False Teaching: Destruction Is not Sleeping, Part 1-6, Complete Edition

False Teaching: Destruction Is not Sleeping, Part 1-6, Complete Edition

By John Piper

Watch Out for Those Who Lead You Away from the Truth

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. Such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

I recall talking to a wise leader of a large missions organization about doctrinal faithfulness. He said something to this effect, “It’s crucial. And so is unity. Some people emphasize one, and some the other. Our organization is made of two kinds of people: purity boys and unity boys.” The unity boys naturally emphasize the preciousness of personal relationships and tend to neglect an emphasis on truth. The purity boys naturally emphasize the preciousness of truth and tend to neglect the nurture of personal relationships.

In fact, you could probably categorize people and churches and denominations and institutions and movements in the evangelical church today (or even in society in general) along these lines: There are those who emphasize doctrinal purity, and there are those that emphasize relational unity.

Loving People and Loving Truth

I hope you are feeling uncomfortable with that description. A good impulse inside of you would be saying right now: “Do we have to choose? Can’t it be both? Can’t you love truth and love people?” In fact, it would be an even more biblical impulse if you found yourself thinking, “I don’t even think you can love people if you don’t love truth. How can you do what is ultimately good for people if you don’t have any strong convictions about what is ultimately good?”

And yet there is no escaping the reality that people and churches and denominations and schools and even whole periods in history lean one way or the other. I think the period of history we live in is not an easy time to be a lover of truth. The most common criticism, if you stand for an important truth and imply by that stand that others should believe it, is that you are arrogant, which is the opposite of being loving (1 Corinthians 13:4), and therefore you are undermining relationships.

For many thoughtful people today the only path to peaceful relationships in a pluralistic world is the path of no truth that deserves assent from everyone. It seems on the face of it to make sense. If no one claims that what he believes deserves assent from anyone else, then we can live together in peace. Right? So peaceful pluralism and diminished truth claims go hand in hand.

But it doesn’t work like that. When there is no truth that deserves assent from everybody, the only arbiter in our competing desires is power. Where truth doesn’t define what’s right, might makes right. And where might makes right, weak people pay with their lives. When the universal claim of truth disappears, what you get is not peaceful pluralism or loving relationships; what you get is concentration camps and gulags.

Purity for the Sake of Unity

I want you to see from the Bible—and feel in your bones—the importance of being a purity boy for the sake of being a unity boy. I want you to see and feel how out of step this text is with today’s Western culture. It pictures a way of thinking and living that most of our fellow Americans would consider offensive, unloving, fundamentalistic, and out of date. It’s mainly a purity text—a text calling for vigilance in matters of truth and doctrine. But it’s not only that. In a striking way, it is a unity text. The goal of the vigilance for right teaching is to avoid Christ-belittling, self-exalting dissension.

So my hope in preaching from verses 17 and 18 is that you will be freed from any blindness or bondage to this truth-diminishing period of time in which we live. And I pray that, because of this liberty, you would know what it is to love your adversaries and that you would have fresh power from the gospel to magnify Christ in showing that love.

Let’s read again Romans 16:17-18,

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.

Verse 17 gives two commands that seem contradictory, but they are joined by a phrase that shows why they are not contradictory. And verse 18 gives two reasons why these two commands are so crucial. Let’s look first at the commands in verse 17.

Watch Out for Those Who Cause Divisions

The first command in verse 17 is to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles or stumbling blocks. “I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles.” So it is clear from this command that Paul is concerned about unity. He wants to promote unity. Watch out for those who cause divisions. These are enemies of unity. Watch out for them. I don’t want them to have that effect on you.

Avoid Them

The second command in verse 17 is to avoid these people. The last phrase in the verse: “Avoid them.” Stay away from them. Now the reason I said these two commands sound contradictory is that the first one is driven by a passion for unity: Watch out for those who cause divisions. And the second one is, in fact, a call for division. When you spot such a division-causing person, divide from him. Avoid him.

The Dividing Line of Doctrine

What is it then between these two commands that helps us see how they are not in fact contradictory? It’s Paul’s reference to doctrine. Verse 17: “I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.” The issue here is not the same as in chapter 14 where Paul is dealing with different convictions about non-essential things. There he said, in verse 5, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” There was no talk in chapter 14 about avoiding people. The whole point was to help the strong and the weak Christians live together in mutual respect and understanding.

But now here in Romans 16:17, the approach is dramatically different. Here Paul says: Avoid them. Divide from them. Why? Because they are promoting doctrine contrary to what they had been taught. Now Paul’s response to this could have been: Well, nobody has all the truth, and everybody has a piece of it, and unity is more important than truth, and so don’t divide. And we would say: That impulse would not be all bad, would it? Unity is a good thing. Paul cares about it. His first command is: “Watch out for those who cause divisions.”

Truth-Based Division for the Sake of Truth-Based Unity

But that is not the way he responded to this situation. Instead, for the sake of unity—that is, truth-based unity—Paul calls for truth-based division. Avoid them. I don’t know how Paul could make any clearer how he relates doctrine and unity. For Paul, doctrine is the basis of unity. Without the common doctrine they had been taught, the unity would not have been Christian unity. So he is willing to call for truth-based disunity (“Avoid them.” “Divide from them.”) for the sake of truth-based unity.

In other words, when a person departs from the doctrine that the apostles had taught, Paul sees this as a greater threat to unity than the disunity caused by avoiding such people. If we say: How can that be? How can dividing from a false teacher who rises up in the church promote unity in the church? The answer is that the only unity that counts for unity in the church is rooted in a common apostolic teaching. Isolating false teachers—avoiding them—is Paul’s strategy for preserving unity that is based on true teaching.

Joy in the Truth Is Dominant

Now let’s pause here before looking at the reasons for these commands in verse 18. I want to make a clarifying comment about both of these commands and the doctrine that connects them.

First, with regard to the command to “watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught,” it is possible to go overboard on this. I hesitate even to say it, since I don’t think this is the temptation of most churches or most Christians today. But it is possible, and there are churches and people that do go overboard.

What I mean is that they become so obsessed with spotting doctrinal error that they lose their ability to rejoice in doctrinal truth. They’re like dogs that are trained so completely to sniff out drugs at the airport, that even when they’re off duty they greet everybody that way. It doesn’t make for a very welcoming atmosphere.

The book of Romans does not make this mistake. Periodically Paul warns against doctrinal or ethical error. But most of Romans is a glorious display of the work of Christ for us and in us. So let’s ask the Lord to help us get the balance right here. We must do this: “Watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.” But this is not the main thing we do. Vigilance over error is necessary, but joy in the truth is dominant.

There Is a Defined Body of Doctrine

Second, with regard to the doctrine, don’t miss the obvious: There is such a thing—a body of doctrine that someone can go against. Verse 17: “Watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.” There is a doctrinal standard. There is something you can depart from. Paul refers to it in several ways. In Romans 6:17, he calls it the standard of teaching: “[You] have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.” In 2 Timothy 1:13-14, he calls it the pattern of sound words and the good deposit. “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” In Acts 20:27, he calls it the whole counsel of God. “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”

So there is a body or standard or pattern of sound doctrine. The caution here, of course, is that we must not put every minor opinion about hundreds of Bible verses in this category so that there is no room for any disagreement at all (cf. Philippians 3:15). The pattern of sound doctrine would be a faithful summary of biblical essentials determined by how crucial they are in expressing and preserving the history of redemption, the nature and condition of man, the nature and work of Christ, the nature and word of the Holy Spirit, and the nature and work of God the Father. One of the greatest challenges in the quest for unity is deciding what belongs in this body of doctrine when Paul says, if someone departs from it, avoid him. That’s part of what the elders were working on last year in the baptism question. And which we are still working on.

