The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Peter — Section 56

HOMILETICS. Vers. 1-9.- Warning against false teachers. I. THE NERD OF WATCHFULNESS. 1. There must befalse teachers. There had been false prophets in Israel, like Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah, who flattered Ahab and lured him to his death. There was a traitor among the chosen twelve. "In the visible Church the evil are ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the ministration of the Word and sacraments." The Lord himself had said that it would be so. "Beware of false prophets," he had said ill his sermon on the mount; the apostle echoes the Master's words. It seems very sad that there should be the taint of evil even in the chief places of the Church, that ungodly men should assume the character of teachers, and abuse the form of religion for their selfish and wicked ends. 'l'he divisions of the Church, the strange diversities of opinion among Christians, seem a great hindrance to the progress of the gospel, and furnish to some an excuse for unbelief. But when we remember Judas Iscariot, we feel that the Church must be always liable to this great misfortune; if in its very illfancy, ill the very presence of the incarnate Saviour, one whom he had chosen could betray his Lord for money, it is not to be expected that all those who serve in the ministry of the Church should be pure and holy. False teachillg, too, made its appearance very early in the history of the Church. We soon meet with the name of the first heresiarch, Simon Magus; he was one of the converts of Philip the deacon at Samaria, one of the first candidates for confirmation. 'l'he existence of false teaching is a great trial of our faith ; but, like other trials, it is overruled for good to those who ill Sillcerity seek to know the truth. 2. Tlie character of their teaching. All false doctrine is pernicious. The ancient forms of heresy stood in direct opposition to the great truths of Christianity : they denied the distillction of Persons in the one God., or the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, or the truth of his manhood, or the reality of his precious death; they separated Jesus from the Christ, and the God of Christians from the God of the Old Testament; while others, as apparently the Nicolaitanes of the Revelation, indulged in licentious practices, and maintained that the mind might be pure, thougL. the body was de.filed. These and such-like heresies were heresies of destruction ; they led to the spiritual destruction both of the teachers and the taught; they were privily brought in, set alongside of the truths of the gospel, and so corrupted the gospel of Christ, and deprived it of its saving power. l!'or these false teachers denied the Master that bought them, some by rejecting either his Divinity or his humanity, or tbe truth of his atonement, sume by the practical denial of a licentious life. He had bought them to be his own : they were redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ; and they denied the Master that bought them with that stupendous price. Alas l we have all at some time and in some sense denied him by spiritual sloth and actual sin; we knew that he died that we should die unto sin, and rose again that we should rise to newness of life ; and knowing this, we have sinned agaiu and again, yielding ourselves to be servants of sin rather than of CLrist. St. Peter himself bad thrice denied the Lord; confident in his own steadfastness, he had mailltaincd that Le at least would bG faithful even unto death ; but his courage failed him in the hour of temptation. He must have remem- bered Lis own great sin when he wrote these words. He repented; the bitter tears, tbe holy life that followed, proved the sincerity of his repentance. May we feel the power of the Lord's loving look tilted on us, and be led, like Peter, to rellentanc11, OH, rr. 1-22.J THE SECOND EPISTLE GENERAL OF PETER. 5]