“APOSTASY - proof that TRUTH is a standard”

 Apostasy is both a departing and a reverting to a previous condition (2 Peter 2:20-22).

We learn much from this text. Notice, these phrases:

       a. “after they have escaped...defilements of the world”

b. “Through the knowledge” (spiritual discernment)

c. “entangled/overcome”

d. “Last state is become worse...than the first.”

e. “Better...not to have known...than to turn back”

This language describes a return to a defiled condition; one in which was escaped by spiritual discernment. Knowledge of: ‘the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’; ‘the way of righteousness’; and ‘the holy commandment’ (all of these are one and the same thing).

Other passages describing apostasy:

2 Thess. 2:3, 10-12. Here, apostasy is called ‘a falling away’. We are also told the causes of this ‘falling away’: “they received not a love of the TRUTH”; and, they “believed not the TRUTH, but had pleasure in unrighteousness”.

 

[Apostasy necessarily implies the existence of TRUTH. The reason this is so, is because TRUTH was ‘fallen from’. TRUTH existed because knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had made TRUTH known. Jesus was “…the way the truth & the life...” because His teachings were TRUTH and life (cf. John 6:68; 14:6). TRUTH equates to ‘the holy commandment’ and to ‘the way of righteousness’. TRUTH also necessarily implies the existence of a standard or a pattern (Gal. 1:6-9).]

2 Peter 2:2 – false prophets blaspheme the way of truth. The way of truth must exist, else it could not be evil spoken of. Something ‘true’ must exist before anything false can be identified. A ‘departure’ cannot occur from something that doesn’t exist.