12These men are like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be captured and destroyed. They blaspheme in matters they do not understand, and like such creatures, they too will be destroyed. 13The harm they will suffer is the wages of their wickedness.
They consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deception as they feast with you. 14Their eyes are full of adultery; their desire for sin is never satisfied; they seduce the unstable. They are accursed children with hearts trained in greed.
15They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of wickedness. 16But he was rebuked for his transgression by a donkey, otherwise without speech, that spoke with a man’s voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.
17These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18With lofty but empty words, they appeal to the sensual passions of the flesh and entice the ones who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves to corruption. For a man is a slave to whatever has overcome him.
20If indeed they have escaped the corruption of the world through their knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,d only to be entangled and overcome by it again, their final condition is worse than it was at first. 21It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and turned away from the holy commandment passed on to them. 22Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”e and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”
I decided not to break this scripture up into a smaller bite so we could get the full context of this scripture.
Isn't it interesting that a fisherman wrote this? I wonder what got into Peter? The Holy Spirit!
How else could an uneducated man write with such words?
“What these evil men, who were troubling Peter’s people, were doing, was to say that they loved and served Christ, while the things they taught and did were a complete denial of him.” (Barclay)
“The metaphor is taken from the agonistae in the Grecian games, who exercised themselves in those feats, such as wrestling, boxing, running, etc., in which they proposed to contend in the public games. These persons had their hearts schooled in nefarious practices; they had exercised themselves until they were perfectly expert in all the arts of seduction, overreaching, and every kind of fraud.” (Clarke)
i. Christians warmly debate the issue of whether or not it is possible for a true Christian to ever lose their status as a true Christian and fall away to damnation. Perhaps the best way of understanding the issue is to say that it is certainly true that those who appear saved – those who fit the description of Peter here – can end up in a place where it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness. (Guzik)
ii. Regarding these, those with a Reformed perspective will say that they were actually never saved; those with an Arminian perspective will say that they were actually saved and lost their salvation. To bitterly divide along the lines of this debate – which focuses on things that are unknowable to outside observation – seems to fall into the category of being obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, as in 1 Timothy 6:4. (Guzik)
I believe they were never truly saved that they had an alternative motive for appearing to be saved while infecting the church.
What do you think?
Blessings, David
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