Leave Room for Enemy Love

Third, with regard to the second command at the end of verse 17 (avoid them), we need to be sure we leave room for obedience to the teaching in Romans 12 that says we should “Bless those who curse you” (v. 14), and, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (v. 18), and so on.

Avoiding someone does not mean: Stop caring about him, or stop praying for him, or even stop talking to them. When Peter acted contrary to the gospel in Galatians 2, Paul did not first avoid him. He first confronted him with a view to winning him back. That kind of contact is not forbidden. What Paul commands with the words avoid them, is not no contact at all, but rather avoid the kind of contact that communicates life can go on as usual between us. It can’t. If you, as a professing Christian, persist in departing from the doctrine the apostles taught, we can’t simply hang out together like we used to.

False Teachers Seem Nice

That brings us finally to verse 18 and the two reasons Paul gives for why doctrinal vigilance is so important. Verse 18: “For such persons [that is, the persons who depart from the doctrine] do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.”

Let’s take the second one first. Verse 18b: “By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.” The word for flattery is simply blessing. And smooth talk doesn’t necessarily mean manifestly slippery. It just means pleasant and plausible. So the reason we must be so vigilant over biblical doctrine is that those who depart from it take simple people with them by pleasant, plausible speech that presents itself as a blessing. False teachers don’t get a following by being rough and harsh. They get a following by being nice.

Just take two examples from history: Arius (d. 336) and Socinus (d. 1604)—both of whom denied the deity of Christ. Parker Williamson describes Arius like this:

Here was a bright, energetic, attractive fellow, the kind of citizen whom any Rotary Club would welcome. Singing sea chanties in dockside pubs and teaching Bible stories to the Wednesday night faithful, this was an immensely popular man. His story reminds us that heresy does not bludgeon us into belief. We are seduced. (Parker T. Williamson, Standing Firm: Reclaiming the Chastain Faith in Times of Controversy [Lenoir, North Carolina: PLC Publications, 1996], p. 31.)

And another writer describes Socinus like this:

He was a gentleman. His morals were above reproach and he distinguished himself by his unfailing courtesy. Unfailing courtesy was remarkable in an age when even the great Protestant leaders, Luther and Calvin would use vile street language when arguing with their opponents.

This means that it will seldom be popular to resist false teachers in the church because they are almost always perceived as bringing a blessing and speaking with winsome words. They are gentlemen. And Paul says the innocent are carried away. Hence he says, “Watch out for them. And avoid them.”

False Teachers Serve Their Own Appetites

The other reason why doctrinal vigilance is so crucial, Paul says, is (verse 18a) because “such persons [the false teachers] do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites”—literally their own belly. In other words, the issue in false teaching is not a simple intellectual mistake. Behind the plausible speech and the smooth gentlemanly demeanor is idolatry, and the idol is the belly—the appetite for food or sex or human approval. Behind serious false teaching, we almost always find not merely intellectual mistakes, but worldly passions enslaving the mind.

Watch Out

So I close with a pointed call to vigilance: Watch out for smooth talkers who pastor large churches, write many books, lead wide ministries, and do not manifestly prize above their earthly good the whole counsel of God.

Destruction Is not Sleeping

The main point of 2 Peter 1 which everything else supports or elaborates is verse 10: "Brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call and election; for if you do this, you will never fall." Peter wants us to enjoy the certainty of our salvation. He wants us to be so firmly established in God that we cannot be shaken by any temptation or false teaching. In 3:17 he draws his letter to a close with this admonition: "Beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability." Peter devotes his last will and testament (1:14, 15) to help us be firm and stable and unshakable in our faith.

The way he helps us in chapter 1 is by reminding us about God's precious and very great promises. He assures us that if we trust firmly in these, God's power will flow into us and enable us to "escape the corruption that is in the world because of passion" (v. 4), and to grow in godliness and self-control and love (vv. 6, 7). He reminds us that the source of these promises, the Scriptures, "did not come by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (v. 21). And not only that, but we have this prophetic word made even more sure by the eyewitness experience of Peter who saw Christ's majesty on the mount of transfiguration (v. 16). In summary, then, the confirmation of God's Word leads to confidence in his promises, which brings power for godliness, which gives us a personal, experiential confirmation of our call and election.

Same Goal, Different Approach

And now comes chapter 2, and a very significant change in Peter's approach. I say a change in his approach, not his goal. His goal is still to make us firm and stable and unshakable in our faith. But his approach is very different. Chapter 1 is mainly an encouragement to avail ourselves of God's power to lead lives of godliness and love. Chapter 2 is mainly a warning against the destruction that will befall those who don't avail themselves of this power. If chapter 1 is the carrot, chapter 2 is the crack of the whip over our heads. There are no commands, no admonitions, no imperatives in chapter 2; just pure, terrifying description of what will happen to those who fall prey to the false teachers in the church.

The main point of chapter 2 is expressed in four places. The last part of verse 1: those who deny the Master who bought them bring upon themselves swift destruction. The last part of verse 3: "from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not been asleep." Verse 12: "But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed, reviling in matters of which they are ignorant, will be destroyed in the same destruction with them, suffering wrong for their wrongdoing." The last part of verse 17: "For them the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved." The main point of the chapter is a warning that destruction awaits the false teachers and their followers. Chapter 2 is the other side of the coin from what Peter said in 1:10, 11. There he said, "Be zealous to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never fall; so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." Here in chapter 2 he says, if you contradict the doctrine and the character of God's elect, you will fall, and there will be no entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord, but instead eternal destruction in the gloom of hell.

Not Playing Games

What would we think of commanders in the British and Argentine armed forces who deployed their troops as though the war were a game and who never paused to ponder that on this or that mission sons and husbands and fathers will be maimed and killed? We would probably call them heartless. How much more, then, should we regard a pastor or teacher or counselor as heartless, who does not pause to ponder that eternal life and death are at stake in preaching and teaching and counseling. It is heartless to give the impression that in the matters of doctrine, faith, and obedience we are playing a game. It is heartless to foster the impression that the most weighty concerns of our preaching and teaching and counseling are the alteration of psychological states and the modification of behavior. If that were our most weighty concern, then preaching would simply be a variety of psychotherapy, and Christian doctrine would simply be another means to mental health, and the church would be just another institution for the advancement of the psychological and social welfare. That is exactly the way more and more people view preaching and doctrine and church. But it is heartless, because it treats life as though it were a game, when in fact eternal joy in the kingdom of Christ and eternal misery in hell are at stake. That is our most weighty concern, and that sets the church off as distinct from all other human institutions.

2 Peter 2 is aimed at keeping me from being a heartless pastor. It aims to keep me from playing games in this pulpit. It aims to keep my sermons from dissolving into pep-talks about the power of positive thinking. It aims to make me earnest about my calling and angry about false teaching and grieved over the destruction of the ungodly. This chapter is no accident in Holy Scripture. It is the Word of God and is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, that all of us might become very, very zealous to confirm our call and election.

False Prophets Who Deny the Master

Let's look at the first 10 verses today. 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, bringing upon themselves swift destruction." Wherever important truth is at stake, counterfeits will be offered. In the Old Testament men claimed to speak from God when he had not sent them (Deuteronomy 18:20), and in the New Testament church there arose those whose explanations and applications of apostolic doctrine were false and destructive. Even though Peter says these false teachers will arise in the future, it is clear from the rest of the letter that the prophecy is already being fulfilled. The false teachers are on the scene.

