Look Great, Taste Terrible – 2 Peter 2:17-22

Many years ago in my first and last attempt at being a vegetable gardener I planted radish seeds (I loved radishes then and now, but they no longer love me back). When we harvested our radishes they looked great but they tasted terrible. Someone I consulted told me the soil they grew in was either too acidic or not acidic enough. I don’t remember which. Either way, hope was dashed of my being able to harvest yummy radishes.

False teachers promise something yummy and have great appeal, but they ultimately disappoint.

These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” (2 Peter 2:17-22, ESV)

False teachers promise refreshment but are like waterless springs, a mirage of refreshment.  They promise hope but are like chaotic mists driven by the storm.  Their judgment is assured.

Their biggest promise is that we can indulge our sensual passions, that we can have freedom sexually. But indulgence in sexual freedom actually only enslaves them and us.  Their prey is typically new and immature Christians who don’t yet maturely know the way of life in Christ. Their loud and boastful expression fools the immature into believing them.

Those who profess Christ and then buy into the false teaching and turn from Christ to the world are in a worse state than before since they cannot repent (Hebrews 6). They know the truth and are more culpable than before.  They have rejected the light more decisively.  They have revealed their true nature as unbelievers returning to the life they lived before even though now they cloak it in Christian garb. They had escaped the defilement of the world initially through the teaching about Jesus, but were never genuinely saved. They correspond to those Jesus described in his parable of the sower, those who were the thorny soil among which the seed of the word proved ultimately unfruitful (Matthew 13:22).

May we stay unstained by the world and always find the place of repentance when we sin.  May we recognize and expose false teaching for what it is.