When Nothing Feels Like Enough

2 Peter 2:10-14 Explained

How would you define “desire” without relying on a synonym like “wanting”?

Think about the role desire plays in your spiritual life. In this passage, Peter shows that desires can shipwreck your whole life. But they are also the key to closeness with God. We’ll explore how it all works and how to make corrections when desires go wrong.

What Does 2 Peter 2:10a,12b-14 Mean?

Peter 2:10 This is especially true of those who follow the flesh in desire of defilement 12 … They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish. 13 They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you. 14 With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed–an children of cursing!

The false teachers navigate life like animals—following their animal impulses instead of governing them, failing to use reason. As a result, their desires becoming defiling. Their lives become as meaningless as an animal’s, and they will die like animals (by being lured into a trap with bait). Following your flesh makes you vulnerable. They will be judged because it’s not a victimless crime. Following their flesh causes harm. For one thing, it contaminates the church’s worship (love feasts were combined with communion), making it blemished like a blemished lamb in the Old Testament. They see every woman as a potential adulteress, which makes their sin continuous. They have trained themselves in greed (desire that is insatiable because it seeks to fulfill a spiritual appetite with an earthly pleasure). They are children of cursing in that they deserve God’s curse all the way down to their DNA.

2 Peter 2:10 This is especially true of those who follow the flesh in desire of defilement 12 … They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish. 13 They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you. 14 With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed–children of cursing!

Introduction: Desire Drives Life

How would you define the word “desire”—without using a synonym? In 2 Peter 2:10 you see the phrase “corrupt desire.” In v.14 we read about “experts in greed”—I think this whole section is all about desire disorders. So I thought, “If I preach about desire, I better know what the word means.” So I tried to define it. What is desire, exactly? When a little kid is in a store and he spots some toy he just wants so badly he can hardly stand it, he begs mom for it, he gazes at it—it’s almost painful, the desire is so strong. We’ve all experienced that. We all know how desire feels, but what is it? What’s happening inside you when you experience that? What is desire?

I looked it up in a dictionary and just got a definition loop using a synonym. Desire is wanting. Then I looked up wanting and it said it’s desire. AI wasn’t any better. Scientists can observe what regions of the brain light up when you feel desire, but that seems to be more an effect than the thing itself.

So all that to say, even though everyone knows how desire feels, pinning down exactly what it is is tricky. Here’s my best effort at defining desire: Desire is a motivating internal drive toward happiness or fulfillment. It’s a drive to acquire whatever your soul thinks will make it happy or fulfilled. Not necessarily what your mind thinks will make you happy. Your mind might say, “No, I know this thing will ultimately bring more heartache than happiness,” but you still desire it because your mind and your soul aren’t always on the same page. Even when your mind knows better, your soul will often latch on to something it thinks will bring happiness and that latching on—that’s desire.

God designed us with an unstoppable need to be happy and fulfilled. It’s the most powerful drive we have. You could argue it’s the only drive we have. Every other drive we have, in some form derives from our need for happiness.

And so desire is the engine of life. It’s always what gets you moving. Everything you do, you do because of some kind of desire—a desire that won out over all competing desires. That includes everything from getting a glass of water to getting married. Big decisions, small decisions—life is powered by desire.

It’s the engine of life, and not just the engine—it’s also the steering wheel. Your strongest desires determine which direction your life will go because you’ll be driven to pursue them.

God made us this way because the highest goal in life is to be happy in God. That’s the best way you can glorify God and it’s the best thing that can ever happen to you. Nothing will improve your life more than good desires. And nothing glorifies God more than desiring him. There’s no more profound expression of worship in the Bible than the beginning of Psalm 63.

Psalm 63:1 … my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you

Or Psalm 42.

Psalm 42:1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

It glorifies God a little bit when you say he’s wonderful, but it glorifies him a whole lot more when you desire him as wonderful because that proves that your soul really believes he’s wonderful.

And it’s the best thing that can happen to you, because if desire is what sets the direction of your life and drives you forward in that direction, what do you think your life would be like if your strongest desire was to meet with God?

On the other hand, if your soul gets fixated on the wrong thing as a source of happiness, you’ve got real trouble. And that’s why Scripture has so much to say about bad desires. The tenth commandment: Thou shalt not covet—thou shalt not have bad desire. If desire is the engine and the steering wheel, then if desire goes bad, your whole life goes bad. Nothing will ruin your life more thoroughly than messed up desires. There will be no stopping the train wreck that will come.

