2 Pet 2.1-9

false teachers (1)

(2 Peter 2.1-9)

Jason Procopio

There are thousands of preconceived ideas we can have about the Christian faith. Today, I’d just like to mention three.

1. “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship.” I’m sure you’ve heard that one.

2. “As long as we love God, things like doctrine and theology aren’t really important.” We say that the most important thing is loving God and loving others, and as long as we do that, all the rest is peripheral.

3. “A sermon based on the Bible must be good.” We hear someone preach, and it reassures us when they open the Bible and read from it—and the more passages they read, the more reassured we are.

I bring up these three ideas because in our text today (and in next week’s text), the apostle Peter is going to contradict them pretty brutally.

In last week’s text, at the end of chapter 1, Peter reminded his readers why they could trust what he and the other apostles had told them. They were eyewitnesses to the majesty of Christ, and had seen the words of the prophets confirmed before their eyes. So their message carried with it the authority of God himself—as he had spoken through the prophets, he was speaking through them.

It was important to establish this authority, because the subject to which Peter turns now in chapter 2 is one of the main reasons why he is writing his letter in the first place. False teachers have always made their way into the church—at the beginning of v. 1, Peter even speaks of false prophets in the times of the Old Testament, so this was nothing new. But in every time and place God’s people needed to be reminded that this would happen, and they needed to know how to spot these false teachers when they came.

Markers of False Teachers (v. 1-3)

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

Peter is going to go into a lot more detail in describing false teachers in next week’s passage; but for now, he introduces the subject by giving us the essentials.

The first thing he says is that they will secretly bring in destructive heresies. When we talk about heresy it’s really important that we understand the concept of “theological triage”. (That term doesn’t come from me, but it’s really useful.) If there is a car accident in which several patients are injured, and all of them are admitted to the E.R. at the same time, the doctors will perform “triage” on the patients—they’ll look at them quickly and decide which injuries are the most serious, and work on them first. It’s a way of prioritizing the gravity of a problem.

Theological triage is taking that same idea and applying it to doctrine. There are some questions of doctrine that are absolutely fundamental—if you lose them, then you have no Christian faith. This would be things like the divinity of Christ, the Creator God, the Trinity, the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of justification by faith alone. These doctrines are absolutely essential—if you lose them, you lose everything.

Then there are other issues which are definitely important, but which you can deny while still being a Christian. This would be things like the doctrine of election (which we talked about a couple weeks ago); questions around the spiritual gifts; questions around the roles of men and women in marriage and the church. These are very important subjects—it would be almost impossible, for example, for two pastors to work in the same church together if they disagreed on these subjects, because they have an impact on nearly every area of teaching and practice. But they are not central: my brothers and sisters who do not agree with me concerning the doctrine of election or the spiritual gifts are still very much Christians, because they are not rejecting the fundamental tenants of the faith.

Then there are other issues which are even less impactful—not less important, because everything God says in the Bible is important—but they will have even less of an impact on our Christian life. These would be things like what we believe the Bible says about the millenium, or what exactly will happen in detail before Christ returns. We could easily disagree on these things, and still even work closely together, because they honestly don’t come up very often.

It’s essential to do this kind of theological triage when we run up against a teaching we disagree with, because it’s all too easy to call something a “heresy” when in fact it’s just a disagreement.

When Peter talks about “destructive heresies,” he’s talking about any teaching which is contrary to these first-order, foundational doctrines—the teaching that Christ and the apostles set forth as fundamental. If your teaching contradicts these things, you bring ruin on the church and on yourself, because you are essentially destroying what is “Christian” about your faith.

And we see this even in v. 1—by these destructive heresies, these teachers deny the Master who bought them. Now is he saying these people are actually Christians—that they really have been redeemed and saved by Christ? No, he’s not, because through their denial of Christ they bring destruction upon themselves, and Christians have the promise that God has saved them from destruction through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. So what does he mean?

He’s actually doing something similar to what he does at the end of chapter 2. He’s ironically using the language of salvation to describe counterfeit faith. These people claim to be “redeemed”, they claim to be saved, and they have at least some credibility because they are part of a church. But they are not true believers: they deny the Master they say saved them.

Now what do they actually do? The first thing Peter mentions is that they draw others into their sensuality. This word “sensuality” is literally a lack of self-restraint; it means to give oneself up to immoral behavior. When this word is used in the Bible, it most often refers to sexual sin.

