2 Peter: Power Under PressureSample

At some point, every child gets lost. This can happen by wandering off from your parents, getting lost in a crowd, or hiding. Peter says Christians are God’s children, and sometimes we can wander off as well. God wants us to stick close to our parents and also to Jesus so we can be safe and not get hurt.  

Peter warns Christians there are false teachers. False teachers pretend to speak for God, but what they teach is not true and does not agree with the Bible. False teachers can be very popular, have power from the Devil, and make a lot of money. Just like children should not do what a stranger tells them, Christians should not do what false teachers tell them.  

As Christianity spread from largely Jewish to Gentile cultures and languages, there was a growing risk that syncretism would blend biblical Christianity with pagan philosophy thereby creating a cult instead of the Church. Syncretism is always Jesus plus something else–usually a religious or spiritual belief which does not agree with biblical Christianity. 

The Gnostic heresy was perhaps the most powerful counterfeit to the gospel in the early church and included some church leaders falling prey to the false teaching. Rooted in Greek philosophy, Gnosticism held a strong division between the physical as evil and the spiritual as good. The result was they denied Jesus occupied a physical body or rose from the dead physically, which are essential aspects of the Christian gospel. Entire books, like 1 John and Colossians, are written in large part to refute these kinds of Gnostic false teachings.  

According to Peter, many false teachers are motivated by greed and selfishness, and they want to create a religion that allows them to continue sinning. If we too are greedy, we can love money more than God and do bad things. The way to not be greedy is to love God more than money and the things money can buy. 

Ultimately, Peter reminds Christians that God promises protection for them when they walk in His will.  Protection means God loves us, keeps an eye on us, helps us, and gets us through this world safely into Heaven. As an example of protection, Peter mentions Noah, whom God saved from the flood, and Lot, whom God saved from the destruction of the cities of  Sodom and Gomorrah by getting him out of town just in time. Peter is stressing even if the world gets dark and false teachers are everywhere, we can trust God and his protection of us.  

Although the path of the world and false prophets may seem promising, in this section Peter illuminates their way is hopeless and God will judge them in the end.

Questions: 

Who are your teachers? Who do you teach?

Do you believe God will protect you from condemnation and get you to heaven safely? Why or why not?  

What kinds of sins do you think false teachers today want people to do?

How does Jesus cleanse us from our sin?

Are you more prone to be a trusting person who has a hard time believing the world is filled with false teachers, or more prone to be a suspicious person who can too quickly rush to judge a Bible teacher for an error?