3 Patterns That False Teachers Follow
The Authority of Jesus
Both Peter and Jude are confronted with opponents who deny the authority of Jesus Christ over them through the indulgence of their sinful passions. In both situations it seems that the opponents rejected the possibility of facing final judgment for their actions, though this is clearer in 2 Peter than in Jude. The opponents demonstrate their departure from the one true gospel proclaimed by the apostles and confirmed by the Old Testament through lives that are out of step with the moral imperatives that flow from what Jesus has done for his people. Peter is dealing with opponents who explicitly deny the return of Christ and twist Scripture; neither seems to be the case with Jude’s opponents. Although more speculative, there is also likely a difference in the context in which their respective audiences live. Jude appears to have been written to believers who were familiar with Jewish traditions and noncanonical Jewish literature, whereas Peter seems to be addressing readers living in a more Greco-Roman context.
One key takeaway from both 2 Peter and Jude is the inseparable relationship between orthodoxy (right belief/doctrine) and orthopraxy (right living). In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus warned that false prophets would enter in among God’s people as wolves looking to devour the sheep (Matt. 7:15–20). He gave a simple yet powerful way of identifying these false prophets and false teachers:
You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matt. 7:16–20)
Taking Jesus at his word, both Peter and Jude go to great lengths to expose the rotten fruit of their opponents as a means of inoculating the sheep from the disease that the wolves have brought with them.
The God Who Judges and Saves
Matthew S. Harmon
In this addition to the New Testament Theology series, Matthew S. Harmon examines the unique themes of 2 Peter and Jude as well as their common ground, addressing topics such as false teaching, God’s authority, and the new heavens and the new earth.
The Core of False Teaching
Understanding the similarities and differences between the opponents that Peter and Jude addressed in their respective letters is an important first step. But in order to set the false teaching of these opponents within a broader biblical and theological context, we need to go back to the very beginning of the biblical story, because at the core of what Peter and Jude must confront is an error first propagated in the garden of Eden by the serpent himself. What we see there is a pattern that, at some level, all subsequent false teaching follows. That pattern has three steps.
1. False teachers question what God said.
The initial sign of trouble is in the opening description of the serpent (who is later explicitly identified as Satan in Rev. 12:9) as “more crafty than any other beast of the field” (Gen. 3:1). His initial question to the woman confirms his craftiness: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1). There should be little doubt that Satan knew God had not prohibited eating from any tree but rather just from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. His purpose is to raise questions and doubts about what God had actually said. Eve responds by going beyond what God had actually said: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die’” (Gen. 3:2–3). But a closer look at what God had actually told Adam reveals that Yahweh never prohibited touching the tree but only eating from it (Gen. 2:17). Satan has managed to muddy the waters, creating confusion as to the exact nature of what God had or had not commanded.
2. False teachers defy or reject what God said.
The serpent moves from questioning God’s word to direct rejection of it in his response: “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4). Yahweh had been emphatic with Adam when he gave the commandment: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Not maybe. Not even probably. Disobedience to this one commandment would bring certain death. But Satan, emboldened by the confusion he has created in Eve’s mind about the specifics of what God actually said, is now able to openly reject what God said. He is even so bold as to use the same wording that God spoke to Adam and that Eve spoke to the serpent. In effect, the serpent accuses God of lying.
3. False teachers offer a “better” alternative by appealing to the natural appetites.
The serpent explains why God actually does not want people to eat from the tree: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). Despite the fact that the man and the woman were created in the image of God, the serpent holds out the “better” alternative of determining for themselves good and evil rather than submitting to what God has already revealed as good and evil.1Why submit to what God says when what he has said is not true? Would it not be better to simply strike out on your own? After all, God is actually holding you back from being everything you could be. Rather than respond along the lines of “I am already like God in every way that God intends me to be, no more and no less,” the woman says nothing more. Inspired by this better alternative, the woman “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6). Prompted by the serpent, the woman now sees the tree in a fresh light. Rather than a source of danger to be avoided at all costs, it is now an enticing path to “truly” being like God. When she stretches out her hand to touch the fruit of the tree and nothing happens, it seems as though the serpent had been right. She does not die. God must have lied to them after all.
But once Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they realize that the serpent was only partially right. Their eyes are indeed opened, but rather than the promised joys of selfdetermination, they experience the guilt and shame of self-destruction (Gen. 3:7). Whereas before they were “naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25), now they are naked and, by implication, ashamed, as the effort to cover themselves indicates (Gen. 3:7). But their feeble efforts to cover that shame and guilt are nowhere near adequate for such a task. That shame only intensifies when Yahweh walks in the garden; rather than joyfully approaching him, they hide, knowing that they are no longer able to approach a holy God because of their disobedience (Gen. 3:8–11).