Where Bad Desire Leads: Judgment

In today’s passage, Peter’s going to show us that train wreck in slow motion. And as he does so, every two verses he stops and skips ahead and shows us the end product of the wreck, which is God’s judgment. And all through this chapter, Peter never goes more than 2 verses without reminding us of the judgment coming on these men. Right in the middle of another thought, he’ll interrupt himself and say, “By the way, these men are in for severe judgment.” “Don’t forget, these guys will be punished.” He said it in v.1, v.3, vv.4-9, v.10, then in our passage today.

2 Peter 2:12 … like beasts they too will perish.[1] 13 They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done.

Two verses later he calls them

14 … an accursed brood!

Literally: the offspring of cursing. That’s a Hebrew figure of speech, where if they wanted to say someone was 100% defined by a certain characteristic, they would say he is a child of that characteristic—like that characteristic is your mom and dad, so your genetic makeup comes from that trait.

So Peter says these men are children of God’s curse. Everything in them, all the way down to their DNA, deserved to be cursed by God.

Then he’ll do it again in v.17 and again in v.21. If there is one point the Holy Spirit wants you to get from this chapter it is that these men will not escape judgment. No one defies gravity.

Okay, so those are all snapshots of the end result of this train wreck. What caused that wreck? How did these men manage to put themselves so squarely in the crosshairs of divine wrath? Verse 10 points to two sins. One is despising authority, which we covered last time. The other one is a desire problem.

Dehumanizing Desire

When Cravings Take the Wheel

Literally, v.10 says:

2 Peter 2:10 This is especially true of those who follow the flesh in desire of defilement

Defilement refers to moral pollution. Desire of defilement is desire that makes you spiritually unclean.

The word for desire is important. This is the word for “coveting” in the 10^th commandment.[2] Coveting refers to any bad desire. It could be desire for something forbidden or it could be desire for something good but you desire it in a way that dishonors God. There are a lot of ways desire for a good thing can go wrong. For example:

If you have to have that thing in order to be happy—that’s coveting. It’s a desire disorder.
If you put your hope in that thing so it becomes your security and causes fear in your heart if you don’t get it or if you have fear of losing it.That’s disordered desire—you’re coveting that thing.

If you’re so desperate for that thing that you’ll sin to get it or you’ll sin if you don’t get it. That’s a desire disorder.

If you’re trying to get something from that thing or person that you should be seeking from God.

Those are all forms of coveting—all examples of desire gone wrong.

This isn’t the first time Peter has brought this up. He used this word in the opening paragraph of the book. If you remember back in v.4 of ch.1, Peter made the amazing statement that coveting is the cause of all the corruption in the world (same word). And in that same opening section, Peter gave the formula for defeating covetous desires. We do it by trusting God’s promises.

But that’s not a one-time event. It’s a constant battle, because covetous desires spring up in our hearts like weeds in a garden. You can pull every one of them, and a year later there they are again.

So we constantly fight that battle against covetous desires, but what did these false teachers do? Were they fighting those desires? No. They didn’t fight them; they followed them.

2 Peter 2:10 This is especially true of those who follow the flesh in desire of defilement

Underline that word “follow.” Your Bible might say “indulge,” but “follow” or “go after” is the more literal translation.[3]

And I like the literal image because the idea of following something reminds us that living this way will take you somewhere. It will determine what path your life will take and where you’ll end up. We all have some strategy for making decisions and navigating through life. And for the false teachers, their strategy was to just go wherever the desire of the flesh took them.

The desires of your flesh are impulses that rise from physical cravings—the impulse to eat and drink and sleep and all the needs of your body. You could call those our animal impulses because we share those with animals. There isn’t much difference in the way those impulses work in animals compared to humans.

But here’s where we differ from animals: For animals, those impulses are the way they navigate through life. If you read the book of Proverbs for cattle, where the dad cow is teaching his little calf about life, it would be a lot shorter than our book of Proverbs. It would say, “My son, listen to my wisdom and do not forsake my teaching. When you’re hungry, eat. When you’re thirsty, drink. When you’re sleepy, sleep. When you get a chance, reproduce.” And that’s it. That’s the sum total of what guides them through life. They’re led through life by their physical desires.