The first thing we learn about them is that they are denying the Master who bought them. What does this mean? As with most heresies, Jesus Christ is in some way being diminished. Some aspect of his personhood or his work is being denied. But Peter never tells us what aspect. In fact, you get the impression from chapter 2 that the error of the false teachers was an error in morality, not doctrine. But the two are never really separate. How you live and how you esteem Christ always rise and fall together. It is possible to live in such a disobedient way that Christ is scorned and belittled by our very behavior. That seems to be what was happening here.

There is a clue to this in the little phrase, "Master who bought them" (v. 1). In 1 Corinthians 6:20 Paul says, "You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your bodies." And Peter said in his first letter (1:18), "You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers . . . with the precious blood of Christ" (cf. Revelation 14:3, 4; Acts 20:28). When the apostles spoke of being bought or ransomed by Christ (as Peter does in verse 1), they pictured us as slaves of sin and Satan, being purchased and made free from sin to serve Christ and glorify God. And the context in both 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter 1 has to do with sexual morality (1 Peter 1:14 and 1 Corinthians 6:18, 19). To be bought by Christ is to be freed from the domination of sexual passions that drive one into sexual preoccupations and illicit sexual intercourse. We belong to a new master whose promises are so superior to the promises of sex that (as 1:4 says) we can escape from the lordship of passion. When this happens, we exalt Christ and affirm his worth. But if we live in the grip of sexual domination, we belittle Christ and "deny the Master who bought us."

There are some indications in the text that, in fact, the false teachers were propagating sexual immorality in the name of Christian freedom. For example, verse 2: "Many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled." Notice that right after saying they deny the Master who bought them, it says that their seductive danger lies in their licentiousness. "Licentiousness" is a fancy word for "blatant sexual immorality"—sexual immorality with an arrogant (cf. 2:10, 18), debauched flare (see especially Romans 13:13; 2 Corinthians 12:21; 1 Peter 4:3). Do you remember what happened at Corinth? In 1 Corinthians 5:1 Paul says, "It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found among pagans; for a man is living with his father's wife. And you are arrogant." This same attitude seems to mark the false teachers in 2 Peter. In 2:18 it says, "For, uttering loud boasts of folly, they entice with licentious passions of the flesh men who have barely escaped those who live in error." In these false teachers arrogance and immorality go hand in hand. Notice verse 10: "they indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. They are bold and self-willed." They "despise authority" because they cannot stand any controls on their passions. This helps us to understand verse 1, where it says they deny the Master who bought them. They don't want a master. A master means authority and submission. But they despise authority.

This begins to shed a lot of light back on chapter 1. For example, verse 4, where Peter tells us that the promises of God enable us "to escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion." And verse 6 where Peter stresses that we add to our knowledge "self-control." It becomes clear that already in chapter 1 Peter was choosing his words in view of the false teaching he opposed.

But it seems almost impossible that such a thing as arrogant sexual immorality could actually be taught in the church. What did the false teachers say? Verse 3 tells us, "In their greed they will exploit you with false words." They didn't just come in and seduce people with good looks. They taught. They gave reasons why people should abandon their rules about sexuality. They probably would have said, "It's OK for kids to experiment sexually. It's OK for a couple to live together out of wedlock. It's OK for a husband and wife to gratify their desires with a prostitute or another person's partner." There is nothing new about the contemporary assault on the sanctity of sexual intercourse in marriage. Jesus wasn't gone for more than 30 years before false teachers in the church were announcing open sex as a legitimate Christian lifestyle. So listen, young people. You know who the real old fogies are today? They are the swingers who live together unmarried, the wife-swappers, the prostitute patrons, the kids at school who twitter about their weekend connections. It's all old-fashioned; and even its perverted Christian authorization is as old as the church.

You can see it in verse 19: "They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption." Sound familiar? The push for free sex was there long before we had any puritanical or Victorian ethic to rebel against. The false teachers were taking the grace of God and perverting it into licentiousness (Jude 1:4). They were saying that what we do with our bodies does not matter, and in fact the more sensuality you pursue, the more you show your true Christian freedom from the law. In the name of grace and in the name of Christ they perverted Christian moral teaching, and in that way denied the Master who bought them.

The answer to give to a person (inside or outside the church) who says that we are enslaved to an old-fashioned sexual morality is this: 1) All immorality is just as old-fashioned as biblical morality. 2) Why should it be called slavery when we freely choose to govern our passions according to divine principles, but be called freedom when you follow the dictates of your passions? If we choose to follow God and you choose to follow your impulses, who's the fool? Listen! Don't let the world shape you! The world is covered with darkness (1:19). It is enslaved to irrational passions. And unless it turns and repents, it is doomed.

God's Past Judgment

That's what the rest of our text is about. The point of verses 4–10 is to warn us that since God has punished unrighteousness in the past, he will punish it in the future. Peter illustrates God's wrath with three cases in verses 4–8 and then draws his conclusion in verses 9 and 10. First, in verse 4 is the case of the fallen angels. "If God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom (or chains of darkness) to be kept until judgment . . . " What a lesson there is here! Angels are the most glorious and mighty beings under God. But all their power and dignity was of no use when they sinned. God was unsparing in his sentence. They were cast out of his presence and have been reserved in darkness, until the great day of judgment when they will be consigned to the "lake of fire and brimstone to be tormented day and night forever and ever" (Revelation 20:10). The false teachers should learn from this that if they "despise authority" (v. 10) and reject the lordship of Christ (v. 1), they will hear the sentence of Jesus which he foretold in Matthew 25:41, "Depart from me, you cursed, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."

The second illustration of God's judgment is the case of Noah's generation in verse 5: "If he did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven other persons, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly . . . " If the false teachers do not learn the lesson from the fallen angels, let them learn it from the flood. God swept away the ungodly in judgment. And even though the rebellious and the licentious today may think they are safe, they should learn that "from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction is not sleeping" (v. 3). It will come upon them with horrifying swiftness.

The third illustration is the case of Sodom and Gomorrah in verses 6–8. "If by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example to those who were to be ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked (for by what that righteous man saw and heard as he lived among them, he was vexed in his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds) . . . " If the case of the fallen angels and the case of Noah's generation do not deter people from following the false teachers, then surely the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah will wake them up to God's wrath. For these cities were judged for the very licentiousness that the false teachers commend.

To make the lesson of history perfectly plain Peter states it in verses 9 and 10: "So the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial (like Noah and Lot), and he knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority." And, of course, Peter doesn't just mean God knows how to do it. It means he has done it in the past; he will do it in the future. Destruction is not sleeping.

Lessons for Today

What, then, do we learn for our life today? First, the church is not immune to false teachers. We must make every effort to keep ourselves rooted and grounded in the Word of God lest we lose our stability and be carried away in error (3:17).

Second, advocating sexual immorality is a heresy. It is an offense against Jesus Christ the Lord. The practice and propagation of sexual activity outside marriage is a denial of the Master who bought us, because he died for us to free us from the domination of sexual passion. We should glorify him in our bodies by submitting to his pattern of sexual fulfillment. There is nothing new about free sex. And we should resist it today as resolutely as the apostles of old.

Third, divine judgment is coming upon those who deny Christ in this way. And it is heartless to encourage people to go about their business and live their lives as though nothing very significant were at stake. Heaven and hell hang on whether we follow Christ in righteousness or deny him in immorality.

