Introduction
The Danger of False Teaching
Somewhere out there is a preacher whose message would make you feel more free, more loved, and more at peace with God than you've ever felt—and that preacher is one of the most dangerous people alive. There is a version of the gospel being preached in thousands of churches that is more spiritually lethal than outright atheism. It’s a form of teaching that appeals to people who want to follow Christ and convinces them that the best way to do that is on a path other than the path of obedience.
Review
This is part 2 of our study of the opening paragraph of 2 Peter 2 (vv.1-3).
2 Peter 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce heresies of destruction, even denying the Master who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring ridicule on the way of truth. 3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
I told you last time we can put all the material under 5 headings, all starting with D. Last time we covered the first three: Damnation, Damage, and Delay. My plan today was to cover the other two—Deception and Denial. The false teachers use deception (they secretly introduce their heresies) and they deny the master who bought them.
But over the past couple weeks I’ve decided the rest of what I want to teach from this passage really fits better under three headings, not just two. I should have known better than to think I would know 2 weeks ahead of time what my outline would be. So scratch the two Ds for today; instead we’re going to look at 3 M’s. We’re going to look at their method, their motive, and their message. Same material, but I think these headings will make it more understandable.
We saw that God promises severe destruction and damnation on the false teachers because of how much damage they do. But I didn’t say anything about how to spot these false teachers. How do they operate? What is their method? Peter answers that in v.1—their method.
Their Method
2 Peter 2:1 They will secretly introduce heresies
Angel of Light
Secretly—that’s why I originally titled this “their deception.” False teachers don’t show up with a big “false teacher” nametag.
2 Corinthians 11:14 Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15 It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.
“Angel of light” means an angel characterized by light. Light represents holiness and purity and truth. And the phrase “servants of righteousness” has the same idea—people who serve in the church who are characterized by righteousness. If you saw the devil in your church, your first reaction would be, “Wow, that’s beautiful.” And if you saw one of his agents, you’d say, “That is a person of integrity and godliness. That’s someone I can trust.”
Sin doesn’t approach us as sin. Satan never comes to us as Satan. Sin always comes to us as pleasure and Satan comes as an angel of truth and holiness and purity. Error never comes to us as error, error always comes to us as truth.
Whenever you point out a false teacher, a whole lot of people will get really upset. “He can’t be a false teacher. He’s such a good guy. I’ve learned so much from him. He leads hundreds of people to Christ. He does so much good.”
Prong 1: Relationship
So they use deception, but to just use the word “deception” isn’t enough. We need to get more specific than that. We need to know exactly how they deceive—what method do they use?
Their method, in this passage, is a two-pronged approach. For prong #1, look again at v.1.
2 Peter 2:1 They will secretly introduce heresies of destruction.
Secretly introduce” is just one word in the Greek, and it shows us how they operate. It’s the word “to bring in” with the word “para” attached to it. Para means alongside. A paralegal works alongside a lawyer. A paramedic comes alongside you where you are and gives medical attention.
In the NT, that para prefix often has the idea of drawing close to someone in a personal, relational way. For example, the word “to comfort” or “encourage” is para-kaleo—to call alongside. You comfort someone by being there right at his side.
So how do these false teachers manage to get Christians to buy into their heresies? Relationships. They don’t just blurt out their false doctrines on day one. First they move in close, right alongside you. They befriend you and win your trust. They don’t start saying any of the sketchy stuff until after they have completely won you over as a friend.
Jude speaks of false teachers who sneak in from the outside.[1] But Peter warns us about false teachers who come from inside the church—people you have a connection with. This is like when Paul spoke to the elder board of the Ephesian church.
Acts 20:30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth
Who Should You Trust?
So who can you trust? Where most people go wrong is they trust the people they like and they distrust the people they don’t like. And that’s why so many people fall for the deceivers, because the deceivers are experts at becoming likable.
When you’re deciding whom to trust, how much you like the person should have nothing to do with it. Really friendly, nice, likable people can be dead wrong.
So who do you trust? Experts? People with a lot of training and credentials? Be careful with that, because educated liars can be even more deceptive than uneducated liars.
What insight does Peter give us in this passage? He’s going to point us to the way false teachers treat Scripture. This is the second part of their 2-pronged method.
