Ignorant and unstable people are the heretics or false teachers. They may be intelligent and well educated but when it comes to understanding Scripture they do not know the full picture and thus they are unstable.1 It is they who distort Paul’s message, unwilling to submit to what he teaches—similar to heretics in the past (see Psalm 56:6; Jeremiah 23:36). From elsewhere in the New Testament we know that many distorted his preaching concerning grace (Romans 3:8), misinterpreting various declarations (e.g., 1 Corinthians 6:12; Galatians 5:13). Others perverted his teaching regarding eschatology (2 Thessalonians 2:2–3; 2 Timothy 2:17–18). Though it is not clear exactly how the false teachers misinterpreted Paul,2 it seems likely that the distortions propagated by them focused on the two specific doctrines of grace and eschatology (see 2 Peter 2:19; 2 Peter 3:4).3
16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.