One of the blessings of living in the age in which we live—the information age—is the incredible abundance of biblical and theological teaching materials that we can access easily. We have publishing houses, bookstores, online ministries, blogs, conferences, podcasts, and on and on the list goes. If you want to learn more about theology, you can instantly pull up thousands of resources at your fingertips. What a time to be alive!
One of the curses of living in the age in which we live—the information age—is the incredible abundance of biblical and theological teaching materials that we can access easily. I am a pastor with a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology, and I cannot keep up with it all. But I do know enough about the conference circuit, about what kinds of books Christian bookstores tend to sell, and about the kinds of resources you can find from online ministries to know that there is a lot of teaching out there today that will lead you astray from the truth if you follow it. There are numerous platformed speakers and authors with book deals, with podcasts, with media empires whom I would not trust to teach a Sunday School class at this church.
The reason this point matters is because if you are accustomed to thinking that the Christian life is basically an individual pursuit in which you navigate your own way in the marketplace of resources, pulling a little teaching from here or there, and the local church is one resource among many, then you are doing it wrong. Here’s why: the internet cannot pastor you. The conference circuit cannot be the congregation that affirms your faith in Christ and holds you accountable to following him. Your local Christian bookstore will probably not promote and uphold doctrinal standards to filter out bad teaching. Resources like these can be very helpful, but not if you do not submit yourself to the authority of a local church and put yourself under the teaching of faithful pastors who will care for your soul. American Christians, because of our autonomous approach to life and to the Christian faith, are particularly susceptible to the threat of false teachings that are destructive to the gospel. False teachings have always been a threat to the church, but in the information age we must assume they are exponentially more so. And the greatest protection against false teaching is putting down deep roots in a solid local church.
Peter warns against false teaching in all of chapter 2 of this letter. He has just argued in 1:16-21 that the gospel proclaimed by the apostles is true, confirmed by their eyewitness testimony and the testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures, which came not from men, but from God. Now he turns to acknowledge that, alongside the true prophets of the Old Testament era, there were also false prophets who spoke the words of men rather than the words of God. In the same way, alongside the true apostles and faithful teachers of the gospel in the New Testament era, there will also be false teachers who threaten the church. Peter teaches us in this passage that we must be prepared to resist false teachers by recognizing the threat they pose and the judgment they will face. As we unpack these verses, I want to note first Peter’s teaching on the threat of false teachers, followed by his teaching on their destiny, and then conclude by noting typical elements of false teaching so that we can recognize it when we see it. May God give us discernment and vigilance to guard the truth as we devote ourselves to walking together as a faithful local church.
First, Peter speaks of
Don’t assume that false teachers are a threat in other churches, in other parts of the world, in other families, but not here. Take Peter’s warning seriously. I want to point out four actions of false teachers from these verses that highlight how great a threat they are.
Peter says it plainly in verse 1: “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.” One of the reasons false teachers can be such a threat is because they often come from within, from voices we trust. That is why they “secretly bring in” destructive heresies. If their teachings were obviously false and bizarre, they would be easily exposed and removed from positions of influence. But coming from within, they can slip past our defenses.
When Peter says they will deny the Master who bought them, some have argued that this refers to Christ’s payment for their sins by his death. But the word “bought” here doesn’t mean merely “died for.” It means something more like “redeemed,” and refers to Christian conversion. It should be read in conjunction with what Peter says of the false teachers in verses 20-22: “For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ [i.e., after they have been converted], they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: ‘The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.’” When we compare those verses to verse 1, we see that these false teachers are “bought” in the sense that they have confessed faith in Jesus Christ and belong to the church. But instead of adhering to the gospel they profess, they have turned it into an excuse for unrestrained sin. In Jude’s words, they “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). In Peter’s context, that took the form of false teachers denying the future return of Christ, denying the future judgment, and thus encouraging and promoting sin.
So is Peter saying that a true believer, once “bought” by Christ and thus regenerated by the Holy Spirit, can be lost again? No, I don’t believe he is. I think Peter is speaking according to appearances here, saying that some who have identified publicly with Christ and with the church will deny the gospel they have confessed. He is speaking of the visible reality of apostasy, but I think there are good reasons to say that the hidden, spiritual reality is that these false teachers were never true believers. I’ll give you three reasons for that conclusion. First, in verse 3 Peter speaks of “their condemnation from long ago,” which implies that God has known them as those destined for condemnation at all times. There was never a time when God accepted them into right standing with him, only subsequently to remove it later. Second, remember what Peter said in 1:10 when he exhorted his readers to pursue growth in virtue: “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” “Calling” and “election” are God’s sovereign actions of salvation, and Peter’s exhortation for us to “confirm” them indicates that our salvation rests with God in eternity past and is manifested in our lives by our actions. It doesn’t change status back and forth from God’s perspective. And then third, we could look at numerous other texts that speak to this issue, but I’ll mention two: 1 John 2:19 and Matthew 7:23, both of which refer to false teachers. John tells us that they went out from us because they were never of us (that is, they were not truly converted). And Jesus will say to many on the last day, “Depart from me, for I never knew you.” Peter speaks here of appearances, but it is specifically their outward association with the church that makes their false teachings harder to detect.