Let me give you an example of what this might look like: a false teacher who preaches heresies and follows his sensuality. This pastor is charismatic; he is intelligent; he is incredibly convincing. He ingratiates himself with his congregation by telling them things which sound persuasive, and which they want to hear. Then he seduces women (or men) into thinking that in order to hear from God, or be blessed by God, or be approved by God, they have to go through him, the pastor; and if they want to stay close to him, they have to please him sexually.

Now of course this is abhorrent, but God help us, this happens. When we hear it told the way I just said it, it seems insane to us that this could happen: why would anyone would fall for it?

Because this pastor suggests (even very subtly) that God has given him—the pastor—priveleged access to himself. And this goes against the fundamental doctrine of the Bible that there is now no intermediary between God and man other than Jesus Christ himself. To get to God, you do not have to go through me—or any other pastor, or a priest, or anyone. Jesus Christ is the only intermediary between God and man. And when we even so much as suggest that this is not true, we bring in a destructive heresy which, if we’re not careful, will open the door to sin and abuse and—yes—destruction.

This is why, as Peter says at the end of v. 2, because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And that makes perfect sense. A false teacher comes in preaching false doctrines in order to satisfy his own sinful desires; people from outside the church see that, and say, “Well, looks like I was right to stay where I was. If God’s like that, I want nothing to do with him.” How many people have seen the sinful behavior of some so-called “Bible teachers,” and found God guilty by association? How many people now want nothing to do with God—no matter what we might say about him—because of that?

So these false teachers bring in destructive heresies, following their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth is blasphemed. Next, Peter says (v. 3) that in their greed they will exploit you with false words. So what motivates these people is not the glory of God, but their own greed. And when there is enough greed and not enough legitimate gain to satisfy that greed, what happens? You exploit those who are weaker to get what you want.

How will you do it? Again, by false words. By denial of the fundamental tenants of our faith. You say, for example, that Jesus Christ came, not mainly to deal with the problem of sin and to absorb the wrath of God against that sin, but to give you a better life, according to your terms—that Jesus came to make you rich and to make you healthy and to fulfill your dreams.

This is a false gospel. This is destructive heresy. And unfortunately it is one of the most widely-accepted teachings from people who say they are Christian teachers (when they aren’t) preaching what they say is Christianity (when it isn’t).

So their motivation is greed; their act is exploitation; their method is false words; and their end, Peter says, is condemnation. End of v. 3:

Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

Now this final sentence is the key to understanding what comes next. Everything that comes between v. 4 and v. 8 is a response, an example, of this truth.

Protection from False Teachers (v. 4-10a)

Let’s read the verses first, then we’ll go through what he’s saying here. Let’s start again at the end of v. 3:

Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked 8 (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

I’m sure you noticed a pattern in these verses. “If God did this… If God did this… If God did this… Then God will do this.” This was a common form of argumentation in Judaism; it’s a rabbinic proof that moves from a minor premise to a major premise (if A is true, how much more is B also true?).

So essentially in these verses, Peter lays out his minor premises in v. 4-8, and then his major premise in v. 9-10. Let’s take them one by one.

V. 4:

God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment...

As we go through these, forget the “if” for the time being. Peter is relating to us a series of things that we see God do in the Old Testament. The passages which refer to this first event are obscure, but the New Testament affirms it on more than one occasion (we see the same thing in Jude 6, Matthew 25 and Revelation 20). We’re not going to go into the question of the angels’ free will, or why they would sin if they were with God, because that’s not the point. The point is that they did sin, and they were cast into hell by God until the judgment at the return of Christ.

The reason why this is remarkable is because they are angels—presumably, our superiors in every conceivable way. They are powerful, they are beautiful, they are glorious…and they received condemnation for rebelling against God.

Next—v. 5:

…he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly…

Now the dominant feeling of a modern reader when we read the story of the flood in Genesis 6-7 is one of injustice. Killing all of humanity except for one family? Even if the Bible is clear that they were “wicked”, that “every intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6.5), we still think they got treated pretty harshly. We would have liked to see some kind of rehabilitation plan set up.

But we feel this way because we seriously underestimate the gravity of sin. We have this idea that some sins are really bad (like murder), but that sin itself, taken generally, isn’t all that serious. We think the problem is that God is just way too strict.

This too is a destructive heresy—this is why so many preachers don’t like to talk about sin, and instead insist that we’re all essentially good. The Bible teaches the exact opposite: that no matter how good we may think we are, we are still sinners, and the slightest inkling of sin in us is an affront to the holy God who created us. God is right to punish sin, and he will stop at nothing to do away with it—even if it takes a massive flood to do it. (That’s not all that was going on there, of course, but that’s Peter’s point.)

