For the false teachers, the twisting of Scripture leads to destruction because it results in a life where there is no repentance and submission to Jesus Christ. Cheap grace is no grace and thus where the heretics think they can look forward to salvation, they deceive themselves and will only find destruction when Christ comes in glory. The fact that distortion leads to destruction implies that it is not the victims of the false teachers but the false teachers themselves who are in view (see 2 Peter 2:1–2; 2 Peter 3:7).1 These people especially will suffer dire consequences when the Lord whom they deny with their behaviour comes back in a return which they believe will not happen.2
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.