Fourth, you can be saved from judgment if you repent and trust the Master who bought you by his blood. When it says the Lord knows how to deliver the godly (v. 9), it doesn't mean he only delivers the perfect. Lot was far from perfect. If you put your trust in Jesus Christ and press on to love what he loves, "then you will never fall, and there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Better Never to Have Known the Way

Chapter 1 of 2 Peter is a positive, encouraging summons for us to confirm our call and election by availing ourselves of God's power for godliness through faith in his precious and very great promises. Chapter 2 is a very bleak portrayal of the false teachers in the churches who do not avail themselves of God's power and give themselves over to sexual indulgence in the name of Christian freedom. The main point of the chapter is that these false teachers and those enticed by them will in the end experience condemnation and destruction. The chapter intends to do in a negative way what chapter 1 aims to do in a positive way, namely, make us earnest about the business of confirming our call and election.

We saw last week from verses 1–10 that the heresy of the false teachers is a moral heresy. They deny the Master who bought them, by promoting sexual license. Instead of submitting to Christ's way of sexual purity, they despise authority and teach that by grace we are free in Christ to use our bodies as we please. The more we rise above the limitations of the law, the more we magnify the grace of God. Therefore, as it were, let us sin that grace may abound (Romans 6:1)! Peter warns in verse 10 that God will hold such people under punishment until the day of judgment. Heaven and hell are at stake in whether we rely on Christ for our hope and obey his Word, or whether we deny him by our disobedience.

Today we will listen together to the rest of chapter 2 and try to see what lessons there are for us. We will go through verses 10–22 in four sections. In verses 10b–13a the focus is on the brazen willfulness and pride and self-sufficiency of the false teachers. In verses 13b–16 the focus is on their unashamed indulgence in sex and their love of money. In verse 17 the emptiness of their teaching is exposed. And in verses 18–22 Peter warns how these false teachers entice new and unstable Christians into moral apostasy where their last condition is worse than if they had never known the way of righteousness. Let's look at these sections briefly, one at a time.

Boastful and Reviling

First, verses 10b–13a. Describing the false teachers, Peter says: "Bold and willful, they are not afraid to revile the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a reviling judgment upon them before the Lord. But these (i.e., the false teachers), like irrational animals, creatures of instinct born to be caught and killed, reviling in matters of which they are ignorant, will be destroyed in the same destruction with them, suffering wrong for their wrongdoing." It is possible that the "glorious ones" mentioned in verse 10 are the fallen angels of verse 4, and that Peter is saying: the false teachers are so brazen and cocky and self-assured that they revile the evil spirits as though they were safe from any supernatural evil influence at all. And to show the arrogance of such an attitude of false security, Peter says: even the good angels who, unlike the false teachers, are stronger than the evil ones, nevertheless do not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment on them. They humble themselves and leave judgment to God.

But it seems to be very unlikely that Peter would have used the phrase "glorious ones" to refer to fallen angels. Literally the term is simply "glories" and was used in 1 Peter 1:11 to refer to all the glories surrounding Christ in his exaltation and second coming. In 2 Peter the word "glory" is associated with the future of Christ's second coming (1:3, 17, where the transfigured Christ foreshadows the glorious returning Christ, 3:18). And in 2 Peter 3:3, 4 the false teachers are pictured as mocking this glorious second coming. So I am inclined to think that the "glories" which the false teachers revile are the glories of God and Christ, especially associated with the second coming. Then when it says in verse 11 that "the angels (notice it does not say 'good' angels since there is probably no contrast with bad angels in view), though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a reviling judgment upon them before the Lord," it probably means that the angels don't revile the false teachers, even though they deserve it and the angels are in an exalted position to give it. This contrast shows how incredibly puffed up the false teachers are. Even angels yield to the authority of God to pass just judgment. But the false teachers despise all authority and rise above the angels to scorn the glories of the holy God, probably by denying the second coming.

Verse 12 adds that the false teachers are like animals in two senses. First, they are utterly ignorant of what they speak. Their reviling at the glories of Christ is like a wolf howling at the sunrise. And, second, they will be destroyed like the animals. They will come to and end in judgment, and all their howling will be silenced. We are admonished, therefore, to beware of spiritual pride. As Paul says, "Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Corinthians 10:12). We are utterly dependent on the grace of God and dare not boast in any self-sufficiency.

Carousing and Greedy

The second unit is verses 13b–16.

They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes reveling in their dissipation, carousing with you. They have eyes full of adultery insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression; a dumb ass spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.

Here the brazen willfulness of the false teachers is seen in their doing in the daytime (v. 13) what other sinners only dare to do at night. The term rendered "carousing with you" in verse 13 means literally "eating feasts with you." The picture seems to be of an all-church banquet where these men show up as spots and blemishes (contrast 3:14) with their eyes full of adultery (v. 14). They can't look on a woman without thinking about sexual relations. With hearts well-trained in greed they try to isolate the unstable new-comers and draw them away in licentiousness (v. 2).

Peter doesn't say how the false teachers aim to make money, but the analogy of Balaam (in vv. 15, 16) gives a clue. When the Israelites were approaching the land of Moab, Balak, the king, was afraid of them and sent for a prophet named Balaam and offered him money (Numbers 22:7) to come and curse the Israelites. This is what Peter zeroes in on in verse 15: Balaam loved gain from wrongdoing, specifically, gain from someone willing to pay for his prophetic services. Probably, then, the false teachers were not only luring young converts away into sexual license, but were charging them for their own special teaching. If you pay for something, you take it more seriously!

Notice who the false teachers go after in verse 14: "unsteady souls." We get an even clearer picture in verse 18: "they entice . . . people who have barely escaped from those who live in error." In other words, new converts; people who are unstable in their grasp of truth. This is a strong admonition, first, to establish our own doctrinal stability in the Word, but then, also to labor seriously to ground our children and all new converts quickly in the truth of Scripture. Let's be a church where we are constantly helping each other to send our roots ever deeper into the rock of God's truth.

Waterless Springs and Mists

The third section is just one verse. Verse 17: "These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved." Picture yourself in the desert with a parched tongue, longing for water to satisfy your thirst. You see an oasis with trees and grass. You run, thrown yourself down by the spring, and it is dry as a bone. These false teachers offer thrills and insight and freedom, but in reality they are empty and barren. They are like mists that seem to promise rain for the land, but are quickly blown away. O what a need there is in the church for discernment between waterless springs and springs of living water! The one bubbles up unto eternal life. The other sinks down into the gloom where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. We must become a deeply discerning people.

Distorting the Gospel of Freedom

The last unit is the most straightforward warning to the church about the perils of being drawn away in this false teaching. Verses 18–22:

Uttering loud boasts of folly, they entice with licentious passions of the flesh people who have barely escaped from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he enslaved. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, 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. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "The dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire."

The way the false teachers entice new and unstable converts is by promising them freedom, according to verse 19. I think it's possible to get a pretty good idea how they argued. In 1 Peter 2:16 Peter says, "Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as slaves of God." The false teachers were right to promise people freedom. The call to freedom is at the heart of New Testament faith. But this was not a call to give free reign to your passions. For then you are really a slave of corruption as verse 19 says. The apostolic call to freedom recognizes 1) that Christ had died to free us from the guilt and power of sin; 2) that we are free from the law in the sense that we need no longer strive to keep it in our own strength; and 3) that we are given new hearts by the Holy Spirit so that freely we delight in holiness.

But everywhere this gospel of freedom was preached, false teachers distorted it. And 2 Peter 3:16 shows that the writings of the apostle Paul were a sitting duck for this distortion. It says, "There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction." The false teachers take the unstable souls (of 2:14) and teach how to use the letters of Paul to justify their view of sexual freedom.