V. 6:

…by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly…

Now even by today’s standards, Sodom and Gomorrah were pretty rough places. If you read Genesis 19 and you see just a few of the things that were going on there, you can (maybe begrudgingly) accept that if any cities deserved to be made examples of, it was these two.

But then Peter moves on to something which has baffled many of us (including myself). V. 7-8:

…he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked 8 (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard)…

We need to stop here for a moment because if you know the story of Lot, then you’re probably thinking there’s something wrong with this picture. We don’t have time to go into all the details of the story right now;let’s just say that Lot was far from a model of righteousness in this story. Peter’s right to say that Lot was distressed by the sexual depravity of the people of Sodom, and he was pretty miserable living there. The reason why he was miserable living there is because he knew Abraham’s God, and he had at least some kind of faith in Abraham’s God. But while decrying the sin of the people of Sodom, Lot falls into sin which in my mind at least is just as bad if not worst.

But the point isn’t whether Lot himself was a good or bad person. What have we learned from the Bible in regards to sin? There is none who does good, not even one (the psalmist says in Psalm 14). So when the Bible talks about someone being “righteous” it’s not talking about their own moral goodness, but rather about the faith they have placed in God, who alone is righteous. Lot isn’t called “righteous” because he was good; he is called righteous because he trusted God, who is good. The same thing is said of Abraham before him, who was just as sinful: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Romans 4.3).

And because of this simple trust—the faith Lot placed in God—God rescued him.

So we have all of these “if…if… if…” statements: If God didn’t spare the angels when they sinned… If he didn’t spare the ancient world from the flood… If he didn’t spare Sodom and Gomorrah…then he will absolutely judge the ungodly. And if he rescued Noah… If he rescued someone even as messed up as Lot…then he will absolutely save his children.

V. 9—if God did all of these things:

9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

So Peter lumps in these “ungodly” false teachers with those who indulge in the lust of defiling passions (in this case, their “defiling passions” are their own selfish desires, whatever they hope to gain from twisting true doctrine and exploiting the weak); and with those who despise authority (namely, the authority of God, and the authority of the church).

As difficult as it may be for us to see it, God’s protection of the saints and his judgment of false teachers are both good things. We don’t have to worry that false teachers will go unpunished for their exploitation; they won’t get away with it. They may get away with it here on this earth, during their own lives; but their sin and deception will be judged by God.

And we don’t have to worry that God’s people will be irretrievably misled—God knows how to protect his church from false doctrine.

One wonderful example of this, we can see in the historic creeds. A “creed” is basically a summary of the Christian faith. We did a whole workshop on the Apostles’ Creed a little over a year ago. It’s a summary of the main teachings of the Bible—these “first importance” issues we mentioned at the beginning.

Nearly every historic creed that was written in the church was written in response to a destructive heresy. R. C. Sproul said, “All the heresies with which the church has had to fight have been difficult and destructive, yet in every age the appearance of heresy has forced the church to sharpen her definition and confession of the truth. When Arius denied the deity of Christ, the church convened at Nicaea to declare the full deity of our Lord in what became the Nicene Creed. When Eutychus and Nestorius proclaimed their heresies in the fifth century, the church assembled at Chalcedon and gave further definition and precision to our faith in the person of Jesus [in the Chalcedonean Creed].”

We now have these beautiful summaries of the main points of the Christian faith, which are so short we can easily memorize them, and so clearly thought out that we can lean on them for help in remembering the main points of our own faith…all because God knows how to protect his people from heresy.

Preconceived Ideas

So the question is, what do we do with all this? How do we take a passage about false teachers and pull out some kind of real-world application for us (or rather for you, since most of you aren’t teachers—being a pastor, I'm kind of in the line of fire here)?

This passage—this entire chapter, in fact—should be a massive course-correct for us; it runs counter to several preconceived ideas we have adopted without even realizing it. I mentioned three of those ideas at the beginning of the message.

Here’s the first one: “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship.” Have you ever heard that?

I understand why people say that (people are squeamish about the idea of organized religion), but it’s simply not true that Christianity is a relationship and not a religion. It is a relationship, yes; but it’s not only that. Christianity is a religion, in that it holds as fundamental a certain number of distinct doctrines.

Number two (perhaps subtler and more common): “As long as you love God, doctrine doesn’t matter.” Now few people would actually say that aloud, but functionally, that’s how we often operate. We think, the main thing is loving God and loving other people, and if we do that, everything else is kind of superfluous.

And that’s not true either. Doctrine is, essentially, the various ways in which the Bible describes our God. And that is really important—because if you don’t know how God describes himself in his Word, how do you know whom you’re loving?

I’ve used this illustration before (and it doesn’t come from me), but it helps us see why this stuff is so important.