A second action of false teachers is this:
In verse 2 Peter begins, “And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them [those who fallow the false teachers] the way of truth will be blasphemed.” False teachings that cater to human desires often have no trouble appealing to a large group of people. Don’t ever assume that because a teaching has a big following, it must therefore be credible. But it is specifically the big following that false teachers gather that causes the way of truth to be blasphemed. When multitudes who claim the name of Christ live comfortably with the pursuit of sexual immorality or greed, all with the blessing of their trusted teachers, they make Christ appear to be a promoter of these wicked things, and that clouds the truth of the gospel to the world.
Third,
Verse 3 reads, “And in their greed they will exploit you with false words.” Just as it is today, so it was in Peter’s world: people are willing to give money to support teachers they trust and respect. And just as it is today, so it was in Peter’s world: smooth-talking men have an ability to swindle sincere people out of large sums of money. One test of a false teacher is this: is he a lover of money? First Timothy 3:3 explicitly forbids that quality in an elder, so if you ever get that vibe from a teacher or elder, beware. No man who values his own financial advancement over the care and protection of his flock is qualified to be a leader in the church.
Fourth,
Note again verse 3: “And in their greed they will exploit you with false words.” Peter is turning the tables here on his opponents. Back up in 1:16, he wrote, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Contrary to what the false teachers were saying about Peter and the other apostles, it was actually the false teachers who speak lies, fabricated words, falsehoods, and half-truths that distort what God has revealed and seek to lead people astray. The devil is the father of lies, and as such he is hard at work to lead God’s people in the darkness of spiritual deception.
And the devil’s lies are destructive lies. They lead people away from the gospel, which is their only hope of salvation from the coming wrath of God. That’s why Peter calls them “destructive heresies” in verse 1. Promoting and blessing sin leads people to hell.
Hopefully you can see from these three verses that false teachers are a threat. They threaten the well-being of the church, the reputation of the gospel, and the souls of men and women. So we must be on guard against them, having decided in our minds that vigilance for the truth matters. And if we need any persuading on that point, Peter will go on to provide it to us in the next section, where he addresses, second,
If you tend to think that doctrine doesn’t matter all that much, consider what Peter says is the destiny of those who spread false doctrine. The end of verse 3 reads, “Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” Though they might have large influence today, and though it may seem like they will never be held accountable, Peter says make no mistake: their judgment is coming. And he is going to go on to show how their judgment was foretold long ago through two Old Testament stories that prefigure the final judgment.
foretold long ago through two Old Testament stories that prefigure the final judgment. I say there are two stories, but you may read verses 4-9 and think there are three stories mentioned: angels, the flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah. But I actually think the angels in verse 4 are to be grouped together with the flood story in verse 5. When we read it as two stories, it makes a tighter argument because then both stories mention judgment on the wicked and deliverance of the righteous, and that is the main point made in verse 9 about these stories. So let’s dig deeper into the two stories.
In verses 4-5, Peter speaks of God’s judgment on angels who sinned and on the ancient world at the time of Noah. Because the angels are closely identified with the days of Noah, it appears Peter is referencing the “sons of God” who are mentioned in Genesis 6:1-4 as those who left their heavenly dwelling so that they could intermarry with human women. That may sound quite bizarre to you, but I think that is the interpretation of that passage that the New Testament supports. Peter says those angels have been “cast into hell,” but the footnote on the word “hell” indicates that Peter is not using the conventional Greek word that is normally translated “hell” (the place of final, eternal punishment). The Greek word is actually “Tartarus,” which was a way of referring to the underworld. In the biblical picture of reality, the underworld is a holding place for the unbelieving dead and of fallen angels who have come under God’s judgment as they await the final judgment. So God judged the angels who rebelled against him in Genesis 6:1-4. He stopped their rebellious activity, restrained their influence over this world, and is holding them for a final judgment yet to come.