Humans have all those same desires. All day every day you have a constant stream of impulses that rise from bodily appetites. Your body never shuts up.

“Give me some food, get me a drink,
sit down and rest,
lie down, get up,
give me some entertainment,
listen to something pleasurable,
look at something pleasurable,

touch that, daydream about this …”—it never stops.

Those animal impulses aren’t bad.

It’s God’s design. You need signals from your body to make sure you tend to physical needs. But here’s where we differ from the animals:

2 Peter 2:12 … They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed

God made animals to be unreasoning. The Greek word is a-logos—no reason. But God gave humans a prefrontal cortex, so we can feel a hunger pang and think it over—should I eat now or later? What are my priorities? Should I eat something tasty or something healthy that I don’t even like? God gave us a spiritual executive function so instead of following our fleshly impulses, we can govern them. Animals follow their fleshly desires; humans govern them. As a human, you can choose the direction of your life. You can say, “This is where I’m going in life,” and when your feelings and desires and impulses want to go another way, you have the ability to drag them along kicking and screaming.

Animals can’t do that because they are creatures of instinct. They can’t disobey orders from their stomach. They’re just led around by the nose by their impulses.

When the false teachers let the impulses of the flesh set the direction of their life, they become animals. They destroy their own humanity.

When Humans Mimic Animals

On May 16, 2018, there was a White House roundtable discussion about the MS-13 gang describing the unique brutality of that gang. They murder innocent people with machetes just to gain status in the gang. Gang members chased down two girls, ages 15 and 16 and murdered them with baseball bats. Another teen stabbed over 100 times. And in that roundtable discussion, President Trump made this comment: “These aren’t people. They’re animals.”

And when he said that, critics complained that Trump was dehumanizing the gang members. I find that criticism interesting coming from a culture that believes in evolution, because evolutionists insist that all humans are animals. But if humans are animals, why does the word “dehumanizing” even exist?

It’s because despite what they claim to believe, deep down, somewhere at the level of common sense, everyone knows there is a huge difference between humans and animals. It’s such a huge difference that one of the worst insults you can level at a person is to call him an animal.

Peter’s statement goes a lot further than Trump’s. Imagine if Trump had said this:

2 Peter 2:12 … They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish.

Was Peter dehumanizing those men? Nope. Those men did it all by themselves. They destroyed their own humanity by following their flesh and allowing those impulses to turn into covetous desire.

Live by your feelings and you become an animal. Do what you feel like doing, and whenever you don’t feel like doing something, just don’t do it. Let your feelings steer your life, and not only will your life be as meaningless as animals’ lives, but, Peter says, you’ll also die like an animal. How do animals die?

Easy Prey

2 Peter 2:12 … born only to be caught and destroyed

Very often, animals die by being caught in a trap. Animals are easy to lure into a trap if you have something they want because they can’t resist their impulses. It’s so easy that it’s illegal to hunt big game using bait, because it’s just not fair. They’re incapable of saying no.

I read about a jungle tribe that has monkey traps. It’s just a basket, fastened to the ground, and it has a narrow opening at the top. They put food in it, the monkey reaches in, takes hold of the food, and now his hand is too big to fit through the opening so he can’t withdraw his hand unless he lets go of the food. And the monkeys won’t let go. They just sit there until they’re captured.

And Peter says, “If you follow your flesh—you live by feelings, you’ll be just like those monkeys. It’ll be easy for Satan to capture and get you to do whatever he wants just by dangling the right bait.

Just like an animal, you won’t be able to disobey orders from your flesh. Paul said it in Philippians 3:19—”their god is their stomach.” They’ve turned their animal appetites into a god that they can’t disobey. Peter points in that same direction with this word “follow,” because that term is routinely used in the OT for following idols.[4]

Follow your flesh, and it will not lead you to where it promises to lead you. It promises happiness and wellbeing, but that’s never what it delivers. In v.13, when it says they revel in their pleasures, that word for pleasures has a primary meaning of deceit. They are deceitful pleasures. Some pleasures tell you the truth about reality, but these pleasures lie to you, make promises they can’t deliver, and they lead you right into a trap.

The Loss of Shame

13 … Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight.

Animals do what they do in broad daylight because they have no shame. But normal humans do. Usually when people get drunk or let loose with indulging the flesh, they do it in the dark.