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We see this same pattern in Jesus’s encounter with Satan in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–13). Right before the Holy Spirit leads him into the wilderness to be tempted, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. After the Spirit descends upon Jesus, God the Father declares from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Like he did with Eve in the garden, Satan begins his temptation by questioning what God said: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matt. 4:3). While he was successful in raising doubts about God’s word with Eve, the tempter is unsuccessful in his efforts to do so with Jesus. Nonetheless, Satan moves on to reject what God says, though in a more subtle manner than he did with Eve. Continuing in his efforts to question what God said, Satan takes Jesus to the pinnacle and says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone’” (Matt. 4:6, citing Ps. 91:11–12). On the surface, quoting Psalm 91:11–12 might seem like Satan is embracing God’s word. But by intentionally twisting and misapplying it, he is in fact rejecting its authority by trying to make it mean something that it does not. In his final temptation of Jesus, Satan proposes a “better” alternative to receiving universal dominion than the long path of obedience and the suffering it will entail. He offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if he will simply fall down before Satan and worship him (Matt. 4:8–9). But rather than choose the path of least resistance, Jesus rejects Satan’s offer and reaffirms his loyalty to the Father (Matt. 4:10–11). At every point where Adam and Eve had failed to resist the wiles of the serpent, Jesus obeyed!
Each aspect of this pattern is also present in 2 Peter, though not always in the most obvious way. Peter refers to the “the ignorant and unstable” who twist Scripture to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:16). One obvious form of twisting Scripture is calling into question what God has said. Peter’s opponents ask the question, “Where is the promise of his coming?” (3:4). Despite the explicit promise of the Lord Jesus that he would return for his people (e.g., John 14:1–4), the opponents question whether he said it or perhaps whether he meant it.
From this posture of questioning God’s word they move to a direct rejection of what Jesus said. They do so based on their own brand of flawed logic: “For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:4). The return of Christ is not possible, according to the opponents, because the world has remained the same since the days of Israel’s patriarchs. But their rejection of God’s word is most evident in their rejection of God’s moral standards, which have been clearly revealed in the Old Testament and reaffirmed by the apostles of Jesus (2 Pet. 3:1–3). They casually dismiss God’s condemnation of greed (Ex. 20:17), sexual immorality (Ex. 20:14), rebellion against authority (Num. 16:50), pride/arrogance (Prov. 3:34), and impurity (Ps. 24:3–4).
Having questioned and then rejected God’s word, Peter’s opponents seek to offer a better alternative to faithfulness to God by appealing to a variety of appetites. Most noticeably they appeal to the seemingly unrestrained expression of sexual desire, described in various ways as sensuality (2 Pet. 2:2, 7, 18), indulging the lusts of defiling passions (2 Pet. 2:10), and eyes full of adultery (2 Pet. 2:14). Indeed, they actively “entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error” (2 Pet. 2:18). They appeal to the desire for autonomy, offering freedom when they are in fact leading people into slavery to corruption (2 Pet. 2:19).
While not as evident in Jude, hints of this pattern are still present. His opponents “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (Jude 4), language that could reflect either their questioning of God’s word spoken through the apostles or their rejection of it. They “deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4), which at some level must include a rejection of what he taught. These opponents clearly reject God’s revealed moral commands with regard to sexuality (Jude 6–7, 16, 18), submitting to God’s appointed leaders (Jude 8–11), and greed (Jude 11), among other areas. Although Jude does not explicitly say so, these opponents are clearly using their wiles to appeal to people within the body of Christ, trying to entice them to embrace their rejection of God’s moral standards and embrace their sinful desires.
Notes:
- When Satan says they will know good and evil, this does not mean that they will simply experience it for themselves. To know good and evil in this sense is to determine it for themselves. In contexts like this, the Hebrew verb rendered “know” (yādaʾ) occurs with the sense of discern, especially with reference to distinguishing good from evil (Deut. 1:39; Isa. 7:15). Although different Hebrew verbs are used, the same idea is present when Solomon asks for the ability as king to discern good and evil (1 Kings 3:9; cf. 1 Sam. 14:17).
This article is adapted from The God Who Judges and Saves: A Theology of 2 Peter and Jude by Matthew S. Harmon.
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