Bird's-eye view
In this section of his second letter, the apostle Peter sharpens his focus on the character of the false teachers who were troubling the church. Having established the certainty of God's judgment by appealing to the historical examples of fallen angels, the flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah, he now provides a detailed profile of these corrupt men. The portrait he paints is one of profound arrogance, spiritual blindness, and enslavement to base instinct. These men are marked by a contempt for authority, both earthly and cosmic. They operate not according to divine revelation or reason, but like animals, driven by their appetites. Their end is not a matter of speculation; it is as certain as the fate of a trapped animal. Peter concludes this description by tracing their spiritual lineage back to the compromised prophet Balaam, a man who knew God's will but loved the paycheck that came from subverting it. This passage is a stark and necessary warning against those who would use the grace of God as a cover for their own greed and licentiousness.
The central thrust of the argument is a contrast between the creature and the Creator, between heavenly order and earthly chaos. The false teachers, in their self-willed audacity, blaspheme a spiritual reality they cannot see and do not understand. Peter contrasts this with the behavior of angels, who, despite their immense power, show a proper restraint and deference to the Lord's authority. The false teachers are thus revealed as fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. Their entire ministry is a manifestation of their unregenerate hearts, which are trained in greed and perpetually seeking to gratify the flesh. They are not just mistaken; they are accursed.
Outline
- 1. The Character of the Condemned (2 Pet 2:10-16)
- a. Arrogant Blasphemers of the Unseen Realm (2 Pet 2:10-11)
- b. Brute Beasts Destined for Destruction (2 Pet 2:12-13a)
- c. Shameless Revelers in the Christian Assembly (2 Pet 2:13b-14)
- d. Heirs of Balaam: Prophets for Profit (2 Pet 2:15-16)
Context In 2 Peter
This passage is the heart of Peter's polemic against the false teachers in chapter 2. The chapter begins by predicting their arrival and describing their damnable heresies (2:1-3). Peter then assures his readers that God's judgment on such men is not idle, providing three Old Testament examples of divine judgment (2:4-9). Our current text (2:10-16) flows directly from this, beginning with the word "especially," indicating that these are the prime candidates for the judgment he has just described. He moves from the historical certainty of judgment to a detailed, present-tense description of the culprits. This section provides the moral and spiritual diagnosis of the disease that has infected the church. The subsequent verses (2:17-22) will go on to describe the empty promises and ultimate futility of their teaching, comparing them to dry wells and runaway slaves. This entire chapter serves as the necessary groundwork for chapter 3, where Peter addresses the specific content of their scoffing, namely their denial of the Lord's promised return in judgment.
Key Issues
- The Nature of Authority and Rebellion
- The Identity of the "Glorious Ones"
- The Analogy of "Unreasoning Animals"
- The Sin of Balaam
- The Connection Between Greed and False Doctrine
- The Danger of Antinomianism in the Church
Where Angels Fear to Tread
One of the central themes in this passage is a right understanding of authority and created order. The false teachers are fundamentally rebels. They despise authority. But Peter's concern is not primarily with their attitude toward civil magistrates, though that is surely included. He goes deeper. Their rebellion is cosmic. They blaspheme "glorious ones," or doxas in the Greek. This refers to the angelic hierarchy, the unseen spiritual realm that governs the affairs of men under God's sovereign hand.
These false teachers are arrogant blowhards who have no idea what they are talking about. They speak with great confidence about a spiritual world of which they are entirely ignorant. Peter's point of comparison is devastating. He says that even the holy angels, beings of immense strength and power, do not bring a railing accusation against other spiritual beings before the Lord. The parallel passage in Jude 9 gives us the specific example of Michael the archangel, who, when disputing with the devil himself over the body of Moses, did not presume to rebuke him on his own authority but simply said, "The Lord rebuke you." If the highest archangel shows such restraint when confronting the chief of fallen angels, what kind of breathtaking arrogance does it take for these mortal men to slander glorious beings they have never seen? It reveals a heart that is puffed up, self-willed, and completely blind to its own creaturely status. This is the essence of all sin: a refusal to stay in one's assigned place in God's world.
Verse by Verse Commentary
10 Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they blaspheme glorious ones,
Peter now zeroes in on the defining characteristics of these men. They are daring, audacious, presumptuous. They are self-willed, a word that means they are determined to have their own way, accountable to no one. Their standard is their own desire. And this internal arrogance manifests itself in a shocking lack of fear. They do not tremble. A holy fear, a reverent awe, is the beginning of wisdom. These men have none of it. And so, they rush to speak about things they do not understand. They blaspheme, or slander, glorious ones. As noted above, this refers to angelic beings. Whether good or evil angels, the point is that these are powerful spiritual realities that are part of God's created order. These false teachers speak of them with contempt, likely dismissing them as irrelevant or non-existent, thereby clearing the way for their own self-made theology of licentiousness. They have no sense of their place in the cosmos.
11 whereas angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.