1 Thessalonians 5:7 … those who get drunk, get drunk at night.[5]

Why? Because it’s embarrassing and they don’t want to make a fool of themselves in full view of everyone. But those who become enslaved to their passions eventually lose all shame.

And they can’t control themselves. Sometimes you hear about how some of these pastors are caught in terrible immorality, and you wonder, “Why were they so reckless? Didn’t they know they would get caught?” But when you get that enslaved, you can’t stop yourself even if it means doing things that will get you caught.

Animal Rejects

So in v.12, these men are animals. Then in v.13, Peter says, “Not just animals—they’re lousy animals.”

13 … They are blots and blemishes

Blots and blemishes are terms used in the OT to describe sacrifices that were unacceptable to God in worship. You have a lamb to offer God, but it has a blemish, you might as well just go home and enjoy some lamb chops because that animal will be rejected in the temple.

Following the flesh drops you from the human level down to the animal level, and then it drops you down even further to the bottom tier of the animal world—the rejects among the animals.

But God calls us to be the opposite of that.

2 Peter 3:14 … since you are looking forward to [Christ’s coming], make every effort to be found without blot and without blemish

Same two words. We still exist in a sacrificial system. We still offer sacrifices to God. We don’t use animals anymore. We offer different kinds of sacrifices—one of which is our corporate worship.

Hebrews 13:15 … let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise

The church is the new temple, our worship is presented to God as a sacrifice, and people who are following their disordered desires are blemishes that make our worship unacceptable.

13 … They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.

The early church had what they called “agape feasts,” where they would have big potluck meal together and the whole thing would culminate in the Lord’s supper. That’s how they did communion—a big feast.

So these feasts were part of their worship. But that worship was contaminated by the false teachers who used the occasion to just indulge the flesh in sinful ways. That’s part of the harm they cause.

2 Peter 2:13 They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done.

Indulging the flesh is not a victimless crime. It does real damage. It not only makes everyone around the selfish person miserable, but it does real spiritual damage to the whole church.

When Desire Becomes Greed

That’s v.13. Now in v.14 their desire disorder explodes into full-blown greed.

2 Peter 2:14 With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed

Greed is when desire becomes insatiable. The word for greed is pleonexia—pleon = “more” + echō = “to have” Greed is “more having.” More and more and more having—never satisfied. Greed is desire without contentment. You can have super strong, driving desire without being greedy. But if you can’t be content without that thing you want—that’s greed.

Greed has nothing to do with how much you want or how strong your desire is. You can have a very strong desire for a huge sum of money, but as long as you’re content without it, it’s not greed.

So you can be greedy for something you already have. In 2 Corinthians 9:5, Paul told the Corinthians not to give to the poor “grudgingly.” Literally, “as a gift given in greed.” If you give a gift but it feels like a piece of your flesh is being torn out, it means you’re greedy for your own money. Giving it away is excruciating because you can’t be content without it.

Worse than Animals

And this is where these false teachers drop down yet another level and become even worse than animals.

An animal can eat, satisfy its hunger, and move on. But greed can’t ever be satisfied. In fact, the more you feed it, the less satisfied you become. Greed is the ultimate joy-killer. You can’t feel happiness and greed at the same time because greed is, by nature, unsatisfied and discontented.

We’re All Greedy

The problem is, most people don’t understand what greed is, so most of our greed goes undetected. It never gets identified as greed, so the problem never gets solved.

All Kinds of Greed

Most people think of greed only in terms of money or possessions. But in Luke 12:15, Jesus said:

Luke 12:15 … Be on your guard against all kinds of greed

What else could you be greedy for besides money? How about attention? Or approval from people? Are there people who just run after more and more approval? And no matter how much approval you give them, they’re never satisfied?

How about food? Is it possible to be greedy for food? We’ve all experienced that.

You can be greedy for anything in this world. And one way to tell if it’s greed is if it can’t be satisfied. If I feel uncomfortable because my stomach is empty, then as soon as I fill my stomach, the hunger goes away. But if you find that you keep eating and keep eating and you’re never satisfied—or you’re never satisfied with a relationship or never satisfied with your job or fill in the blank—probably what’s happening is your soul is hungry for an encounter with God’s presence, and you’re trying to fill that longing with food or your marriage or work or something else. And no earthly thing, no matter how good, can satisfy a spiritual craving.