At the same time that he judged these angels, he also sent a flood upon the ancient world to wipe out sinful humanity, but he preserved Noah, of whom two interesting points are made. One is that Noah was one man in a group of eight people. His family was a tiny minority of godly people in a corrupt generation. Another interesting point is that Noah is called “a herald of righteousness,” indicating that Noah proclaimed the true God to his contemporaries and called them to repentance. The book of Genesis doesn’t actually say that Noah was a preacher of righteousness, but it does say that Noah “walked with God” in Genesis 6:9, which seems to indicate that Noah was in God’s “inner circle,” so to speak, and that is typically how the Bible speaks of men who are prophets.
In verses 6-8, Peter gives a second example. God sent fire from heaven that reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, but before he did, he made sure Lot (and his two daughters) escaped the city of Sodom safely. Verse 7 says God “rescued righteous Lot.” When you read the Genesis story, you may have trouble with the description of Lot as “righteous.” We know, for example, that Lot made a foolish decision to locate his family in Sodom to begin with, and he suffered for that decision. And yet, the conversation between Abraham and God that takes place just before the judgment of Sodom in Genesis 18 indicates that God will not sweep away the righteous with the wicked. The fact that Lot escaped God’s judgment is proof enough that he was a righteous man, in spite of his flaws. Lot’s messy life (in contrast to Noah’s) can encourage us in the knowledge that, even if we have messy lives and sometimes make bad decisions, God is still for us if we have faith in him. In spite of his flaws, Lot was still righteous. In fact, Peter tells us in verse 8 that Lot felt so out of place among the wicked men of Sodom that it caused inner turmoil for him to live among them day after day.
Now that we have seen the two examples, let’s not lose sight of the argument. Peter began with an “if” statement in verse 4 and had several “ifs” along the way. Where’s the “then” statement? It’s in verse 9, which really brings us to Peter’s main point in bringing up these examples of the flood and of Sodom and Gomorrah. If God punished the angels and the ancient world but delivered Noah and his family, and if God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah but delivered Lot, verse 9 says, “then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.” That is an incredibly comforting verse! It is an argument that we can trust God to do again what he has done in the past. So what trials did God deliver Noah and Lot from? With Noah, Peter notes that he belonged to a tiny minority of people, namely, the last eight righteous people on earth. With Lot, he mentions that he experienced inner turmoil over the godless behavior that was all around him. Both of these men belonged to godly minorities living in ungodly societies. There is no doubt they faced pressure to conform their lives to the sinful patterns around them, and that certainly would have left them feeling out of place. But in the end, God delivered them when he judged their neighbors and vindicated them as his righteous people. God knows how to rescue the righteous from trial.
By the same token, God knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. The wording of verse 9 is interesting, because it seems that Peter is speaking not only of the coming final judgment, but also of God’s judgments in history against false teachers by which he holds them under punishment until the final judgment. God will protect his church, and that means he will often intervene in history to bring down the wicked who are infecting his church with false teachings. And so this is Peter’s argument for why you should be vigilant in the fight against false teachings: false teachers and those who follow them will face God’s judgment.
One additional word of encouragement I want us to draw from these verses is the fact that, when we are tempted to think that our generation is uniquely bad and that we are facing a depth of wickedness that no one has ever witnessed before, we should simply be reminded of what godly people in the past have faced. Yes, we live in a sin-darkened generation that doesn’t even know what boys and girls are anymore. But as bad as that is, I don’t think we understand how bad it was for Noah, who was one of only eight godly people left on earth. I don’t think we understand how bad it was for Lot, who witnessed perversion and brutality in Sodom that was more horrifying than most of us have ever witnessed. God’s people have been through it all before, and the same God is with us in our generation, so take heart.
Now that we have seen the threat of false teaching and the destiny of false teachers, I want to come now to the last part of our passage and note, finally,
Here’s a difficult question: how do I know when something is a matter of false teaching and when it is a matter on which Christians can disagree charitably? Yes, we must be vigilant against false teaching, but if we call out every little disagreement and cause needless division in the church where we should be able to have unity, we are doing no better than the false teachers! So is there a way for us to be able to discern what does and does not fall under the category of false teaching that is a threat to the gospel? I think there is. First, we should look to Scripture and see what kinds of teachings the New Testament calls out as threats to the gospel. Nearly every book in the New Testament warns in some way against a particular false teaching, and if we let the New Testament lead us, we will develop a sense for what kinds of teachings threaten the gospel. In addition to that, we should look to the history of the church. The church has confronted many false teachings over 2,000 years, and as it has reflected on Scripture it has come up with boundaries that define sound doctrine over against heresies. We should seek to know what those boundaries are by understanding the tradition that has been handed down to us. This is one reason we have Sunday School classes every spring semester on history and tradition.