Paul already knew that his teaching about freedom was open to this abuse, and he warned against it. For example, in Galatians 5:13 he says: "You were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another." But the false teachers were doing just that, using their freedom as an opportunity to indulge their love for money and their love for praise and their love for sexual pleasure. They probably quoted Galatians 5:1 with great power among the new and unstable converts: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery!" "Away with the enslaving rules that govern the life of the body! You are not under law; you are under grace!" But they probably neglected entirely those other teachings of Paul, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13). So Peter blasts the trumpet of warning: they are twisting the Scriptures to their own destruction, and their promised freedom is a bondage to corruption.

Storing Up More Judgment

Then in verses 20 and 21 the decisive word of warning rings out to the church in danger of being enticed: if you turn away from the holy commandment and forsake the way of righteousness and by your actions deny the Master who bought you (v. 1), then you are not saved and your condition is worse than when you had never known the way. Peter pictures the real possibility in verse 20 that by learning of Christ some people make a start in the Christian life, and by all outward appearances have escaped from the defilements of the world. Then the cares and riches and pleasures of life (as Jesus says) choke the young plant, and it withers and bears no fruit and dies (Luke 8:14).

Two parts need to be stressed from these verses. First, notice the principle that the more you know of Christ and his way, the more severe will be your judgment for not trusting and obeying Christ. Better never to have known the way, Peter says in verse 21. And in this he simply preserves the teaching of Jesus. He said, "Woe to you Chorazin and Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you" (Matthew 11:21–22). The more evidence you have of Christ's reality, the more severe your judgment for not repenting. "Everyone to whom much is given, of him much will be required" (Luke 12:47, 48). Peter warns the new converts: if you forsake the way now, after all you have learned and experienced, your doom will be more miserable than the pagans'. The doctor gave me ten days worth of antibiotics and said, "Don't stop taking them after five days just because your sore throat clears up. If you do, it may flare up all the worse." So it is in the Christian life: if you stop trusting the heavenly doctor and disobey his prescription for your redemption, your latter state will be worse than the former.

The second point that needs to be stressed is that Peter is not teaching that God's elect can lose their salvation. He is most definitely teaching that church members can be lost, and people who make outward professions of faith and even begin to clean up their lives can turn away from Christ and be lost. But in verse 22 he explains to us in a proverb that we should not be overly surprised at this: dogs characteristically return to their vomit; and no matter how clean you make a pig on the outside, if it is still a pig, it will return to the mire. In other words, those who leave the way of righteousness, never to return, simply show that their inner nature had never been changed. This was Peter's way of saying what 1 John 2:19 says, "They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that it might be plain that they are all not of us." Or as Jesus said, "He who endures to the end will be saved" (Matthew 10:22). Or as Hebrews puts it, "We share in Christ if we hold our first confidence firm to the end" (Hebrews 3:14). Or as Paul says, "I preached to you the gospel which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast" (1 Corinthians 15:1, 2). The whole New Testament is agreed: there is no salvation apart from persevering faith. And persevering faith always works itself out in the way of righteousness. Therefore, to abandon the way of righteousness is to exclude oneself from salvation.

But this can never happen to God's elect. If it could, verse 10 of chapter 1 would be nonsense. There Peter says, "Be the more zealous to confirm your call and election." If the elect could be lost, there would be no advantage in confirming our election. The point of verse 10 is that the elect will never fall but will enter into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And therefore we should be utterly earnest about confirming our election.

And 2 Peter 2 was written to help us do just that. It aims to help us confirm our election by warning us not to deny the Master who bought us (v. 1) , and by strengthening us to resist the temptations of spiritual pride and self-sufficiency (11–13), the love of money and all its destructive tendencies (14–16), and the summons to unbridled sexual license (2, 7, 14, 18). It's not the kind of chapter we enjoy reading. But not all medicine tastes good. God, the great physician, knows our need. And every word is profitable. If it increases our earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope to the end, it will have succeeded. May God make it so. Amen.

When Not to Believe an Angel

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ.

The truth that underlies this passage is that there is only one gospel. Growing up out of this truth are three statements which are very crucial for us to hear and believe, because nothing has happened to change them between Paul's day and ours. The first is that it is astonishing when a person hears and believes the gospel but afterward turns away from it (1:6–7). The second is that if a person rejects the gospel, he stands under God's curse, whether he is an angel or an apostle (1:8, 9). The third statement is that the servant of the gospel seeks to please God alone, not men.

Only One Gospel

The text does not define the gospel. The rest of the book does. So our focus today will not be on the content of the gospel but on its cruciality. First of all, the underlying truth of the passage: There is only one gospel. In verse 6 Paul says that the Galatians are starting to turn away to a "different gospel." Then in verse 7 he corrects a false impression. He did not mean to say that there are several possible gospels and that they have simply chosen another of several options. In verse 7 he carefully says, "Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel." This verse is very clear: There is no other gospel than the one he preached to them and which they received. To be sure, as verses 6 and 7 make plain, there are people presenting their ideas as gospel, but these are perversions.

The implications of this text for our day are very important. The text is a radical and forthright denial of a pluralism which says that we are all on different roads to heaven, but our destination is the same. There are popular forms of this universalism, and there are technical, scholarly forms of it, but there is no biblical universalism—that is, no biblical teaching that a person can go on rejecting the gospel of Christ and still be saved. There are other religions besides Christianity, and there are other leaders besides Jesus Christ, but there is no other gospel, no other good news of salvation.

And what makes that underlying truth in the text so powerful is that the "different gospel" in the churches of Galatia was not a religion from a foreign land. It was a close counterfeit to the real thing. The people in verse 7 who were perverting the gospel were professing Christians. They probably belonged to the church in Jerusalem and knew its leaders (2:12). This "different gospel" was not on the order of Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam. It was an in-house distortion. It was promoted by men who called themselves Christian "brothers" (2:4).

So another implication of verses 6 and 7 for us is that doctrinal maturity is not a luxury at Bethlehem. It is a necessity. If a "different gospel," which is no gospel but only a perversion, can spring up inside the church, then surely we must make it our aim to become rigorous and discriminating in our doctrinal knowledge. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14:20, "Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature." Galatians is one of the best books in the Bible for helping us refine and clarify what the heart of the gospel is, which can't be replaced or altered. There is a tragic pattern in churches and in history, I think. Renewal breaks forth on a church or on an age through a fresh encounter with the gospel and the Spirit. Hearts are filled with the love of Christ, and mouths are filled with praise. The concern for evangelism and justice rises.

But in all the glorious stirrings of heart there begins to be an impatience with doctrinal refinements. Clear doctrine requires thought, and thought is seen to be the enemy of feeling, so it is resisted. There is the widespread sense that the Holy Spirit will guard the church from all error, and so rigorous study and thought about the gospel are felt to be not only a threat to joy but a failure of faith. The result over a generation is the emergence of a people whose understanding of biblical teaching is so hazy and imprecise that they are sitting ducks for the Galatian heresy. It arises right in their midst. Paul said to the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20:30, "From among your own selves will arise men speaking distorted things to draw away the disciples after them." He says in verse 27 that he has done his part to prepare them by "declaring the whole counsel of God." I hope to be able to say the same thing some day about Bethlehem: "I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God."

So the underlying truth of the passage (Galatians 1:6–10) is that there is no other gospel. And the two implications we need to hear from that are that universalism is wrong (there are not many roads to heaven, but only one) and that rigorous attention to doctrinal clarity and faithfulness is crucial in the long run of church life.

To Turn Away Is Astonishing

The first of three statements now that grow up out of this underlying truth is that it is astonishing when a person first believes the true gospel and then turns away from it. In verse 6 Paul says, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel." In this verse there are two reasons implied why turning to a different gospel is so astonishing.

