry that He had made men on the earth (Gen_6:6). He was so grieved that He determined to blot them out (Gen_6:7). He did not spare the ancient world, but brought the flood upon it to destroy its ungodly inhabitants. Only Noah and his family found favor in the eyes of the Lord. They sought and found refuge in the ark, and rode safely above the storm of God’s wrath and indignation. Noah is described as a preacher of righteousness. Doubtless as he built the ark, his hammer blows were interspersed with warnings to the mocking spectators to turn from sin or face God’s righteous punishment for their wickedness. 2:6 The third example of God’s unsparing judgment concerns the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. These two cities, somewhere near what is now the southern area of the Dead Sea, were cesspools of sexual perversion. The people accepted homosexuality as a normal way of life. This sin is described in Rom_1:26-27 : Even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. God did not look upon this unrestrained degeneracy as sickness but as sin. In order to show to all succeeding generations His extreme hatred of homosexuality, He rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen_19:24), reducing them to ashes. The destruction was so complete that there is considerable doubt today as to the exact location of the cities. They serve as an example to any who would legalize this sin or condone it as a disease. It is significant that liberal clergymen today are becoming increasingly outspoken in favor of sexual perversion. One official of the United Church of Christ, writing in Social Action, recommended that the church cease to discriminate against homosexuals in admission to seminaries, in ordination, and in employment on church staffs. Ninety Episcopal priests recently decided that homosexual acts between consenting adults are morally neutral. False religious teachers are in the forefront of movements to legalize this sin. It is no accident that this Epistle, dealing with apostasy, should have so much to say about immorality; the two often go together. Apostasy often has its roots in moral failure. For instance, a man may fall into serious sexual sin. Instead of acknowledging his guilt and finding cleansing through the blood of Christ, he decides to cast off the knowledge of God, which condemns his actions, and live in practical atheism. A. J. Pollock tells of meeting a young man who had once professed to be a Christian but who was now full of doubts and denials. Mr. Pollock asked him, My friend, what sin have you been indulging lately? The young man hung his head, brought the conversation to a quick halt, and went away shamefacedly. 2:7 The same God who visits destruction on the ungodly rescues the righteous. Peter illustrates this by the experience of Lot. If we had only the OT account of Lot, we might not think him a true believer at all. In the Genesis account, he almost appears as a status-seeking opportunist, willing to put up with sin and corruption in order to make a place and name for himself in the world. But Peter, writing by inspiration, tells us that he was a righteous man who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked. God saw that Lot had genuine faith, and that he loved righteousness and hated sin. 2:8 To emphasize that Lot really was a righteous man in spite of appearances to the contrary, Peter repeats that his soul was tormented daily by the things he heard and saw in Sodom. The vile immorality of the people caused him deep suffering. 2:9 The conclusion is that the Lord knows how to deliver the godly and to punish the ungodly. He can rescue His people from trial, and at the same time reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment. The wicked are reserved for hell (v. 9) and hell for the wicked (v. 17). By way of contrast, an inheritance is reserved for believers, and they are kept for the inheritance (1Pe_1:4-5). 2:10 God’s ability to keep wicked men under restraints until their final trial is especially true of the class of people described in this chapterfalse teachers whose lives are contaminated by sexual uncleanness, who advocate rebellion against governmental authority, and who boldly hurl insults at high officials. It is no secret that false religious leaders, posing as ministers of Christ, are often characterized by low moral standards. They not only indulge in illicit sexual activities themselves, but they openly advocate libertinism. The Episcopal Chaplain of a girls’ school in Baltimore, Maryland, wrote: We all ought to relax and stop feeling guilty about our sexual activities, thoughts and desires. And I mean this, whether those thoughts are heterosexual, homosexual or autosexual. … Sex is fun … and this means that there are no laws attached which you ought to do or not to do. There are no rules of the game, so to speak. It is also significant that liberal religious leaders are commonly in the forefront of movements that advocate the violent overthrow of the government. Modernistic ministers have been frequently affiliated with subversive political causes. A director of church and community affairs for the Presbytery of Philadelphia said, I don’t think we preclude this (the use of bombs and grenades by the church) in the future, if all non-violent means prove ineffectual.These men are bold and willful. Their brazen repudiation of all duly constituted authority seems to have no limits. No language is too extreme for them to use in reviling their rulers. The fact that human governments are ordained by God (Rom_13:1) and that it is forbidden to speak evil of them (Act_23:5) does not influence such men in the least.

