2Peter 2:12-13 - Blaspheming Beasts

[By way of review. After Peter goes to be with the Lord there will arise false teachers among the brethren. They will be crafty and covetous and deceptive. They will not have signs around their necks saying "false teacher." God knows this. It will all happen, just like everything else, under God’s authority - with His permission according to His eternal and sovereign purposes. But there is a day of reckoning coming in which all will be revealed and recompensed and God, Who loves His elect with an everlasting and unbreakable love, will preserve His own even in the midst of such chaos and deception. False teachers will be characterized by their underlying contempt for authority - thus betraying an utter lack of the knowledge of the One True God, and how He governs.]

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12-13 But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, 13 suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you.


Now Peter characterizes these false teachers, speaking in the present tense, though referring to what will also happen in the future. False teachers have always been - and will always be - with us. They do not know it, but they are a part of God’s very means of testing and purifying His true children.

False teachers are compared to dumb animals which are raised for the purpose of being killed. This is a hard saying. It does not mean that God causes these people to be, from birth, mere fodder for the eternal cannon. This would be to misrepresent the nature of God. Men perish not because God gleefully predestines them to be useless, rebellious, false traitors to their creator; they perish because, despite all the evidences, signs and calls of God they prefer their sin to the truth.

It is in this sense that they are compared to dumb beasts. They have no understanding. They do not know the Truth because He is not in them. But rather than cast themselves upon divine mercy, that God might reveal the Truth in their hearts, they rely upon their fallen, carnal understanding. Man’s understanding of God apart from faith in God’s holy Word is comparable to a beast’s understanding of the affairs of men. There is no comprehension - there is only reaction to stimulus, or instinct.

Just as a cow might wander through a person’s house oblivious to the importance of contents, crashing and smashing about blindly without regard to the true value of things, so false teachers bumble destructively in the things of a God they neither know nor understand. Holy things are treated the same as common things because they are all alike to them. Make no mistake, they will speak of God, of the Holy Spirit, and of Jesus Christ. They will praise God and say "hallelujah" and "amen" and "glory to God". In the mouths of true saints these are holy things, but in the minds of the false teachers they are only a means to an end. And that end is the acclaim of men, or the accumulation of wealth, or the amassing of power over others. It is worldliness and fleshliness cloaked in the outer garb of true religion.

Such things abound in every age and no less so in ours. Pray for discernment because, without it, you will be led astray like so many have been in this present age. Don’t assume that the use of the name of Jesus or the outward form of conformity to the gospel is a guarantee of orthodoxy. There are many out there who are twisting the gospel to their own ends. And there are some who are twisting it without knowing that they do so. All are, however, accountable to God for what they do with Jesus Christ. Teachers are held to a higher standard and they will answer to that standard.

"Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that will he reap." False teachers are destroyed in their destruction. They wreak havoc for a short time and reap judgment for all eternity. We are not their judge because, "there but for the grace of God go we." We do not pronounce sentence nor bring a reviling judgment upon them - thus despising authority ourselves. But never, never, never confuse the concept of dispositional judgment with the exercise of judgment to discern the truth of what someone says or does. The latter is what we are commanded to do by our Lord and Saviour.

How else could you be on guard against false teachers? In whose interest do you think it is to persuade the saints that they shouldn’t be judging what they hear? Who wants them to be unguarded? Who wants the children of God to listen to corruptions of the Truth and thus be rendered unfruitful? Who speaks the half-truth that says we must never judge but then applies those words wrongly to include the judgment of discerning the Truth? It’s time to grow up and to stop being blown around by every wind of doctrine. Churches are being invaded today by false teachings. People are going out to seminars and para-church ministries - they are buying and reading books by people with their own agendas. They flock to hear the famous and are put completely off guard by the person’s fame. It happens all the time.

But what is God’s plan for the church? It is for members of local congregations to build each other up in the most holy faith through submission to God in the power of the Spirit who indwells all who believe. It is to impart the Truth through the preaching and teaching of the word - faithfully and accurately for a lifetime. It isn’t often glamorous. It doesn’t usually offer instant solutions. There is little outward drama. Sometimes there may be. That is God’s prerogative. But drama and the highs of hyper-emotionalism, instant solutions and endless miracles are so much more often the bait of the false teachers than of the true ones.

False teachers appeal to the flesh under the guise of spirituality. That is why their approach so often appeals to the emotions and, through them, to the flesh. Emotions are a good thing given by God. But our fallen natures must not give reign to such a powerful influence to govern our thoughts and actions. Our emotions are just as fallen as our intellects. And they must equally be governed by the Word of God. False teachers understand the fact that people are vulnerable through their emotions, and they exploit that. Some consciously some reflexively - all wickedly.

This picture of false teachers reveling unashamedly in the daytime speaks to their lack of shame or of consideration for a meek and self-controlled (spirit submitted) lifestyle. What others are ashamed to be seen doing in broad daylight they will have no compunction about. And they will bring this attitude into the church with the same lack of shame or conscience. They will sit in the most intimate places in the church, participate in the most sacred rites and yet all the while being deceivers, having hearts that are not towards God.

The greatest enemy is not the one outside the walls, but the one within.