Prong 2: Word Plasticity
2 Peter 2:3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with false words.
Your Bible might say “deceptive words,” “fabricated stories,” or “stories they have made up.” The Greek phrase is plastos logos—plastic words. Plastos means fabricated. It’s the same word used for God forming Adam and Eve (1 Timothy 2:13). He formed them, fabricated them out of the clay and made them into something that wasn’t clay. We have the word plasticity, which means changeable, malleable, something that can be morphed or manipulated or changed.
When false teachers look at the Bible, they see clay—plastic—material that can be shaped and fabricated and molded into what they want. It’s the way they look at the text of Scripture. That’s the second prong of their 2-pronged method. First they win your trust, then they manipulate the words of Scripture.
So if you want to know how to spot a false teacher, and if you want to know who to trust when it comes to spiritual things, the most important place to look is at how that preacher treats the words of Scripture. Don’t just trust anyone who is likable. Trust preachers in relation to how they handle Scripture. Do they treat the words in the Bible as plastic and malleable? Or do they treat them as etched in stone? Jesus saw them as set in stone.
Matthew 5:18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
If anyone would be at liberty to tinker with the words of God, it would be God himself. But even the smallest alteration to the smallest letter in the Bible was unthinkable to Jesus.
Two Kinds of Preachers
There are two kinds of preachers: those who use the Bible and those who show you the Bible. All the godly preacher wants to do is show it—expose it. That’s why we call it “expository” preaching, from the word “expose.” Expository preaching holds up the Bible and says, “Look. See?”
But preachers who use the text—they have something they want to say, and they use the Bible to find biblical lingo they can use to say it. False teachers see themselves as chefs and expository preachers see themselves as waiters. False teachers cook up the message themselves. The preacher creates the meal, and Scripture is the platter he serves it on. Their sermons might be loaded with Scripture, but if you pay attention, you’ll see those Bible verses are the platter, not the meal.
But the godly preacher is just a waiter. Whatever the passage says—that’s the meal. The platter is his sermon. He sees the words of Scripture as etched in stone, unchangeable, sacred, not to be messed with. And so his goal is to get his sermon as close as he possibly can to the exact intent of the biblical words. What does it say, what does it mean by what it says, and what are the implications for life? That’s the meal. And the godly preacher’s goal is to just get that meal from the kitchen to the table without dropping it.
So if you want to steer clear of false teachers, pay attention to how they treat Scripture. If you’re checking out a church or an organization, start with their statement on the Scriptures. That’s the most important. If it’s really basic and vague, be careful because the more generic or simplistic it is, the more opportunity that leaves for false teachers to worm their way into the pulpit. Nothing is foolproof, of course, but the more detailed the statement on the Scriptures, the greater the chance that the leadership of that church is careful with God’s Word. I have an appendix in the notes on what to look for in a statement on the Scriptures that includes a glossary, so you can have a handle on what all the relevant seminary words mean. If you read that appendix, you’ll know exactly what I believe about Scripture.
Wordsmiths
So you want to find a church with a good statement on Scripture, but even then, you still have to pay close attention because of how skilled false teachers are at manipulating plastic words. They have a way of teaching heresy in words that sound right on. They say things in vague ways and your brain fills in the blanks so you think they said what you agree with. But so does the other guy who believes the opposite.
And on top of their rhetorical skills, they twist meanings of words. They use our vocabulary but not our dictionary. They use all our lingo, but they attach different definitions to the words. (Deceivers in politics use the same tactic, by the way.) The teacher who will do the most damage to your soul will probably never say a single thing you disagree with on the surface.
Heresy Sandwich
I’m spending time on this because Peter makes much of it. That Scripture-twisting technique is so fundamental to their approach that Peter begins and ends with warnings about it. He tells us here, right at the beginning of his discussion of false teachers—they manipulate the text of Scripture to their own destruction. Then if you skip all the way to the end of the book, he circles back to it.
2 Peter 3:16 ignorant and unstable people distort [Paul’s letters], as they do the other Scriptures to their own destruction.
So two bookends. It starts with using Scripture as plastic to fabricate their message to their own destruction, and it ends with distorting the Scripture to their destruction.
Or instead of bookends, you could call it a sandwich. One giant destruction sandwich where the meat of the sandwich is a whole lot of destruction and damnation and punishment, and the two pieces of bread on either end are distortion and twisting and manipulation of God’s Word
Their Motivation: Money
So all of that is their 2-pronged method: likability and plastic words. What about their motivation? What are they trying to accomplish with methods? What motivates them? The big motive that Peter wants us to focus on in this chapter is very simple: cash.