They seem to delight in shocking people by their belligerent denunciation of dignitaries (Greek: glories or glorious ones). This is a general term that could include all those, whether angels or men, who have been vested with governmental authority by God. Here it probably means human rulers. 2:11 The audacity of these professed ministers of religion is without parallel in the angelic realm. Although angels … are greater than men in power and might, they do not pronounce a reviling accusation against the glorious ones before the Lord. Here the reference to the glorious ones seems to apply to angels who are in positions of authority. It is generally thought that this obscure allusion to angels is the same as that in Jud_1:9 : Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke you.. We are not sure as to why there was a controversy over the body of Moses. The important point for us is this: Michael recognized that Satan has a position of authority in the world of demons, and although Satan had no jurisdiction over Michael, yet the latter would not revile him. Think, then, of the boldness of men who dare to do what holy angels shrink from doing! And think too of the corresponding judgment that will repay such defiance! 2:12 These apostate religious leaders resemble irrational animals. Instead of using the powers of reasoning which distinguish them from animals, they live as if the gratification of their bodily appetites is the very essence of existence. Just as many animals seem to have no higher destiny than to be killed and butchered, so the false teachers lunge forward to destruction, heedless of what is their true callingto glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. They speak evil of the things they do not understand. Their ignorance is never more glaring than when they criticize the Bible. Because they are devoid of divine life, they are utterly unable to understand the words, ways, and works of God (1Co_2:14). Yet they pose as experts in the spiritual realm. A humble believer can see more on his knees than they can see on their tiptoes. They will be destroyed in the same destruction as the animals. Since they choose to live like animals, they will die like them. Their death will not mean extinction, but they will die ingloriously and without hope. 2:13 In death they will suffer for their unrighteousness. As Phillips paraphrases it, Their wickedness has earned them an evil end and they will be paid in full.These people are so shameless and abandoned that they carry on their sinful activities in full daylight. Most men wait for the cover of darkness to carouse (Joh_3:19); hence the dim lights of the bar and the brothel (1Th_5:7). The false teachers have cast off the restraints that usually hide sin in the shadows. When they eat with Christian people, they are blots and blemishes, that is, unsightly, impure intruders, who luxuriate in their excessive eating and drinking. In his description of these same people, Jude says: These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves (Jud_1:12). When the false teachers attended the love feasts held in connection with the Lord’s Supper in the early days of the church, they were utterly intemperate and totally unmindful of the spiritual significance of the feast. Instead of thinking of others, which love always does, they selfishly looked after themselves. 2:14 Even more scandalous is the fact that their eyes are full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin. This describes men who preach supposedly religious sermons, administer the ordinances, counsel the members of their congregation; yet their eyes are constantly looking for women with whom they might have an adulterous affair. Their thirst for lechery, disguised perhaps under the ministerial cloth, seems to be limitless. They entice unstable souls. Perhaps they misuse passages of Scripture to condone sin. Or they explain that matters of right and wrong are largely determined by our culture. Or they suavely reassure their dupes that nothing is wrong if it is done in love. It is easy for unsteady souls to reason that if a thing is all right for a religious leader, it certainly must be all right for a member of the laity. They have hearts trained in covetous practices. They are not rank amateurs, but are schooled in the art of seduction. While the word covetous may cover any kind of excessive craving, the context here seems to point primarily to sexual greed. As Peter thinks of this enormous travesty of Christianity, of the sin that these apostates cause to be associated with the name of Christ, he exclaims, accursed children! It is not that he is cursing them; he is simply foreseeing that they will experience the curse of God in all its fury. 2:15 In several ways, these false teachers resemble the prophet Balaam the son of Beor. They falsely pose as spokesmen for God (Num_22:38). They induce others to sin (Rev_2:14). But the chief likeness is that they use the ministry as a means of financial enrichment. Balaam was a Midianite prophet hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel. His motive for doing this was money. 2:16 On one of his attempts to curse Israel, Balaam and his donkey met the angel of the Lord (that is, the Lord Jesus in one of His pre-incarnate appearances). The donkey repeatedly refused to go on. When Balaam whipped it, the donkey rebuked him in human language (Num_22:15-34). This was an astonishing phenomenona dumb donkey speaking with a human voice (and showing better sense than its master!). But the miracle did not shock Balaam out of his madness.Lenski says: Balaam is a fearful example of a man who was a prophet, whom God told what not to do, whom God hindered in his wrongdoing by even letting a dumb ass speak to him, but who in spite of everything secretly clung to his love for what he thought he could get out of unrighteousness, and so perished. God does not rebuke false teachers by dumb animals today. But there is every reason to believe that in other ways He often rebukes their madness and folly and encourages them to turn to the right way, which is Christ. God often uses the simple testimony of a humble believer to confound these men who pride themselves on their superior knowledge and on their ecclesiastical position. It may be by quoting a verse of Scripture or asking an incisive question, that a Spirit-filled layman leaves the modern-day Balaam to writhe in his humiliation and anger. 