Isaiah 55:2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

But like I said, if you’re greedy for something good, it will probably never occur to you that it’s greed. I’ve never once had someone come to me and say, “Hey, I need counseling to help me overcome my greediness for closeness with my wife.” No one thinks of that as greed. But if you look to your marriage to give you what can only come from God, then you’ll just take and take and take from your spouse and you’ll never be content in your marriage because your desire has turned to greed. You’ll end up angry at your spouse for not meeting your needs, your spouse will be angry with you for being so needy, and your relationship with God will die on the vine. That’s what greed does.

So you can be greedy for a relationship, you can be greedy for good health, greedy for security, for knowledge, for comfort, for sleep, for respect, for control. Whatever you use to fulfill spiritual emptiness, or whatever earthly thing your happiness or contentment depends on—that’s greed.

The Greed of Lust

And not only are there other kinds of greed besides financial greed, if you trace the word “greed” (pleonexia)[6] through the NT, you’ll find that money greed isn’t even the most common kind. The most common in the NT is sex greed. A heart that’s greedy for sexual pleasure.

Ephesians 4:19 … they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with greediness.

All sexual immorality is a result of sex greed. That’s why when you see a list of all the various sexual sins, the list can culminate with the word greed.

Ephesians 5:3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed

Colossians 3:5 Put to death … sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

And you see the same thing here in our passage in verse 14.

2 Peter 2:14 With eyes full of adultery[7] … they are experts in greed

Eyes Full of Adultery

Literally, “With eyes full of an adulteress.” They see every woman they look at as a potential adulteress. Or they imagine committing adultery with every woman they see—either physically or visually. It’s sex greed.

And it’s such a graphic word picture—eyes full of the thing you’re greedy for. And you can apply that to any kind of greed. When greed for something takes over your heart, that thing fills your eyes. You look at life through the lens of the object of your greed. You look at everything and everyone in terms of how you might get that thing you feel like you’ve got to have.

And so the sin goes on 24/7.

2 Peter 2:14 With eyes full of an adulteress, they never stop sinning

It’s one thing to stumble into a sin, repent, get back on track, then sin again, repent, fall again—that’s actually the normal rhythm of the Christian life. But for these people, the sin is nonstop without any gaps because when you’re on the lookout for an opportunity to sin, that’s sin. Whether you have an opportunity in the moment or not, the fact that you’re eager for one is itself sin. So they just remain in a state of rebellion against God even when they aren’t physically doing anything.

Experts in Greed

14 … they are experts in greed

Lit. Having a heart trained in greed. That word “trained” is gymnazo—we get our word gymnasium from it, and that’s what the word meant back then. In those days, people would go to the gym for physical training or training in sports. And gyms were also schools where there was academic training as well.

So again, Peter gives us a striking word picture. He says, “These guys hit the gym every day to train their greed muscles.” So the NIV translation really captures it—experts in greed. They’re really good at being greedy, really good at indulging the flesh, and really good at justifying it. And that makes them highly effective at enticing people into their way of life.

Seduce the Unstable

2 Peter 2:14 … they seduce the unstable.[8]

One of the reasons why indulging the flesh isn’t a victimless crime is that you inevitably draw other people into it. Every one of us has a sphere of influence. Even family members who are irritated at your following the flesh, as irritated as they might be, when the moment comes for them to be tempted with fleshy impulses of their own, they’ll be tempted to use your behavior as an excuse for them to give in to the flesh. But these false teachers went beyond that and actively seduced people into their lifestyle. We’ll look into exactly how they do that when we get down to v.18.

How to Become More Human

Remember that Peter is presenting these false teachers as the exact opposite of what we’re called to. So if you take everything Peter says here and flip it to the opposite, what do you get? You get a lesson on how to become more and more human. More and more like the ultimate human—the Lord Jesus Christ who is the perfect ideal for humanity.

Think of it—when God entered his own creation, he didn’t become an angel. He didn’t become a cherub or a seraph or one of the thrones or powers or rulers or authorities in the heavenly realms. He didn’t become the archangel. He took on human form, and he will keep that form forever. What does that tell you about the importance of humanity in God’s eyes?