2 Peter 2:3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with plastic words
That word exploit is a commerce word that means to make money. They use their likability and plastic words to get you to open up your wallet. What they say in their sermons is a simple business decision. They will say what they need to say to get money out of your wallet and feed their insatiable greed.
Taking Advantage of Your Reverence for Scripture
This is why a lot of times you hear more Scripture in a false teacher’s sermon than in a regular preacher, because they know you care about Scripture and they use what you care about to manipulate you. The false teacher looks out at a congregation and realizes, these people value the Bible more than they value their own money. For a greedy preacher with a golden tongue who knows how to manipulate Scripture, that is a monster financial opportunity. That’s why they have so many Bible verses in their sermons.
The Godly Motive
What’s the motive for a godly preacher? A godly pastor looks out over a large congregation, and he also sees an opportunity. His heart is also moved, but with a completely different motivation. He sees a crowd gathered in a church and thinks, “Oh man, there are people out there hungry for God’s Word, and I can give it to them. There are people who are discouraged and I can give them words of life. There are folks out there enslaved to a sin, depressed, lonely, lost, afraid, weighed down with guilt—I have access to what those people need. I can help them!” A true shepherd sees a flock of sheep and he wants to feed them. Wolves see sheep and want to feast on them.
And this is not to say it’s wrong for a pastor to receive a salary. Scripture is clear about paying preachers—it even talks about double honor in the context of salary. Nothing wrong with any of that. But the moment a preacher makes any kind of adjustment to the message in order to keep that salary safe or to increase his income—you manipulate one letter of God’s Word to make one dime—you’ve crossed the line. He may not be a false teacher yet, but he’s definitely on that path.
Their Message: The Heresy of Denial
Okay, so their method is two-pronged: come alongside and win your trust, and then turn the words of Scripture into plastic. Their motivation is money. And the third M—their message. What is it exactly that they teach? Peter says they bring in “heresies of destruction”—what are the heresies? What should we be watching for?
Not all Error Is Heresy
This is important because sometimes people get a little carried away with the word heresy. Not everything we strongly disagree with is heresy. Not everyone who preaches wrong things is a false teacher. Every preacher preaches wrong things. Nobody has perfect doctrine. Certainly not me.
It’s not just error—Peter calls them heresies of destruction, meaning doctrines that, if they are followed, will lead people to hell. That makes heresy a very narrow category. You can be wrong about almost everything in the Bible and still be saved. You can be wrong about: old earth/young earth, the timing of the rapture, tongues, the mode of baptism, communion, the identity of the 144,000, or even the inerrancy of Scripture. You can be mistaken on those and any one of a thousand other points and it won’t necessarily put you on a road toward ultimate destruction. Heresy will.
So what are the heresies Peter has in mind? Well remember, Peter is prophesying about the future here. There “will be” false teachers as church history unfolds, who teach various heresies of destruction. He doesn’t specify exactly what the heretics of his day were teaching because he’s warning us about all heretics of every age.
However, Peter does mention one specific heresy that’s especially concerning. He uses the word “even.” They will teach various heresies—even this one, which gives the impression that “this one” is the most extreme heresy of all. What is it?
2 Peter 2:1 They will secretly introduce heresies of destruction, even denying the Master who bought them
The word “deny” means to renounce, repudiate, or disown. Denying the Master who bought them is the ultimate heresy.
The Boldness of the Forgiven
And as an aside, I just want to point out—this is pretty bold for Peter to bring up this topic because Peter is the most famous Christ-denier of all time. And if you’re wondering—yes, this word “deny” is the same word used to describe the three times Peter denied Christ. No follower of Jesus anywhere in Scripture ever denied Jesus as earnestly and vehemently and famously as Peter did. So you can just imagine his opponents: “You’re one to talk, Peter. Of all people, you are going to lecture us about denying Christ? That's rich!”
Why would Peter bring this up? Is he a hypocrite? No. Peter repented.[2] There’s nothing hypocritical about committing a sin, repenting, and then calling other people to join you in your repentance.
He’s calling the false teachers out, not because they stumbled into sin and repented, but because this was their way of life. When it says they are even denying the Master who bought them, the verb tense points to linear, ongoing action. It’s not a one-off or a periodic stumble. It’s a settled, ongoing orientation of their life that they have no intention of giving up.