The contrast could not be starker. Angels, who are vastly superior to mortal men in every conceivable way, demonstrate a profound respect for divine protocol. They operate within their God-given authority. Even when dealing with fallen spiritual powers, they do not resort to slander or abusive language. They defer judgment to the only one to whom judgment belongs: the Lord Himself. This is not weakness; it is the strength of humility. It is the recognition that God is God and they are not. The false teachers, by contrast, are all mouth. They appoint themselves judge and jury over the spiritual realm, and in so doing, reveal themselves to be fools of the highest order.
12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,
Peter's analogy here is brutal and precise. These men, who think themselves so wise, are in fact like unreasoning animals. The Greek is aloga zōa, irrational beasts. They have rejected divine revelation, so all they have left is raw instinct. They are driven by their appetites, their lusts, their base desires. And just as wild animals are born into a natural order where they are hunted and trapped, so these men are born for destruction. This is not a statement about God's love for animals; it is a statement about the nature of unregenerate man. By rejecting the image of God in which they were made, they have reduced themselves to the level of beasts. They blaspheme what they don't know, and so their end will be determined by what they are. In the same way that a wild animal meets its end, they too will be caught in the trap of God's judgment and perish in their own corruption.
13 suffering unrighteousness as the wages of their unrighteousness, considering it a pleasure to revel in the daytime, they are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they feast with you,
The judgment they receive will be perfectly just. They will receive unrighteousness as the payment, the wages, for their unrighteousness. The punishment fits the crime. They are so shameless in their sin that they consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. Most debauchery waits for the cover of darkness, but these men are so given over to their lusts that they have no shame. And here is the truly insidious part: they are doing this within the fellowship of the church. They are stains and blemishes at the love feasts, the communal meals of the early Christians. While feasting with the saints, they are delighting in their deceptions, no doubt twisting the gospel of grace into a license for immorality. They are a cancerous pollution in the body of Christ.
14 having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, they are accursed children.
Peter continues his diagnosis. Their eyes are "full of adultery." The Greek literally says "full of an adulteress." They look at every woman through a lens of sexual conquest. Their sin is not occasional; it is unceasing. They are predators, enticing and baiting unstable souls, those who are not well-grounded in the faith, the immature, the gullible. And at the root of it all is a heart that has been trained in greed. They have disciplined themselves, not in godliness, but in covetousness. Their heart has been to the gymnasium of greed and is now well-exercised in it. The conclusion is inescapable: they are accursed children, children of a curse, destined for condemnation.
15 Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness,
Peter now gives their error a name and a history. They have abandoned the straight path of righteousness to wander off on a crooked path. And that path is "the way of Balaam." Balaam is a complex figure in the Old Testament. He was a genuine prophet who received true words from God (Numbers 22-24). He knew he was not to curse Israel. But King Balak offered him a great deal of money to do so. While Balaam did not curse Israel with his mouth, his heart was corrupt. He loved the wages of unrighteousness. Later Scripture reveals that he was the one who counseled Balak on how to defeat Israel by seducing them into sexual immorality and idolatry with the women of Moab (Num 31:16; Rev 2:14). This is the very essence of the false teachers' ministry: using spiritual language and position for personal, financial, and sexual gain.
16 but he received a rebuke for his own lawlessness, for a mute donkey, speaking out with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.
Peter concludes the analogy with a touch of divine irony. Balaam, the great prophet, was so blinded by his greed that he could not see the angel of the Lord standing in his path with a drawn sword. But his donkey could. And God opened the donkey's mouth to rebuke the prophet. A dumb animal showed more spiritual sense than the man of God. This rebuke restrained the madness of the prophet. Greed is a form of insanity. It distorts reality and makes a man blind to the plainest warnings of God. The false teachers in the church are just as mad, and just as blind. They are galloping toward the sword of God's judgment, and they do not even see it coming.
Application
This passage is a bucket of ice water for any church that has grown comfortable and careless. The threats described here are not confined to the first century. The spirit of Balaam is alive and well. The temptation to accommodate the gospel to the spirit of the age, to soften its hard edges, to make it more palatable to the flesh, is a constant one. And it is almost always driven by the twin engines of greed and lust.
We must learn to recognize the signs. When a teacher's message is more about you than about God, be wary. When the "gospel" being preached is a ticket to worldly success, health, and wealth, you are on the way of Balaam. When sin is downplayed and holiness is mocked as legalism, you are hearing the voice of a brute beast. When leaders exhibit a pattern of arrogance, a refusal to be corrected, and a contempt for lawful authority, you are seeing the self-willed spirit Peter describes.
The application for us is twofold. First, we must be those stable souls who cannot be easily enticed. This requires being deeply rooted in the Word of God, not just knowing the stories, but understanding the whole counsel of God. Second, we must pray for and demand integrity from our leaders. The church must not be a place where predators can feast. We must be willing to exercise biblical discipline, to mark those who cause divisions and put a stumbling block in the way of the gospel (Rom 16:17). The true gospel does not offer the wages of unrighteousness. It offers the righteousness of Christ, received by faith, which then works itself out in a life of grateful, trembling obedience.