2 Peter 2 Study Notes

2:10b-22 Peter further described the false teachers. They were rash, arrogant, and, in contrast to the behavior of the more powerful angels, slanderously insolent. They were brute-like and irrational in their understanding, blasphemous, and ruled by lust and greed. Peter compared the false teachers to Balaam (Nm 22-24). Like Balaam, these false teachers had abandoned the straight path, were consumed by greed, and would receive the wages of their unrighteousness; Balaam’s donkey showed more moral sense than Balaam did. The false teachers are described as springs without water and mists driven by a storm. In other words they were unsatisfactory and unstable. As punishment, the gloom of darkness was reserved for them. With their empty boastful words, and despite their promises of freedom to others, these false teachers led their hearers into the same spiritual slavery and corruption to which they themselves were enslaved. Although these heretics had once claimed to know Christ and even experienced some freedom from sin, they returned to their old practices and became entangled again. They were worse off in the end with their rejection of Christ than they were at the beginning when in a state of ignorance; indeed, it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness. Just as a dog returns to its own vomit and a pig returns to wallow in the mud, so also these false teachers reverted to the immoral lifestyles they preferred by nature. The immoral behavior of the false teachers shows that they had never been genuinely converted.