At the beginning of the church, my wife and I often had people over who were visiting—missionaries, or visiting pastors—and we would spend time talking about things over dinner. Imagine that at one of these dinners, I am bragging to them about Loanne. My love for her is just oozing out. I’m talking about how incredible she is, how beautiful she is, how the first time I saw her with her blonde hair and blue eyes, I was instantly smitten…and then I found out that she loves Star Wars and likes sleight of hand magic like I do…how I love her testimony of she grew up in church and had never known a time when she didn’t follow Christ…

Now all of that is really nice; those are good things I’m saying about her. The problem is, they’re not true. Loanne’s doesn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes; she has brown hair, and brown eyes. She doesn’t like Star Wars. She makes fun of me when I try to do magic tricks around her. She grew up in a non-Christian family and met Christ in her early twenties.

So if I’m saying all this stuff, no matter how flattering it is, she would be sitting there at the table, thinking, Does he have another wife? Who is he talking about? If I went on like this, I’d be in for a serious discussion later that night.

Doctrine matters. Getting the gospel right matters. It is only through the lens of right doctrine that we know and love God as he is, and not as we’d like him to be (which, every time, is a cheap and filthy counterfeit of what God actually is).

Now, do we need to know all this doctrine at once? Of course not. So if you’re new to the faith, and you don’t know a lot of doctrine, that’s okay—you’ll get there. You don’t learn everything there is to know about another human being all at once either, and here we’re talking about an infinite God, whose character and work we’ll never stop discovering.

But we need to make absolutely sure that the things we do know about God are right; that the things we say about God are right.

Because if we don’t, we run the risk of being derailed by our own selfish desires, and doing serious damage to the church, as well as discovering that our faith was a hoax we perpetuated to get what we wanted.

Here’s the last one: “All teaching based on the Bible must be good teaching.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth. You can use the Bible to say anything you want to say. You can twist Scripture to defend anything you want. And people do twist Scripture like that. All the time. So if it’s important for you to learn right doctrine, to learn what is true about God—and it is—then it is just as important that you be very careful about whom you listen to. Whose teaching you follow.

I’m not saying this to scare you, but I’d be a fool to assume that you guys only listen to me. The Internet has given people unprecedented access to preachers and teachers, many of whom are excellent and who are worthy of paying attention to.

Unfortunately, it has also given people unprecedented access to false teachers—it has given them a global megaphone through which they can spout their heresies, and they almost always use the Bible to do it. And just as unfortunately, the Internet has not yet provided a foolproof way of identifying these false teachers on the spot. False teachers will not sound false at first glance; they’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear.

So as you go about feeding yourselves, be very careful how you listen. Don’t take their word for it. Don’t even take my word for it. One thing I love about our church is how many of you are willing to push back against me when you think I’ve said something that’s not quite right. You do it lovingly, and often after discussion I’ll realize that maybe I could have explained something better, been more precise in my explanations; and occasionally, I’ll realize I’ve made a mistake, and be able to correct that mistake next time.

But please, I beg of you—especially if you’re new to the faith and you don’t have a lot of experience yet—don’t go online and assume that every man or woman you see on YouTube holding a Bible in their hand is trustworthy. Don’t assume everything on Top Chrétien is trustworthy. Some of it is; a lot of it isn’t.

So how do we know? How do we discern what is trustworthy and what isn’t?

We go back to Scripture, ourselves. We open the Bible, and we examine it ourselves. We go to the historic creeds, like the Apostles’ Creed, which gives us a quick and easy way of identifying the points of doctrine which are fundamental to our faith. Even better—we get together with brothers and sisters in the faith who have been Christians longer than we have, who have been reading the Bible for longer, and we ask for their help in our reading. As we grow in our own knowledge of God, we become more and more able to recognize falsehoods when we hear them. That’s the first thing—don’t let your main source of theological training be YouTube. Go to the Word of God, and see for yourself what it says.

Here’s the second thing. Peter gives us two examples of men whom God rescues from trials: Noah and Lot. In both cases, these men were sinful. Noah was a drunk, and Lot was one of the worst fathers in history. And yet they trusted God to rescue them. They believed that whatever trial they were facing, it wasn’t up to them to get out of it. That God would provide a way out.

And even if we are surrounded by false teaching, and we are worried that we will fall into their traps, we can trust God—that he knows how to rescue the godly from trials. That he knows how to keep us safe from their lies. We should be on our guard; we should learn; we should grow in our knowledge of doctrine. But we don’t have to worry that we don’t know enough—none of us ever do. God knows enough, and he knows how to protect his church.