I love it that Peter isn’t shy about bringing the sin he’s famous for committing because it shows the boldness we can have in our forgiveness. After Peter swore up and down that he didn’t know Jesus, then Jesus looked right at him and he went out and wept bitterly—that had to be the low point of Peter’s whole life. And yet, this isn’t a sensitive topic for him. He’s not even a little bit self-conscious about his past failure, he’s not one bit afraid of people dredging up his past, because he understood that forgiven sin was separated from him as far as the east is from the west. Other people might have tried to define Peter by his past failure, but not God and not Peter. He understood God’s forgiveness.
What Kind of Denial?
Okay, end of the sidebar. Back to the false teachers who are going on in unrepentant denial. But what kind of denial? Were they just standing in the pulpit on Sunday mornings saying, “We repudiate God!” Hard to imagine them getting any kind of a following in the church doing that. Peter said they will secretly introduce their heresies—it wouldn’t be very sneaky if they just said it outright.
Is it possible to deny God without explicitly saying it like Peter did? Yes.
1 Timothy 5:8 If anyone does not provide for his family, he has denied the faith
They don’t come out and curse Christ, but their actions function as a de facto denial. In fact, you can deny God with your actions even when you’re affirming him with your words.
Titus 1:16 They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him.
And you can do this without even realizing it.
2 Timothy 3:5 having a form of godliness but denying its power.
They don’t knowingly renounce divine power. But by loving the wrong things, they unwittingly renounce it.
Denying the Master
So how do these false teachers deny the Lord? Peter is very specific about exactly what they deny.
2 Peter 2:1 They will secretly introduce heresies of destruction, even denying the Master[3] who bought them
The Master who bought them. The NIV says “sovereign Lord,” but “master” is a better translation. It’s the word despotes, and it’s the word for the master of a household who purchases and owns the household slaves.[4] You’re a slave, you get purchased by the master of a household, so now you no longer belong to your old master. Now you belong to this master who bought you.[5]
That’s one of the ways the NT frequently describes what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is someone who used to be enslaved to another master, but now God purchased him and so now he’s a slave of God.
Romans 6:17 you used to be slaves to sin 22 But now you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God
That’s a very important aspect of what it means to be a Christian.
Denying God’s Mastery
And that is the thing they are now denying. Peter’s very specific—they deny God by rejecting his position as their master. They were purchased by the Lord. They had become slaves of God—the Master who bought them. But now they are denying God as their Master. That’s the ultimate heresy.
Whether explicitly or subconsciously, they now have a sense that obeying God is optional. So you ask them, “Is God your Savior?”
“Yes!”
“Is he your God?”
“Yes.”
“Is he your provider, your refuge, your protector, your caregiver, your healer, your father?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is he your master?”
“Well, um er it depends on what you mean by master.” This is where they want to equivocate.
Grace as License
They probably don’t consider themselves to be in open rebellion against God. What they’ll usually say is that slave-master way of looking at our relationship with God is works-oriented and it’s a violation of grace. They say, “Requiring people to submit to God as Master and obey him—that’s works! We believe in grace, not works. Obeying God—that’s law. We’re not under the law. We’re under grace, so we don’t have to obey God’s law.”
Remember I told you they use the same words but with different definitions? If it hasn’t happened already, you will, at some point, hear a preacher use the word “grace” to try to tell you that you shouldn’t strive to obey God.
The Most Lucrative Heresy
And remember—what is their motive? Money. Well, if money is what you’re after, what’s the most lucrative message you could preach? The message that will make you the richest is one that makes people think they can hold on to their favorite sin or cling to a cherished idol and still be okay with God. If you preach that message in a convincing way, so that people feel comfortable in their sin and, at the same time, safe and secure in their relationship with God even if they don’t repent, people will pay through the nose for that and you won’t be able to build big enough parking lots to fit everyone.
Telling people it’s not necessary to obey God is a very popular doctrine in the church. John MacArthur spent 35 years of his life fighting that doctrine starting with his book The Gospel According to Jesus back in 1988. They call it the Lordship Salvation controversy—is Jesus Lord over us or not? Before him, Dietrich Bonhoeffer called this teaching “cheap grace” in his book The Cost of Discipleship. Before him, Spurgeon called it “the downgrade controversy.” This teaching has always been around—all the way back to before the NT was written. In every age, you can find people who teach that grace amounts to permission to disobey God. When Jude writes about the false teachers he uses those very terms:
Jude 1:4 They change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord
Does God Cut You Slack?