First, it is a turning from a calling God. "You are deserting him who called you." They are not just turning from a doctrine, or an idea. Don't fall prey to the notion that a concern for doctrine is impersonal. The gospel is the very personal good news of God's call to you. If you turn to a different gospel, you turn away from God, and that is astonishing. The second reason turning to a different gospel is astonishing is that it is a turning away from grace. In Galatians 5:4 Paul describes what is happening like this: "You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace." Paul is simply stunned that so soon after his beautiful portrayal of Christ crucified for their sin they would begin to turn to another gospel. He says in 3:1, "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?" You can picture Paul back in Antioch listening in stunned silence to the reports that the churches of Galatia are turning away from God and away from the grace of Christ. And he puts his head in his hands and wonders if his work was in vain. It was astonishing then, and it is astonishing today that anyone hearing the best news in all the world (God offers you full and free forgiveness and hope) would turn to a different gospel, which is no gospel at all.

To Turn Away Brings God's Curse

The second statement that grows out of the underlying truth that there is no other gospel is that rejection of that gospel leaves a person under God's curse. Verses 8 and 9: "Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you the gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed." The word repeated here is anathema (accursed). When a person is anathema, he is cut off from Christ (Romans 9:3) and doomed to eternal punishment. In 2 Thessalonians 1:9 Paul said that those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus "shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." When a person rejects the gospel, the free, gracious gift of God's forgiveness and kingship, then he remains under the divine curse for his sin—a terrifying prospect because of its torment and unending length. The reason I say this curse abides on anyone who rejects the gospel and not just on the false teachers in these verses is that Paul uses the same word in 1 Corinthians 16:22, "If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed."

Paul does not have a cotton candy concern for the gospel. He does not offer sugary smiles in controversy and say, "To each his own." For Paul the gospel of Christ is the point at which the awesome life of God touches the life of this foul world of sin. And when that offer of eternal grace to utterly unworthy creatures like us is rejected or perverted to satisfy our pride, somewhere someone must rage at the heinousness of the crime. O, how we need to meditate on the horror of rejecting the gospel. Satan does his best with television and radio to create in us a mind that is so trivial and banal and petty and earthly that we find ourselves incapable of feeling what terrifying truth is in this word anathema. O, how we need to guard ourselves from the barrage of eternity-denying entertainment. We need to cultivate a pure and childlike imagination that hears a word like anathema the way a child hears his first peal of thunder, or feels his first earthquake, or suffers his first storm at sea. The Bible does not reveal to us the eternal curse of God that we may yawn and turn the page. The wrath of God is revealed to shake unbelievers out of their stupor, and to take the swagger out of the Christian's walk and the cocky twang out of his voice. Don't skim over verses 8 and 9 quickly. There is much humbling and sobering and sanctifying to be had here. Ponder these things in quietness.

Seeking to Please God, Not Man

Finally, the third statement that grows out of the underlying truth of only one gospel is that the servant of the gospel seeks to please God alone and not men. Verse 10: "Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ." In verses 8 and 9 Paul had just said something that will not win him many friends. It doesn't please most people to hear someone pronounce the sentence of eternal damnation. And so what Paul does in verse 10 is give an account of why he is willing to talk this way. He is willing to talk this way because pleasing people is much lower on his list of priorities than serving Christ. Two things are at stake when the gospel is perverted: one is the glory of Christ; the other is the salvation of sinners. If the gospel is twisted, the all-sufficiency of Christ's work is dishonored, and the way to salvation for sinners is blocked. Therefore, in order to serve Christ—to advance his glory and achieve his saving purpose—Paul must oppose the perversion of the gospel with all his might, whether it pleases people or not. For the glory of Christ (6:14) and for the good of those who may yet believe the gospel (2:5), Paul is willing to speak unpleasant truth.

The lesson to learn from verse 10 is not that the more people you can displease the more spiritual you are. It was never Paul's aim to alienate people. On the contrary, in 1 Corinthians 10:31f. he says, "Do all to the glory of God. Give no offence to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please all men in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage but that of many, that they may be saved." And in Romans 15:2f. he says, "Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to edify him; for Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached thee fell on me.'" In other words, it is good to please people provided that pleasing them is a means to their salvation and their edification and to God's glory. This calls for a heart of deep spiritual wisdom to know when to be angry and say, "Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees!" and when to weep and say, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered you like a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not." "Let your speech be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone" (Colossians 4:6).

The most thrilling implication of verse 10 for me personally is this: The absoluteness of Christ's lordship is gloriously liberating. It frees me from having to worry about pleasing one person here and another person there. It brings unity and integrity to my life. When you live to please only one person, everything you do is integrated because it relates to that one person. Shall I go to this movie? Read this book? Make this purchase? Take this job? Go out on this date? Marry this person? What a freeing thing it is to know that there is one person who is to be pleased in every decision of life—Jesus. Sometimes pleasing him will please others. Sometimes it won't, and that will hurt. But the deep joy of a single-minded life is worth it all.

In summary: The underlying truth of this passage is that there is one, and only one, gospel. It is therefore astonishing to turn away from it—away from God who calls, and away from grace in Christ. It is not only astonishing, it is tragic, because the person who rejects the gospel is anathema, accursed and cut off from God. But on the other hand, if you embrace the one true gospel, not only are all your sins forgiven by God, but a thrilling unity and integrity and liberty come into your life because there is only one person to please, Jesus Christ, and he only wills what is best for you.

Where Is the Promise of His Appearing?

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, 2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, 3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation." 5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

In the second chapter of this letter Peter has given us a graphic description of the sexual licentiousness, the love of money, and the rejection of authority by which the false teachers were denying the Master who bought them, Jesus Christ. He warns the churches vividly that if they are enticed out of the way of righteousness and abandon their obedience to Christ, it will be worse for them in the final judgment than if they had never known the way. It is a very sobering word for people who sit under gospel preaching but refuse to give themselves wholly to the Savior.

In chapter 3 Peter returns in part to the theme of chapter 1, namely, that God has given his people precious and very great promises, so that if we hold them in front of us and trust them, we will have power to resist temptation and remain in the way of righteousness. You can see in verses 13–14 the connection between the hope which the promises inspire and the power for godliness which this hope gives. "According to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace." Confident expectation of a new world of righteousness empowers us to live for peace and purity in this world.

The Denial of the Second Coming

But if the promise of Christ's second coming and the new world of joy and righteousness is going to fill us with hope and power for godliness, we have to really believe it's going to happen. And the churches to which Peter was writing were being infiltrated by false teachers (2:1) who did not believe it was going to happen. Probably these teachers were like Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Timothy 2:17, 18), who taught that the resurrection of believers was already past. That is, there won't be a bodily resurrection, only a spiritual one, here again twisting the letters of Paul which said, "You were buried with him through baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith" (Colossians 2:12). And since we have already been raised like Christ, then Christ did not really experience a bodily resurrection, but only a spiritual one; and, therefore, this notion of a powerful, glorious bodily return is a cleverly devised myth. And with the rejection of Christ's glorious bodily coming, the false teachers swept away the reality of judgment for things done in the body. And in this way they provided a theological basis for their indifference to sexual morality. The body is canceled out of all moral considerations, except as one can demonstrate his spiritual freedom by defying physical, sexual restrictions.

In chapter 1, verse 16, Peter had already taken the offensive against the denial of the second coming. He said, "We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." That is, Christ certified to us that he was indeed going to return in bodily glory, by revealing to us the glory of his transformed body in a preview on the mount of transfiguration. Therefore, we have the prophetic word of the second coming made more sure, and we should keep it before us like a lamp shining in a dark place until the day of his coming dawns and the day star of glory rises in your hearts.

