“But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption…”

Jude and 2 Peter are analogous books. 2 Peter 2:12 is parallel to Jude 10.

Jude 10, “But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves.”

But these

Having shown that false teachers are inferior to angels, he now shows how low they are on human beings’ totem pole.

like natural brute beasts

Peter now illustrates the nature of false teachers by animals that have no reason. They operate on instinct, not their mind. They do what comes naturally. Their instinct is to peddle false doctrine.

False teachers are like animals that function from instinct and do not derive truth from the Word. “Brute beasts” means “belonging to nature.” Wild animals follow their appetites. Apostates follow their natural drives. They are like foxes or bears in the wilderness.

made to be caught and destroyed

We treat false teachers like wild animals who we either capture or kill. This is severe language and indicates how serious he is about heresy. False teachers need to be hunted down and “destroyed.” False teaching is an issue to deal with decisively.

speak evil of the things they do not understand

“Speak evil” here means to malign. They love to malign the truth. They malign salvation by grace.

Ignorance is the cause of much false teaching. God does not divulge His truth to false teachers, no matter how brilliant they might be.

1 Co 2:14, “But the natural man [non-Christian] does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

No matter how much university a person may have, he cannot extract truth from God’s Word.

Ro 8:7-8, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. ⁸ So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

No matter what mental horsepower a person might have, the Bible is a closed book to them. The Bible is a book where knowing the Author is a prerequisite to understanding what it says. Once we know the Author, the Bible opens up to us no matter how little education we might have. If we are born again, we have a built-in Bible Teacher, the Holy Spirit.

and will utterly perish in their own corruption

“Corruption” here may be the corruption of eternal damnation. Their teaching puts them in jeopardy of God’s wrath. They have a terrible future (2 Pe 2:1,3). Their only hope is to embrace Jesus as their Savior.

PRINCIPLE:

We are to think of false teachers as wild animals.

APPLICATION:

The instinct of false teachers is to bring out false doctrine. They will confuse and distort as best as they can. They have an instinct for religion without the mutual exclusive message of Jesus Christ.

The instinct of false teachers is to bypass God’s Word in favor of their own distorted thinking.

We have the Word of God in our hands and the Spirit of God in our hearts; therefore, we can both understand and apply the Word of God to our experience. A person who never saw the inside of a university can know more of the Bible than a Ph.D. in religion. Anyone can know how far Jericho is from Jerusalem, but only those who truly know God can know how dark our soul is before God.