Peter next emphasized the conduct of false teachers to motivate his readers to turn away from them.
2:10b "Daring"means bold to the point of being presumptuous, and "self-willed"is arrogant.
"They are concerned about doing their own thing as opposed to doing God's will. Their theme song is I Did It My Way!'"103
"Angelic majesties"is literally "glories"(Gr. doxas) and probably refers to evil angels. Another less probable view is that they describe angels who are more morally excellent than the false teachers.
2:11 This behavior of the false teachers is totally inappropriate as is clear from the conduct of beings who are of a higher order than humans. Good angels do not slander evil angels (the "angelic majesties"of verse 10) in the heavenly courts (cf. Jude 9).
2:12 Rather than behaving as good angels do the false teachers would act like animals. They would follow their lower instincts, their natural desires, instead of their reasons. Animals live purely by instinct. Peter believed the false teachers deserved treatment similar to animals therefore. The last clause is a play on words in Greek. The idea is that they will perish as beasts, like so much meat (cf. Jude 10). Peter did not mean they would escape eternal condemnation.
"As animals are trapped through their eagerness to satisfy their appetite, so self-indulgence betrays these men to their ruin."104
2:13 God will give them punishment in keeping with their crimes (Rom. 6:23; Gal. 6:7). Rather than concealing their carousing under the cover of darkness, they shamelessly practice immorality in broad daylight. The pagans did this in their worship of false gods. Pagan worship often involved "sacred"prostitution. These practices were similar to stains on the clean fabric of the church, blemishes on its countenance, since the practitioners claimed to be Christians (cf. Eph. 5:27). The faithful Christians did not carouse. The false teachers did the carousing, but they did it as part of the Christian community. Peter could say they revelled in their deceptions since they practiced immoral revelling while claiming to be followers of Christ.
"Like the blemishes on an animal not fit for sacrifice (Lev 1:3) or on a man not fit for priestly service (Lev 21:21), these immoral people were frustrating the church's aim of holiness and could make the church unfit to be presented as a sacrifice to God."105
2:14 The person who has eyes full of adultery is one who thinks only of fornication when he or she sees members of the opposite sex. The false teachers sinned without restraint (cf. Matt. 5:28). Furthermore they lured people not firmly committed to Jesus Christ to join them, as a fisherman lures his prey. They had considerable experience practicing greed and were experts in it. They behaved like children, undisciplined and self-centered, and were under God's judgment.
2:15 The false prophet Balaam counselled Balak, the king of Moab, to invite the Israelites to participate with his people in a feast to honor Moab's gods (Num. 31:16).106This worship included sacred prostitution (cf. Num. 25:1-3). Balaam is "the classic example of the false teacher who leads people astray for his own personal gain."107The false teachers Peter referred to were also trying to get the Christians to participate in idolatry and immoral practices. They urged the faithful to wander from the narrow path of righteousness back on to the broad way that leads to destruction (cf. Isa. 53:6; Rev. 2:14). Balaam's motive was greed as was the false teachers'. By advocating unrighteousness they gained followers and profited personally.
2:16 Whenever a person rejects God's Word and will, he or she begins to act irrationally because God's Word reveals true reality. Finally right becomes wrong, and wrong becomes right for him or her. That is what happened to Balaam. He became so insensitive that finally God had to use a dumb animal to rebuke him.108That donkey was wiser than Balaam (cf. Jude 11).
"It is sufficient to say to one who believes at all in miracles, that it was no more difficult for God to utter thought through the mouth of the ass in the words of men, than to stop men, as he once did, from talking in a given language and cause them to talk in another."109
2:17 Like the springs and mists Peter described, the false teachers failed to deliver what they promised.
"Heterodoxy is all very novel in the classroom; it is extremely unsatisfying in the parish."110
These teachers were hypocrites (cf. Jude 12). They would spend eternity in the darkness that symbolizes separation from Him who is light (cf. Matt. 25:30; 1 John 1:6; Jude 13) because they turned from the light of God (1 John 1:5). Elsewhere another figure of the final destiny of the lost is the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14-15). Since fire gives light we should probably understand both figures, darkness and fire, to represent two aspects of eternal judgment, namely, separation from God and torment. The figures do not contradict each other.
2:18 The false teachers appealed to their audiences with boastful (lit. swollen) words, promising more than they could deliver, with vain words empty of anything to back them up. Their appeal was to "the lustful desires of sinful human nature"(NIV).
"Grandiose sophistry is the hook, filthy lust is the bait, with which these men catch those whom the Lord had delivered or was delivering."111
Furthermore they appealed to people who were only just escaping from those who live in error. This group probably includes new Christians and or older carnal ones who were still in the process of making a final break with their pagan friends.112
"The average person does not know how to listen to and analyze the kind of propaganda that pours out of the mouths and printing presses of the apostates. Many people cannot tell the difference between a religious huckster and a sincere servant of Jesus Christ."113
2:19 By promising freedom from eschatological judgment to their hearers while they themselves were the slaves of corruption, the false teachers were ". . . like a 300-pound man selling diet books."114Slavery, after all, occurs whenever one is under the control of some influence, not just some other person.
"The false teachers reveal the futility of their promise of freedom from moral requirements by living lives enslaved to immorality themselves."115
"Seneca [the Greek Stoic philosopher] said, To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.'"116
"Just as a gifted musician finds freedom and fulfillment putting himself or herself under the discipline of a great artist, or an athlete under the discipline of a great coach, so the believer finds true freedom and fulfillment under the authority of Jesus Christ."117