So let’s pay close attention to what Peter tells us are defining marks of the kinds of false teachers he is warning us against. After declaring that God knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, he says in verse 10, “and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.” Let’s take those two matters one-by-one. First is the matter of sexual immorality. Peter speaks here of those who pursue sexual perversion, probably alluding to the angels who sinned in Genesis 6:1-4 by marrying with human women and almost certainly alluding to the men of Sodom and Gomorrah who wanted to abuse sexually the angels who appeared to them as men. Sexual perversion has long been a hallmark of false teaching. Every time you see a church displaying a rainbow flag in solidarity with the LGBT movement, you see a church that has given itself over to false and destructive teaching.
Here I need to say something publicly against a man from whom I have learned a lot, and yet the nature of something he said publicly some time ago merits a public response. J.D. Greear is the very gifted pastor of Summit Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I count him a brother in Christ. But some time ago he preached a message on Romans 1 in which he went through Paul’s teaching on homosexuality. He rightly noted a number of features of the text and made very clear that homosexual practice is sinful, but then he sought to soften the blow of the biblical teaching by saying that we need to whisper about the things the Bible whispers about, and we need to shout about the things the Bible shouts about. Well, that seems like generally good advice, but then Greear went on to say that the Bible whispers about sexual sin by comparison to its shouts about materialism and religious pride. I think that statement is simply wrong and is pastoral malpractice. Even by comparison to other sins, the Bible does not “whisper” about sexual sin. It shouts and shouts and shouts some more. Not only is sexual sin warned against pervasively throughout the New Testament, but it is warned against in the strongest terms. For example, Paul commands the church at Corinth to hand over to Satan a man who is guilty of unrepentant sexual immorality in the church. In the very passage Greear was preaching, Romans 1:18-32, Paul argues that homosexuality is itself God’s judgment of handing people over to the perversity of their hearts when they have rejected him, so that they act contrary to nature. And he says to the Thessalonians in 1 Thess. 4:3: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.” The Bible is very clear, and very emphatic that any teaching or practice that moves sexual activity outside the boundaries of marriage (the union of a man and a woman) is a destructive heresy. We cannot, and we must not compromise on this issue because heaven and hell are at stake. So if you ever encounter a teaching that encourages a revision of historic Christian sexual ethics or minimizes the importance of this issue, be warned. Peter obviously regards the promotion of and practice of sexual immorality as a hallmark of false teachers.
Peter also mentions the despising of authority as a particular mark of false teaching. This could be any kind of authority, because God has all authority, and he is the one who gives authority to whom he will. Authority is his appointed means for giving direction for well-being in the family, in the church, and in the various institutions of society. Without authority, there would be no order in this world. It would all be chaos. Yes, there are times to disobey authorities or challenge them if they are abusing their authority. We see examples of that in Scripture. But before we can deal with exceptions, we must first default to the rule, and that means cultivating in ourselves a deep respect for authority. Children, when you disobey your parents or your teachers, you are disobeying God. It’s that simple. Don’t cultivate a heart that is at ease with disobedience or disrespect for authority. If you have that kind of heart, how will you ever respect God’s authority? And that goes for us all, whether it involves the authorities of the state, of our workplaces, or of the church. We live in an age that is very suspicious of authority, and the church is not immune to these pervasive cultural ideas, so beware of any teaching that would stir up in you a disrespect for authority.
I want to conclude this morning by giving you a few words of direction on how to guard yourself and your family from the threat of false teaching. Instead of despising authority, do the opposite. Submit yourself to authority. Begin by submitting your mind and heart to the authority of Scripture. And submit yourself to a local church. This is where church membership really matters. If you are not a member of any church, but you are a Christian, what you are saying is that you don’t need God’s established authorities in your life. But you do. You need the authority of a congregation that affirms your profession of faith and holds you accountable to it. You need the authority of a church’s confession of faith outlining its vision of sound doctrine and a church covenant that outlines its vision of a godly life. You need the authority of elders who will guide you and care for you as faithful shepherds. All of that is entailed in church membership. Submit yourself to the authority of your local congregation and your elders. Yes, you can benefit from conferences, books, and online resources, but let your steady diet of teaching come from your local church and the elders God has placed over you. And those of you who are husbands and fathers, recognize your authority in your own families. You may not be ordained to public ministry, but you are the “pastor” of your family, and you are responsible to lead your wife and children in the nurturing of their faith. Men, protect your homes from false teaching. Wives, submit to your husbands as they protect your family. Children, submit to your parents as they teach you the truth and warn you against error.
If you do these things, false teaching will have very little room to work its way into your heart, into your home, or into this church. And so recognizing the gravity of Peter’s warnings about false teaching, the best way for us to respond is to commit ourselves to walk faithfully under the authorities God has appointed over us. Amen.