This is worth spending a minute talking about because I believe most Christians have a dangerously flawed understanding of grace. Have you ever heard someone say something like this: “You’re being too hard on yourself. Cut yourself some slack. Give yourself some grace”? People think giving yourself grace means cutting yourself some slack.
Is that what God’s grace is—God cutting you slack? Does God loosen his standards? “I know I said do not covet, but you’re only human. As long as you avoid coveting, say, 85% of the time, we’ll call that good.” “If 9 out of 10 times you resist the urge to steal, that’s close enough.” Is that what grace means?
No. That is not even close to what grace is. In fact, it’s close to being the opposite of grace. Grace always makes you more righteous, never less righteous.
And God never reduces his standards. How could he? He only has one standard—holiness. And that’s based on his own character. He couldn’t lower his standards without ceasing to be God. Anything short of righteousness is unrighteousness.
God does forgive sin. He does take into account our weakness and he is incredibly patient with us. And he does continue to love us even when we fail over and over. But he doesn’t do all that by lowering his standards.
The Meaning of Grace
The Greek word for grace in the NT literally means “gift.” So grace can refer to any gift from God.
And it is very often the gift of enablement. In Ephesians 2, Paul refers to the ministry that God called him to and his ability to carry out that work as his “grace.” So both his ministry and his ability to carry out his ministry were grace. And then he said all of us have been given a grace, referring to our ministries and the ability to carry those ministries out. Grace energizes, gives you power and ability and motivation, and produces effort.
1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them
Grace is not the opposite of works. Grace is not God telling you to relax and stop trying so hard. Paul says, “No—God’s grace made me try even harder and work even more.”
Does that mean it’s all up to you? God just says, “Sink or swim—you have to achieve godliness on your own”? No. Look at the rest of his sentence.
1 Corinthians 15:10 worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
By God’s grace, he works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:13). If you got to the end of your life and looked back through some divine glasses so you could see exactly how much of it you did and how much God did you’d say, “Wow, he did everything. I was working hard, for sure, but even that came from God’s grace.” So I don’t want this to sound like your relationship with God is performance based. But I do want to say that when a preacher tells you that living by grace means you stop striving, stop fighting the flesh, stop resisting sin, stop struggling, guess what happens? Exactly what you’d expect to happen when you stop fighting in the middle of a war—you lose.
Ephesians 6:12 says we are in a struggle. It’s the word for a wrestling match. We’re in a fight to the death wrestling match against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. If you stop wrestling in the middle of a wrestling match, you lose.
Jesus said, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door” (Luke 13:24). In this book, Peter has repeatedly used that same phrase, “make every effort.”
Hebrews 12:4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
Satan knows that as long as you use the spiritual armor and the sword of the Spirit, he can’t win. You’ll always come out on top every time. So his strategy is to send some slick talker into your church to convince you to stop fighting. Let go and let God and stop striving and stop trying and let grace take care of everything.
Heresy that Leads to Debauchery
And that explains why the followers of the false teachers get caught up in so much immorality and debauchery that even unbelievers are grossed out by it. Remember in v.2 where Peter says “Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring ridicule on the way of truth”? “Shameful ways” refers to the gross, disgusting kind of debauchery and depraved immorality that happens when there are no restraints. If you’re a false teacher, how do you go into a church where that kind of behavior is taboo, and get lots of people to do it?
It wasn’t by preaching pro-sin sermons. “Hey everyone, go out there and drown yourselves in immorality! Now let’s close in prayer.” No. It’s so much more subtle. They just preach doctrines that sound biblical, usually featuring the word “grace,” that get people to step out from under God’s role as Master.
Remember, same words, different meanings. Take the word “grace,” mold it, shape it, manipulate it, and then use it to make people think it’s okay to cut a few moral corners here and there, God will understand, this little sin is reasonable, God’s not going to be picky about that, obeying God is legalistic ...” And once you open that barn door, once any sin becomes reasonable or allowable, very soon the list of reasonable, allowable sins gets longer and longer until you can pretty much do whatever you feel like doing. Then the restraints are off. That’s how they get upstanding people in the church to end up enslaved by immorality.
