Who is willing to deal with the context of
2 Peter 2:4
Traditional Christians state
angels can sin but the Scriptural evidence is far from convincing.
So what is the true context of 2 Peter 2:4?
2 Peter 2:4 is connected with
2 Peter 2:1.
"But there were false prophets also among the people, [OT Israel!] even as there shall be false teachers among you! . . ."
2 Peter 2:2 and
2 Peter 2:3 are a warning of
false teachers to come in the future, but verse 4 reverts to verse 1 and illustrates the judgment of God upon
false prophets in Israel. In
2 Peter 2:5-7, Peter, guided by the Holy Spirit, selects two additional illustrations from Old Testament history to prove his point. The word for angels here is used for those false messengers with whom God judged. The question is what incident in Israels history could it be alluding to?
I thought this was important to know, although many already do.
2 Peter 2:1-4
2:1 At the close of chapter 1 Peter referred to the prophets of the OT as men who spoke, not by their own will, but as moved by the Holy Spirit. Now he mentions that in addition to the true prophets in the OT period, there were also false prophets. And just as there will be bona fide teachers in the Christian era, there will be false teachers as well.
These false teachers take their place inside the church. They pose as ministers of the gospel. This is what makes the peril so great. If they came right out and said they were atheists or agnostics, people would be on guard. But they are masters of deception. They carry the Bible and use orthodox expressions —though using them to mean something entirely different. The president of a liberal theological seminary acknowledged the strategy as follows:
Churches often change convictions without formally renouncing views to which they were previously committed, and their theologians usually find ways of preserving continuity with the past through re-interpretations.
W. A. Criswell describes the false teacher as follows:
... a suave, affable, personable, scholarly man who claims to be the friend of Christ. He preaches in the pulpit, he writes learned books, he publishes articles in the religious magazines. He attacks Christianity from within. He makes the church and the school a lodging place for every unclean and hateful bird. He leavens the meal with the doctrine of the Sadducees.
Where are these false teachers found? To mention perhaps the most obvious places, they are found in:
Liberal and Neo-Orthodox Protestantism
Liberal Roman Catholicism
Unitarianism and Universalism
Russellism (Jehovah's Witnesses)
Mormonism
Christian Science
Unity School of Christianity
Christadelphianism
Armstrongism (The “Radio Church of God”)
While professing to be ministers of righteousness, they secretly bring in soul-destroying heresies alongside true Bible doctrine. It is a deliberately deceptive mixture of the false and the true. Primarily, they peddle a system of denials. Here are some of the denials which can be found among certain of the groups listed above:
They deny the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, and His death as a Substitute for sinners. They are especially vehement in their denial of the value of His shed blood. They deny His bodily resurrection, eternal punishment, salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the reality of miracles in the Bible.
Other false teachings common today are:
The Kenosis theory—the heresy that Christ emptied Himself of the attributes of deity. This means that He could sin, make mistakes, etc.
The “God is dead” fantasy, evolution, universal salvation, purgatory, prayers for the dead, etc.
The ultimate sin of false teachers is that they even deny the Master who bought them. While they may say nice things about Jesus, refer to His “divinity,” His lofty ethics, His superb example, they fail to confess Him as God and as unique Savior.
Nels Ferré wrote, “Jesus never was or became God. ... To call Jesus God is to substitute an idol for Incarnation.”
Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy agreed:
I am frank to confess that the statement (that Christ is God) does not please me and it seems far from satisfactory. I would much prefer to have it say that God was in Christ, for I believe that the testimony of the New Testament taken as a whole is against the doctrine of the deity of Jesus, although I think it bears overwhelming witness to the divinity of Jesus.
In this and in many other ways, false teachers deny the Lord who bought them. Here we should pause to remind ourselves that while these false teachers to whom Peter refers had been bought by the Lord, they had never been redeemed. The NT distinguishes between purchase and redemption. All are purchased but not all are redeemed. Redemption applies only to those who receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, availing themselves of the value of His shed blood (1Pe_1:18-19).
In Mat_13:44 the Lord Jesus is pictured as a man who sold all He had to buy a field. In verse 38 of that same chapter, the field is distinctly said to be the world. So by His death on the cross, the Lord bought the world and all who are in it. But He did not redeem the whole world. While His work was sufficient for the redemption of all mankind, it is only effective for those who repent, believe, and accept Him.
The fact that these false teachers were never truly born again is indicated by their destiny. They bring on themselves swift destruction. Their doom is eternal punishment in the lake of fire.
2:2 Peter predicts that they will attract a large following. They do this by scuttling the biblical standards of morality and encouraging the indulgence of the flesh. Here are two examples:
Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson wrote:
... nothing can of itself always be labeled as “wrong.” One cannot, for instance, start from the position “sex relations before marriage” or “divorce” are wrong or sinful in themselves. They may be in 99 cases or even 100 cases out of 100, but they are not intrinsically so, for the only intrinsic evil is lack of love.
In the book Called to Responsible Freedom, published by the National Council of Churches, young people are counseled:
In the personal, individual sense, then, what justifies and sanctifies sexuality is not the external marital status of the people before the law but rather what they feel toward each other in their hearts. Measured in such a way, holding hands can be very wrong indeed while intimate sex-play can be right and good.
As a result of this type of behavior, taught and practiced by false teachers, the way of truth is maligned. Unbelievers develop a deep contempt for Christianity.
2:3 These false teachers are greedy, both in the sexual and financial realms. They have chosen the ministry as a lucrative profession. Their great aim is to build up a large following and thus to increase their income.
They exploit people with false words. Darby said, “The devil is never more satanic than when he carries a Bible.” So these men, with Bible in hand, pose as ministers of righteousness, give out well-known evangelical hymns, and use scriptural expressions. But all this is camouflage for heretical teachings and corrupt morals.
An awful condemnation awaits these religious fifth-columnists. Their judgment has not been idle; it has been arming itself for the slaughter. Their destruction has not been nodding its head in sleep; it has been wide awake, ready to pounce like a panther.
2:4 In verses 4-10, we have three OT examples of God's judgment on apostasy—the angels, the antediluvians, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We assume that the angels who sinned are those also mentioned in Jud_1:6. There we learn that: (1) They did not keep their position. (2) They left their proper dwelling. Though we cannot be certain, there is strong reason to believe that these are the same as “the sons of God” mentioned in Gen_6:2 : “The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.” Angels are called sons of God in Job_1:6; Job_2:1. The inference in Genesis 6 is that these sons of God left the angelic position assigned to them, exchanged their dwelling in heaven for one on earth, and intermarried with human wives. The children born to them were nephilim, which means “fallen ones” (Gen_6:4). It seems clear from Gen_6:3 that God was extremely displeased with these abnormal sexual unions.
Against this view it is generally argued that angels are sexless and therefore cannot marry. But the Bible does not say this. All it says is that in heaven they do not marry (Mar_12:25). Angels often appeared in human form in the OT. For example, the two angels whom Lot entertained in Sodom (Gen_19:1) are described as men in verses 5, 10, 12. They had feet (v. 2) and hands (v. 10); they could eat (v. 3); they had physical strength (vv. 10, 16). It is obvious from the perverted desires of the men of Sodom that these angels had bodies that were capable of sexual abuse (v. 5).
God was outraged by this gross apostasy of the angels from His established order. Their doom was to be thrown down to hell, committed to pits of utter gloom until the final judgment. (Believers Bible)
Good talking though
