2:18

When the false teachers were teaching people, they used words and phrases which sounded very impressive and important, but really didn’t mean much. However, because what they said sounded impressive, it deceived people who had recently become Christians and encouraged them to live in an immoral way.

2:18a

lofty but empty words: Peter used two words in Greek which contrast with each other. The teaching of the false teachers was impressive or lofty (literally “very big, excessive”), but at the same time, it was also empty, it had no value or sense.

2:18b

Because what the false teachers said sounded so impressive, it deceived people and they believed it and acted in the way the false teachers said they could.

they appeal to the sensual passions of the flesh: This refers to behaving in a sexually immoral way, acting according to what their bodies told them and what they wanted to do. See the note on 2:2a. The false teachers enticed the new Christians away from the truth by teaching them that they were free to act immorally if they wanted to.

2:18c

entice: The Greek word which Berean Standard Bible translates as entice here is the same word as Peter used in verse 14 (Berean Standard Bible “seduce”). It literally means “to lure/trap/catch with bait.” Peter has used it in a figurative way in both verses; what the false teachers say and what they promise (verse 19) sounds so good that it attracts people away from the true teaching and way to live, in the same way that a person uses bait to attract an animal so he can catch it.

those who are just escaping from others who live in error: This probably refers to people who had recently become Christians. Peter was probably referring to the same people as in verse 14, where he described them as “the unstable.” They were new Christians who did not yet completely understand all they believed.

Here Peter described becoming a Christian as “escaping from others who live in error.” Peter did not mean that they had run away from the non-Christians, but that they no longer behaved in the same wrong way as those people did.

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.