Beware of any teaching that makes you more comfortable with any sin or that reduces the pressure you feel to confess your sin to God and to repent and turn away from sin back to God. If you want to know the role of grace in our fight against sin, here it is:
Titus 2:11 the grace of God that brings salvation ...12 teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives
Grace teaches us to resist sin. So if anyone tries to sell you some kind of “grace” that doesn’t teach you to say no to worldly passions, and it doesn’t teach you how to have greater self-control, that’s not real grace.
The Ultimate Heresy
So do you see why Peter uses the word “even”—“even denying the Master who bought them”? Can you see why denying God’s role as Master is the ultimate heresy? It dethrones God, so he’s no longer supreme. And if God’s no longer supreme, what is he? Definitely not God. He’s just another idol. What heresy could be worse than that?
Conclusion
What are their methods? Winning your trust and making the words of Scripture plastic. What’s their motive? Money. What’s their message? Some form of denying God as Master, so people don’t feel like they need to obey God’s law and end up becoming enslaved by sins of the flesh.
God Bought You
Let’s close by thinking about this phrase, “the Master who bought them.” This is the only allusion to the cross in 2 Peter.[6] Remember, Peter is writing to mature believers. He expects them to already understand the whole concept of redemption. The word “redeem” means to reclaim rightful ownership, usually by paying a price—purchasing someone out of slavery.
That’s one of the things Jesus was doing on the cross—paying the price to free us from bondage and reclaim ownership of us. And that’s a glorious truth. It’s one reason why heaven explodes with worship and praise when Jesus takes the scroll from the Father in the book of Revelation.
Revelation 5:8 when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. 9 And they sang a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God
He purchased men for God. Gift giving is a part of life for us—we buy things for each other. It’s a way of expressing love. If you had unlimited money, what would you buy for your spouse/child? What about for God? If you had unlimited resources and could acquire anything, what would you buy for God? What would you purchase and say, “Here God. Enjoy!”? Would you buy me? “Here God, here’s Darrell Ferguson. Surprise!”
And if you’re thinking, “Maybe I would. Darrell loves God and serves God and lives for God’s glory—God might like that gift.” If you’re thinking that, think again because we’re talking about Darrell Ferguson as an unbeliever. When Jesus purchased me, none of that was true of me—I was an enemy of God.
If I were asking someone else this question, and put your name in there, what would they say? If that person had unlimited resources and could buy God anything, would they buy you for God? That’s what Jesus did. And all the heavenly beings before God’s throne in heaven erupt with worship because of it.
What else did Jesus purchase for God? Nothing that I know of. There’s nothing in the Bible that says the members of the Trinity bought anything for each other except us. What does that tell you about how much God values you?
And on top of that, consider the price tag. It’s the highest price that has ever been paid for anything—the life of the Son of God. It’s staggering to think about. This is how much God wanted you.
Wanted you for what purpose? When you pay a high price for something, you want that thing for a reason—what did God purchase you for?
1 Peter 1:18 you were redeemed [with the precious blood of Christ] from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers
He wanted to free you from that old slave master of your old way of life.
Titus 2:14 He gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
That’s what Jesus wanted so much he was willing to suffer and die for it. This is why he wanted you so badly. It’s what he wanted to present to the Father as a gift. A people of his own, eager to do what is good. You were purchased for purity.
1 Corinthians 6:20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Glossary
For most parts of a church doctrinal statement, as a general rule, I think it’s best to have short, simple statements so that no one who is within the boundaries of orthodoxy is excluded. But the statement on Scripture is different. I believe that one should be detailed.
In fact, if you don’t understand it, that’s probably a good sign. You want to see something like, “We believe in verbal plenary inspiration, authority, sufficiency, perspicuity (or clarity), infallibility, inerrancy, objective, propositional revelation, grammatical-historical interpretation of authorial intent.”
The reason for all that seminary jargon is that every time someone comes along and wants to downgrade the Scriptures, we have to come up some more jargon to counter it.
Here are some quick definitions:
Inspiration:
Scripture is inspired in the sense that it is “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). The words of the Bible were breathed out by God. The original source is divine, not human.
Verbal Inspiration:
The individual words, not just the big ideas, are inspired.
Plenary Inspiration:
Some say the Bible contains God’s Word, but not everything in there is God’s Word. Plenary inspiration means everything in the Bible is inspired.
Infallible:
Everything the Bible says will happen will happen.
Inerrant:
There are no errors of any kind in the original manuscripts. Everything it affirms as true is true.