2:17 Peter likens the false teachers to waterless springs. Needy people go to them for refreshment and for relief from spiritual thirst but are disappointed. They are wells without water. They are also clouds carried by a tempest. The clouds hold promise of rain for land that has suffered from prolonged drought. But then a windstorm comes and drives the clouds away. Hopes are dashed; parched tongues are unsatisfied. The nether gloom of darkness is reserved for these religious charlatans. Pretending to be ministers of the gospel, they actually have no good news to offer. People go to them for bread and get a stone. The penalty for such deception is an eternity in the blackness of darkness. 2:18 They speak great swelling words of emptiness, or as Knox translates it, they use fine phrases that have no meaning. This is an accurate description of the words of many liberal preachers and false cultists. They are accomplished orators, holding audiences spellbound by their grandiose rhetoric. Their erudite vocabulary attracts undiscerning people. What their sermons lack in content, they make up for in a dogmatic, forceful presentation. But when they have finished they have said nothing. As an example of this sort of sterile sermon, here is a quotation from a well-known theologian of our day: It is not a relationship of either parity or disparity, but of similarity. This is what we think and this is what we express as the true knowledge of God, although in faith we still know and remember that everything that we know as similarity is not identical with the similarity meant here. Yet we also know and remember, and again in faith, that the similarity meant here is pleased to reflect itself in what we know as similarity and call by this name, so that in our thinking and speaking similarity becomes similar to the similarity posited in the true revelation of God (to which it is, in itself, not similar) and we do not think and speak falsely but rightly when we describe the relationship as one of similarity. The strategy of these false teachers is to allure people by promising unrestrained indulgence in every form of lust and passion. They teach that since our bodily appetites are God-given, they should not be restrained. To do so, they say, would cause severe personality disturbances. And so they advocate sexual experimentation before marriage and relaxed morals after marriage. Their victims are the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. These unsaved people once indulged freely in sinful pleasures, but they’ve had a change of heart. They decide to reform, to turn over a new leaf, and to start attending church. Instead of going to a Bible-believing church, they wander into a service where one of these false shepherds is holding forth. Instead of hearing the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ, they hear sin condoned and permissiveness encouraged. It all comes as rather a surprise; they had always thought that sin was wrong and that the church was against it. Now they learn that sin is given religious approval! 2:19 The apostate ministers talk a lot about freedom, but they mean freedom from divine authority and freedom to sin. Actually, this is not liberty but the worst form of bondage. They themselves are slaves of corruption. Bound by the chains of evil lusts and habits, they are powerless to break free. 2:20 Verses 20-22 refer, not to the false teachers themselves, but to their victims. They are people who had reformed but who had not been born again. Through a partial knowledge of … Christ and of Christian principles, they had turned from a life of sin and begun a moral house-cleaning. Then they come under the influence of false teachers who mock puritanical virtue and crusade for liberation from moral inhibitions. They become involved again in the very sins from which they had been temporarily delivered. As a matter of fact, they sink lower than before, because now that religious restraints are gone, there is nothing to hold them back. So it is true that their latter state is worse than the first. 2:21 The greater a person’s privilege, the greater his responsibility. The more a person knows of Christian standards, the more obligated he is to live up to them. It would be better never to have known God’s holy requirements, than having known them to turn back to the filth of the world. 2:22 These people illustrate the true proverb concerning a dog that returns to his own disgusting vomit (see Pro_26:11) and a washed sow that goes back to her wallowing in the mire. It is significant that Peter uses the dog and sow as illustrations. Under the Law of Moses, both of these were unclean animals. There is no suggestion in the proverb that they had experienced any change in their natures. They were unclean before they were delivered from the vomit and the mud, and they were still unclean when they returned to them. So it is with the people of whom Peter wrote. They had undergone a moral reformation but they had never received a new nature. In the language of Mat_12:43-45, their house was empty, swept, and put in order, but they had never invited the Savior to dwell in it. The unclean spirit which was cast out went and found seven other spirits more evil than himself to occupy the empty house. And the last state of that house was worse than the first. This passage should not be used to teach that true believers may fall from grace and be lost. These people never were true believers. They never received a new nature. They demonstrated by their last state that their nature was still unclean and evil. The lesson is, of course, that reformation alone is not only insufficient, but is positively dangerous, because it can lull a person into a false security. Man can receive a new nature only by being born again. He is born again through repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.