2 Peter 2:12-22
What a dreary passage, so much of 2 Peter 2 is!
Such a description of such evil, bad people! Corrupted too. And I think that’s what’s most outstanding to me this morning. Peter is warning against being fooled and deceived by men who had been believers in Jesus.
Once upon a time, they had been saved “through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”! They had experienced deliverance from “the pollutions of the world.” But then they had “forsaken the right way” to go astray and become entangled again in that moral and spiritual pollution.
Not only did they “turn from the holy commandment”, they set about to entrap, fool, and delude…
- “beguiling unstable souls.”
- “allure…those that were…escaped.”
allure
deleazo
G1185
“to entrap, i.e. (figuratively) delude”
Well, here — read about them yourself and be warned:
- But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;
- And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you;
- Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:
- Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;
- But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet.
- These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.
- For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.
- While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.
- For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
- For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
- But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
Now I invite you to refresh your soul and lift your perspective with the Effects of Knowing Jesus as described in the first few verses of the book.
“Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Peter 1:2).