We think so much about Jesus’ divine nature, but it’s also good to consider his human nature. He stands as the perfect, ideal, ultimate human—the fulfillment of everything God had in mind for the human race. It’s all there in him, and so becoming more and more human moves us closer and closer to that marvelous ideal.

The closer you move to that ideal, the more meaningful and fulfilled your life will be. The more we drift from that ideal, the more meaningless life becomes. And much of what makes up that ideal has to do with desires being what they should be. So how can we take the opposite path of these false teachers and keep our desires from becoming disordered?

1) Govern the Flesh, Don’t Follow It

Obviously, that’s easier said than done—we all wish we had greater self-control. Even unbelievers want that. But I think having this as a motive can really help. When you’re struggling with self-control, instead of just saying, “I need to resist this temptation because that thing wouldn’t be good for me,” or “because I’ll regret it afterward,” think about your role in God’s created order. “I’m not an animal. I wasn’t created to be an animal.” Our role is to be above the created order so that it serves us, not the other way around. God created you to subdue the creation and rule over it. You’re a king here—a vice regent for God, reigning with Christ and being like Christ, growing toward his perfect humanity. Don’t let earthly things take your throne by taking you captive. Paul said, “I beat my body and make it my slave.”

Spiritual Atrophy

So remind yourself, “God made me human, in his image, and where my humanity is compromised, I want it restored. I want to become more and more human—more and more like the ideal human, Jesus.”

You can never let up in that war because when you give control over to your flesh, it’s hard to get it back. The more you just operate on animal instincts, the more the human part of you will atrophy. If we don’t exercise the parts of us that set us apart from animals, those parts wither away and you regress toward being like an animal. Every time you face a temptation, remind yourself, “Oh good—another opportunity to practice being human.”

2) Kill Coveting by Trusting Promises

That’s not in this passage, but it is the foundation Peter laid for this passage at the very beginning of the book.

2 Peter 1:4 … he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by coveting.

Desires become disordered when we believe this world’s promises instead of God’s. Always keep God’s promises in front of your face, remind yourself constantly, and lean in to trusting them. The more you trust something God said, the more disordered desires will come into order.

3) Be Grateful, not Greedy

If you trace the word “greed” through the NT, you’ll find the cure for it is gratitude.

Ephesians 5:3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed … 4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking … but rather thanksgiving.

The solution to all greed is gratitude, because you can’t feel greed and gratitude at the same time. Whenever you find yourself with an insatiable longing for something, or when you find that nothing seems to satisfy, it’s probably a sign that you’re not enjoying God’s gestures of love enough. Start scanning your life for God’s expressions of love for you, enjoy them, and respond to him. That enjoyment is gratitude, and it will douse the fires of greed in your heart.

Summary

They follow the impulses of the flesh which results in defiling desire (the solution to which is trusting God’s promises). This makes them like unreasoning animals who can’t disobey their stomach. And so they will be caught with bait like animals. They’re like the worst of animals—blemished and rejected for worship. They contaminate the church’s sacrifice of worship in the love feasts. Then desire turns to greed (desire that is insatiable because they try to fulfill a spiritual craving with a physical pleasure) which makes them worse than animals. They see every woman as a potential adulteress and influence unstable people. Become more human by governing, rather than following the flesh, trusting God’s promises, and replacing greed with gratitude.

[1] Literally, “In their destruction they also will be destroyed.” It’s a difficult sentence. I believe the most likely meaning is that the false teachers will be destroyed in the same kind of destruction animals experience.

[2] The same word can be used for good desire, but when it’s in a negative context, it means coveting. And this is clearly a negative context because the phrase is “in desire of defilement” and it’s a description of why the false teachers were especially deserving of judgment.

[3] It’s actually two words in the Greek. The first means “to proceed” and the second is “after.”

[4] Deut 4:3; 6:14; 28:14; 3 Kgdms 11:10 [1 Kings 11:10]; Isa 65:2; Hos 11:10.

[5] Feasting and drinking during the day was frowned on even among pagans. Ancient writers would talk about how it’s fine to go to drinking parties and feasts after work, at night. But anyone who did that in the daytime was out of control. People say the same thing today—you know you’re an alcoholic if you’re drinking in the morning. And you see it in Scripture too. Moving their degeneracy into the daylight is a sign of degeneracy.

Ecclesiastes 10:16 Woe to you, O land whose … princes feast in the morning.

Isaiah 5:11 Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks.