Jesus On Trial
January 27, 2025
“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them…Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute**.” — 2 Peter 2:2, New International Version (NIV).
* — “Meaning: a self-chosen opinion, a religious or philosophical sect {with} discord or contentious.actions.” Also, “a personal (decisive) choice.”
** — “Definition: Rejection, disapproval, refutation
Meaning: refutation, rejection, hence: disrepute, contempt” — https://biblehub.com/greek/557.htm
I want to focus on the ending phrase “Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.” — especially the word “depraved” as used in this verse :
“The term διαφθείρω would have been understood in a broad sense, encompassing the decay of moral values, the destruction of physical structures, and the spoiling of relationships.” — ibid.
This warning is about the contentious teachings — which the Apostle Peter is talking about — which effectively cause divisions, discord, and corruption of the Gospel message. Even worse, people looking on from outside the Believers gatherings, precipitates contempt and rejection of this “way of truth.”
People will not be anxious to change their ways , lining up to follow Jesus when apparently all that coming to Jesus meant was more of the same.
There are two things that are also apparent in essays published on Medium.com,
- People latch onto the aberrant and hypocritical behavios of Christians from the Pews.to the Lectern.
- There are still those false teachers, pushing their own personal interpretations of the Bible and very often ignorant and unstable people distort what the Bible is saying.
Anne Wilson — Stand (Official Performance Lyric Video)
That idea is from 2 Peter 3:16 which says, “He {the apostle Paul} writes this way in all his letters, speaking in them about such matters. Some parts of his letters are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”
There is lots of humor about people who purchase something that needs to be assembled… When they think they are done, they look and ask with astonishment, “Why do we have all these extra parts?!?”Reading the Bible is a lot like that. Scriptures cannot just be broken down and rearranged to fit conveniently into one’s preset opinions — although most of us have tried at one time or another…
To finish up, Jesus is still on trial — not before Pilate — but by each of us and our Christian behaviors. People are looking askew at people who claim to be Born Again Believers and are confused by our actions. Beyond what we can control, there are adversaries to God, Jesus, and the Bible, who have some kind of axe to grind, who also confuse people by chopping up the Scriptures and building their own ideas to prove those Biblical concepts are wrong and theirs are right.
That phenomenon has been going on since Satan asked Eve, “Did God really say…?”