Authority:
The Bible is the final court of arbitration on every topic it addresses and every matter relating to God and spiritual things. To disobey Scripture is to disobey God.
Sufficiency:
Everything we need to be fully equipped and prepared for every good work is in the Bible. We do not need to add insights from psychology, science, modern day prophecy, any other book, or any other human wisdom.
Perspicuity (Clarity):
God spoke to be understood. While there are some difficult passages, generally speaking, Scripture is clear. And the more important that doctrine, the clearer it is. The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.
Some people talk about the “hermeneutic of humility” and they say we can’t really know for sure what the Bible really means. But we can have a high level of certainty about the fundamentals of the faith.
Objective Truth:
The Bible means the same thing for everyone at every time, and it can never mean what it never meant. It never means one thing to one person and the opposite to someone else.
Propositional:
Some say the Bible doesn’t make propositions (“This is true, that is false.”) They say the Bible just evokes feelings and images and gives you an experience, without saying certain things are true and other things are false. But we believe the Bible is propositional. It makes truth claims.
Authorial Intent:
The Bible means whatever the original author meant to communicate to the original readers.
Summary
False teachers have a two-pronged method: winning your trust by being likable and manipulating the words of Scripture. They do it for money, knowing that you care more about the Bible than about money. And their message is a variety of here
[1] Peter’s false teachers deny the Master who bought them, but Jude’s deny our (not their) master. And in Jude, the teachers “infiltrated” the church (pa?e?sed??sa? - Jude 4) whereas Peter uses pa?e?s????s?? (introduced).
[2] A hypocrite is an actor—someone who pretends to be against a certain behavior, but in reality he does that thing and has no intention of stopping. But if you say, “Yeah, I did that bad thing, it was wrong, I repented, and I have no intention of ever doing it again,” that’s not hypocrisy. That’s honesty. How do we even know that Peter denied Christ three times? It’s recorded in Mark 14. And where did Mark get his information? Peter. He was completely honest. There’s nothing hypocritical about telling people, “All I want is for you to become a repentant sinner like me.” Peter was not pretending to be against denying Christ on the outside but on the inside he was still secretly doing it. He repented of his sin, and going forward, he boldly associated himself with Jesus.xxxxx
[3] Jude says they deny our Master and Lord. The NIV takes “Lord” as implied and includes it in the translation, but the Greek only has the word “Master.”
[4] In the New Testament, this word is only used of slave owners or God the Father (with the possible exception of this passage and Jude, where it might refer to Jesus).
[5] The NT often describes Christianity in terms of being a slaved to God. God is the Master of the household, and if you’re a believer, then God has purchased you, freed you from your old master, and now you belong to him. The term “slave” is distasteful in our culture, so the English translations use the word “servant,” but the Bible very frequently refers to believers as slaves of God or slaves of Christ—using the normal word for “slave.”
The fact that Peter says the false teachers were purchased (redeemed) by God to be his household slaves indicates that they were believers. The Bible never refers to unbelievers as slaves of God. Unbelievers are called slaves of sin, slaves of false gods, or slaves of unrighteousness, and when they become Christians, they are freed from that kind of slavery and become slaves of God and righteousness.
Romans 6:16-22 is very clear—unbelievers are slaves to sin and when you get saved, you become a slave of God. And these false teachers were, at one time, slaves of God. God bought them, freed them from their old masters, and for a time, God was their master.Commentators who want to protect the doctrine of once-saved-always-saved often suggest that these men only had the appearance of having been purchased by the Lord. But that’s not what Peter says. He refers to God as the Master who bought them. According to WBC, “Some who submit to Christ’s lordship subsequently deny him and are therefore damned forever. This is now the view of most commentators.”
Some argue that there’s a sense in which Jesus bought all men based on 1 Timothy 2:6, but it’s debatable in that passage whether “all” refers to all humans or all who are saved. And while Jesus did pay the price for everyone’s salvation, unbelievers are never described as slaves of God. That’s a designation for believers.
Also, the context of 2 Peter 2 clearly describes these men as having been saved in the past.
2 Peter 2:15 They have left the straight way and wandered off 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.
[6] In the whole book, Peter never directly mentions the cross, the resurrection of Christ, or his ascension. Many preachers say that you should never preach a sermon without mentioning the cross. I don’t know what they do with books like James and 2 Peter, but I think Peter might say, “You should never preach a sermon without mentioning the Second Coming.”