Now in chapter 3, verses 1–9, Peter confronts the denial of the second coming head on. He says in verses 1 and 2 that he wants the believers to have a sincere and lively memory (cf. 1:13) of what the prophets predicted and what Jesus commanded. He probably has in mind prophetic words like Malachi 4:1, 2: "Behold the day comes burning like an oven when all the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble . . . But for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go forth leaping like calves from the stall." And when he speaks of the commandment of the Lord and Savior (in v. 2), he probably has in view words like Matthew 24:42: "Watch, therefore, for you do not know what day your Lord is coming."

Then in verses 3 and 4 he introduces the false teachers again. They themselves are part of prophetic fulfillment, and their presence shows that the last days had arrived (cf. Hebrews 1:1, 2). In verse 4 Peter lets them make their case: "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation." This is an amazingly modern argument for rejecting the supernatural, bodily second coming. It simply says, the laws of nature are constant and unchanging. The sun has come up and gone down, the seasons have followed each other, the tides have risen and fallen for thousands of years in perfect order. Therefore, we must expect this constancy for the future, and any thought that the sky might be rolled up like a scroll and the earth purged with global, fiery judgment by the returning Christ is unimaginable and unwarranted. This is exactly the position of much modern science, and there are hundreds of pastors and theologians in the churches and seminaries today who reject a physical second coming and future judgment for the same reason (e.g., Ernest Best, in his commentary on 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1972, pp. 363 and 367).

God Creates and Upholds by His Word

Peter responds to this skepticism in three ways. First, in verses 5–7: "They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men." The first thing the false teachers ignore is that the world was made by God and that its order hangs on his word. If they were willing to think about this, they would realize that the course of natural events is no more locked into one pattern than God is. If God is free to speak a new word, then nature is free to change. We need to guard ourselves against the pseudo-scientific notion that nature is a law unto itself. It is not. The laws of nature are the tireless whisperings of the Almighty. And if he should choose to raise his voice, the cataclysm will come.

And the other thing the false teachers ignore is that things have not continued as they were from the beginning of creation. Peter argues here like he did in 2:5–9. God brought judgment on the world in the flood of Noah's day with a great upheaval in the natural flow of events. God has shown, therefore, that he can and will alter the course of history in judgment. In the past he did it with water. In the future it will be with fire at the coming of Jesus Christ. If the false teachers were not so blinded by their own desire (v. 4), they could see that it is utter folly to deny the future cataclysm of Christ's coming just because the course of the world has been so constant for so long.

A Day Is as a Thousand Years

The second response to the false teachers comes in verse 8: "But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day." Here Peter is answering the criticism that Christ has delayed so long that we can't really believe he is coming back. Peter's answer is that from God's experience of time it hasn't been very long. I doubt that it is a biblical notion that God is outside time. But since he is immortal and does not age and does not forget and sees all history at a glance and is never bored, clearly he does not experience time like we do. But even so, since we are in God's image, there is in us something like God's experience of time. The older we get the faster it seems to go. How many older people say, "It just seems like yesterday I was in school." "It just seems like yesterday we got married." "It just seems like yesterday the kids were young."

And not only age, but joy makes us experience time like God. If you are bored at a program, it seems to drag on forever. But if you go on a vacation for a couple weeks and have a terrific time, you come to the end and say, "It seems like we just got here." Every moment was rich and full of unself-conscious life (like a thousand moments packed into one), and you were so taken up in the joy and beauty and love of those weeks that you never paused to be self-conscious about the passing of time. And at the end of those weeks, it was like yesterday that you arrived. When Jesus comes back and stands on this earth to make it his own, he will say, "It just seems like yesterday that I was here." O people, do not be deceived. It is no argument against Christ's second coming that 1,950 years have passed since his departure. From God's experience of time it is as though Christ arrived at his right hand the day before yesterday.

The Lord's Merciful Forbearance

And finally, Peter responds to the problem of Christ's delay in verse 9 with these words: "The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance." The apostle Paul speaks in Romans 11:25 of "the full number of the Gentiles" who must come into the kingdom before the end arrives. Therefore, we should count the delay of Christ's coming as an act of mercy and patience until all the sheep are gathered into the fold and not one is lost (John 10:16, 26–30). The tragic irony is that the false teachers take God's patience, which is giving them an opportunity to repent, and turn it against God as an evidence that Christ is not coming. It will be an unanswerable indictment on the judgment day, when God asks the false teachers of Peter's day and ours, "Why did you take my gift of time for repenting and use it as an argument for unbelief?"

The Lord is good to us today to address our 20th century doubts in this way. Let us not lose heart or grow weary. Christ is coming. The delay is meant to lead to repentance, not to unbelief. In God's mind it has been only a couple of days. If this world order rests on the word of God, he can and he will bring judgment upon the unrepentant as surely in the future as he did in Noah's day. But for those who repent it will mean glory, honor, and immortality.

Let What You Heard from the Beginning Abide in You

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

I received recently in the mail a box from the Unification Church—the Moonies. It contained three video tapes and a copy of the Divine Principle and a message from Mr. Moon from prison dated 1985. They plead to be given a fair hearing.

The Message of Sun Moon

Here are some quotes taken from pages 122–144 of the message of Sun Moon from prison.

I am making a bold declaration. Jesus did not come to die. Jesus was murdered . . . The crucifixion of Jesus was a result of human faithlessness. The most egregious and destructive lack of faith was to be found in John [the Baptist]. This means that Jesus did not come to die on the cross . . .

If Jesus came to die on the cross, would he not need a man to deliver him up? You know that Judas Iscariot is the disciple who betrayed Jesus. If Jesus fulfilled God's will with his death on the cross, then Judas should be glorified as the man who made the crucifixion possible. Judas would have been aiding God's dispensation. But Jesus said of Judas, "The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed!" . . . Furthermore, if God had wanted His Son to be crucified, He did not need 4,000 years to prepare the chosen people . . .

Many people may now ask, "What about the prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the death of Jesus on the cross?" . . . We must know that there are dual lines of prophecy in the Bible. One group prophesies Jesus' rejection and death; the others, such as Isaiah, Chapters 9, 11, and 60 prophesy the glorious ministry of Jesus when the people accepted him as the Son of God . . .

Why then did God prophesy in two contradictory ways in the Bible? . . . God did not know how the people would respond to His providence for the Messiah. He had no choice but to predict two contradictory results—dual prophecies, each possibility depending on human actions . . .

Once again we find in the Bible a dual prophecy concerning the coming of the Lord of the Second Advent. Revelation 1:7 definitely prophesied the arrival of the Lord with the clouds. However, 1 Thessalonians 5:2 states: "For you yourselves know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night." There are then two opposing prophecies . . .

I am just revealing what I know to be the truth . . . The Lord cannot appear in that kind of supernatural fashion . . . As a man he must come up from the bottom of human misery. He must come to the most miserable nation and lift the human status from the slave position, to the servant position, to the adopted child position and to the direct child position and by physically putting together the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. That is the mission of Messiah . . .

God needs to find his perfected Adam, an Adam who instead of betraying God will become one with God. And then Adam must restore his bride in the position of Eve. Perfected Adam and perfected Eve, united together, will be able to overcome Satan and expel him from the world. In this way, the first righteous ancestors of humankind will begin a new history.

Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour.

How Easy It Is to Deceive

What strikes me as I read these forthright denials of historic biblical Christianity (the atoning death of Jesus for our sins, the omniscience and sovereignty of God, the second coming of the Lord in glory)—what strikes me is the ease with which many people are deceived. Two things account for this: a lack of grounding in the Word of God and a lack of life in the Holy Spirit. Or to put it another way, when people have no theological depth and no vital experience of the Holy Spirit they are sitting ducks for the deceiver and the antichrist.

1 John 2:18–27 is written to a situation like ours, and the two things John strives for is a deeper rooting in the Word of God and a deeper experience of the Spirit of God. The Word of God and the Spirit of God are our only hope for stability in a world filled with antichrists.

Three Assertions

Therefore of all the things that could be said from this text I think we should focus on three:

We are in the last hour of deception.

The Word of God and the Spirit of God protect us from deception and lead us into eternal life.

Therefore we should let the Word abide in us and we should abide in the Spirit.

1. We are in the last hour of deception.

Verse 18 begins, "Children, it is the last hour." That was 2,000 years ago. But the message of the New Testament is that when Christ came, we entered the "last days," and nobody but God knows how long they will last.

The Last Days

Acts 2:16–17, "This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 'And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.'"

1 Corinthians 10:11, "[The Old Testament stories] were written down for our instruction upon whom the end of the ages has come."

Hebrews 1:1–2, "In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son."

Hebrews 9:26, "He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."

1 Peter 1:20, "[Christ] was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake."

The Increasing Activity of the Spirit of Antichrist

From these texts the main characteristic of the last hour is that the Son of God has come and the Holy Spirit is being poured out in a new measure. But John points out another characteristic of the last hour: "You have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour." The last hour is an hour in which the spirit of antichrist will be increasingly active.

He refers back to the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:5, 24. "For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray . . . For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." So John saw evidences of the last days not only in the victorious spread of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, but also in the multiplication of false Christs and false prophets and deceivers in the world. And if John saw that as a sign of the end, how much more should we be alert. That's why I say, we live in the last hour of deception.

John's view of the end-times seems to be that there is a singular antichrist coming but that the spirit of antichrist is already in the world and that it produces many preliminary lesser forms of the antichrist. The essence of the antichrist spirit is to deny that Jesus was the Christ or to deny that the Christ was fully incarnate in Jesus. The spirit of antichrist does whatever it can to diminish Christ and substitute other views or other persons for the true incarnate Son of God. Consider the following texts where John refers to the antichrist (these are the only places in the whole New Testament where the term antichrist occurs).

1 John 2:18, "You have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come."

1 John 4:3, "Every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already."

2 John 7, "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist."

1 John 2:22, "Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son."

John is very concerned that the church be alert to what he calls "the liar" or "deceivers." Many such have gone out into the world. We live in a period of time where God in his sovereignty allows deception to spread. In 5:19 John says, "The whole world is in the power of the evil one." That is the first point: We live in the last hour of deception.

2. The Word of God and the Spirit of God protect us from deception and lead us into eternal life.

Probably the most important thing to focus on in this fairly complex passage is how the Word and the Spirit work together to guard us from deception.

Knowing Truth Is a Gift of the Spirit

The first thing to notice is that to know the truth is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Verses 20–21: "You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all know (or you know all things). I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and know that no lie is of the truth."

The reason I say that to know the truth is a gift is because it depends on the anointing. Verse 20: "You have been anointed by the Holy One and you know." Or verse 27: "The anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that any one should teach you." Whatever this anointing is, it enables us to know the truth and, in some sense, removes the need for teachers.

The anointing probably refers to the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives. Acts 10:38 says that Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit. And 1 John 4:13 says that God has given us of his Spirit. So the anointing referred to in verses 20 and 27 is probably the pouring of the Holy Spirit into our hearts when we are born again.

So we can go back and rephrase verse 20 like this: "You have the Holy Spirit from God in you and so you know the truth." And verse 27 would go like this: "The Holy Spirit which you received from God abides in you and so you have no need that any one should teach you. That is, you don't need these progressive prophets who claim to add new information about Christ beyond the truth you heard at the beginning."

What is plain from these two verses is that without the Holy Spirit we would not know the truth. Knowing the truth about Christ is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

How the Spirit Enables Us to Know the Truth

But now that raises the question how the Holy Spirit enables us to know the truth about Christ and so be protected from the deception of the antichrist. It is almost certain that the antichrists are claiming to have revelations from the Holy Spirit when they give their new revelation that Jesus is not really the Son of God come in the flesh.

That's why 4:1 warns the church not to believe every spirit, but to "test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world." So the antichrists are saying, "Right on! Knowledge is a gift of the Spirit. And we have the Spirit and can tell you some crucial information that you have been missing about Christ."

That is what Sun Moon claims. It is what virtually every sect or cult does. It claims some special revelation beyond the original one of the apostles, or it claims to have specially inspired prophets who give the hidden interpretation of the Bible. So what does John mean? How does the anointing of the Spirit enable the saints to know the truth and protect them from deception?

Verse 24 is the key. What it shows is that the truth which the Holy Spirit enables us to know is a truth that is delivered in the preaching of the apostles. "Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father." Twice in that verse John stresses that the truth that should remain in them is truth that came to them through the ear at the beginning of their Christian walk: "what you heard from the beginning . . . what you heard from the beginning!" This was the preaching of the apostles.

So John is not saying that the anointing of the Spirit enables us to know the truth of Christ by giving additional information beyond what they heard from the beginning. On the contrary John is intent on telling them they have enough revelation in what they heard from the beginning. He does not want to set them off in pursuit of something new. Remember 2:7, "Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard." In other words John makes effort to avoid the saying that what the church needs is new revelation. It does not. It needs to let the original apostolic teaching about Christ abide in them.

The Word Tests the Spirit

2 John 9 warns about the danger of progressiveness and newness in the doctrine of Christ: "Any one who goes ahead [progresses] and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son." So the opposite of abiding in what you have heard from the beginning is to "go ahead" to new revelations and secret knowledge offered by Mohammed and Charles Russell and Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy and Jim Jones and Sun Moon and an ever larger stream of antichrists in this last hour of deception.

The Holy Spirit does not expand the apostolic teaching of Christ. On the contrary, the Word tests the Spirit. 1 John 4:2 says, "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh is of God." The Spirit agrees with the apostolic doctrine or it is not the Spirit of God. This is why we reject the teaching of Mr. Moon. Not because we can boast of different revelations from the Spirit, but because his claim does not square with the faith once for all delivered to the saints in the teaching of the apostles.

So the work of the Holy Spirit is not to take us beyond the teaching of the apostles. It is to help us accept and abide in that teaching. It helps us grow in our understanding of that teaching. It strengthens our power to practice that teaching. It increases our confidence in the truth of that teaching. But it does not change the teaching. It does not expand on the teaching.

Which leads us to our concluding admonition and third main point:

3. Therefore we should let the Word abide in us and we should abide in the Spirit.

In this long text there are only two imperatives. One is in verse 24: "Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you." And the other is in verse 27 at the end: "As his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him."

Let the Word abide in you!

Abide in the Spirit!

I can't help but recall a similar pair of admonitions in Paul's letters:

Colossians 3:16, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you . . . sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God."

Ephesians 5:18–19, "Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, always and for everything giving thanks."

"Let the word dwell in you!" is like John's "Let the word abide in you!"

"Be filled with the Spirit!" is like John's "Abide in the Spirit!"

This will be my prayer for all of you as Noël and I minister in Liberia and Cameroon for the next six weeks—that the Word abide in you and that you abide in the Spirit. That you love the Word, and continue to come Sunday after to worship in the truth. That you be filled with the anointing of God and continue to come Sunday after Sunday to worship in the Spirit. For the Lord seeks those who will worship him in Spirit and in truth.

Guard yourselves from the deceiver and the antichrist. Love the Word, live in the Word, pray the Word, memorize the Word. And before every sentence lay yourself wide open to whatever the Spirit wants to do with you by the Word.

"If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he has promised us, eternal life." AMEN.

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