(2 Pet. 2, 3)
Peter is perfectly clear as to what the judgment of God must be on these wicked men. Faith quietly waits on God, and has its resource in Him, assured the day will come when He must vindicate His own character, let scoffers say what they will; and, in the meantime, He looks for His people to be godly in the midst of the evil.
The Lord looks that you shall be like Lot in this respect: your righteous soul vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, In contrast with everything that you will see around you, the Lord looks that you shall be godly; and “the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.”
Verse 10. That which is given us in this verse is the very thing that is coming up now in our own day, the principle of self-will. Here they have flung off, first, the authority of Christ, and then every other kind of authority likewise, and that we see around us at this present time. We live in a radical day, and religious radicalism I believe to be the most offensive of all things to God.
God has ordained government in the world, and now He says, I will show you what the world comes to, it comes to this, that all authority is despised.
There is not to be any place for flesh or man in the presence of God, and there is a certain order of God’s government which we cannot traverse without doing very great and serious damage.
On every hand this despising of authority is rising up: it is the question that is ruining the family, the nation, and the Church, and which will be headed up in that “man of sin” who will come, by and bye, under the swift destruction of Christ.
Verse 12, &c. It is a solemn thing which the Spirit of God shows us here. These verses describe the person who gets into this line of things, and show what the end is. The description is most dreadful. It contemplates the character of things even among the teachers. They prophesy for gain merely, like Balaam, and the effect is “they allure through the lusts of the flesh, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error,” because, you must remember, for every form of temptation there is some distinct response in our nature, there is something in us to answer to what Satan presents. We could not have believed this could come in among professing Christians unless God Himself had said so. But He has warned us that we may have our eyes open to it, and be on our watch to guard against it day by day.
Verse 20. These have been for the moment practically delivered from the pollution of the world, not by conversion, not by having been born again, but through the outward knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Those who refuse and despise Christianity forget to tell you how much man owes to Christianity. The world has benefitted morally, civilly, and socially from the light God has given in His Word and by the effects of Christianity, but now-a-days all this is forgotten, and it is the fashion to pooh-pooh the whole thing as an old-world fable.
The effect of Christianity has been to deliver people from the pollutions of the world. The truth has been mentally received, and thus has delivered them, but it has not been received by the conscience, else it would have remained and worked by divine grace in the heart.
When people have given up the truth they once have known, if even intellectually only, they become always the bitterest enemies of the truth of Christ, therefore let us beware of giving up one bit of the truth God has given us. Here it runs the length of open apostacy from God. It is a far worse thing to have known the truth and given it up, through flesh being allowed and the world pandered to, than never to have known it.
Verse 21. In the early part of the chapter it was the godly and ungodly spoken of. Here it is the holy commandment, in contrast with what these evil teachers tried to bring in, and did bring in.
Verse 22. Who vomited? The dog. And who went back to the vomit? The dog. It was the dog all the time, not a clean beast ever. And though the sow was washed, it was still a sow, only washed, and never made a clean beast, never anything but a sow, not a sheep.
It is not a person born of God, or renewed, but merely externally affected by the truth of Christianity. It is man as man, and as soon as the restraint is taken off, back he goes to the thing he likes. If a Christian gets away from Christ, and gets mixed up with the pollutions of the world, he is miserable. Take a sow to the mire, what will it do? Wallow in it again, it has no shrinking from the mire. But take a sheep to the mire, does it desire to get into it again? No, it is only too thankful to be taken out.
In chapter 3 Peter says men will assail all the truth of revelation, on the ground that creation has been always what it now appears.
Verse 3. It is always when people want to follow their own lusts that they begin to scoff. It may not be outward and gross lusts, but man wants to be independent, to gratify himself, and therefore he thinks: he must get rid of God, get rid of His authority; and he would be glad to get God out of the scene altogether if he could.
These scoffers say, the only thing that is durable and abiding is creation. It began far away in remote space, how it came we do not know exactly, but it came, and it goes on, and as for the promise of the coming of the Son of God, it is absurd.
But if they scoff at the Lord’s coming, they are obliged to let in creation, and if creation comes in there must be the Creator, and who is the Creator? There they are silenced.
Verses 5,6. There are some of the wise men of this world who tell you you must not believe in the flood. They will tell you it is impossible, and that there ever was such a thing as the flood is a great mistake. Ah! says Peter, you like to believe that there was no flood, and why? Because if you admit the flood you admit the judgment of God upon wickedness, and if you admit the judgment of God upon wickedness once, then it is more than probable He will judge a second time. So men will not have it: their will is in question again.
Verse 7. It was God’s own word that called these heavens and this earth into existence as they now are.
Verse 8. We understand God’s gracious slowness. There is but one thing God is always so slow about; and that is judgment. He never judges till He has warned and given space for repentance. How swift He is to save! How quick to bring peace to the troubled conscience! He is only slow to judge. He has not come because He wants souls to be saved!
He wills that every soul that trusts the blood of His Son should be saved, but He is not willing that any should perish, but He desires that all should come (or go forward) to repentance.
Verse 10. This is coincident with the great white throne, and the heaven and the earth fleeing away spoken of in the 20th chapter of the Revelation.
You have the effect of this mighty conflagration giver you in Revelation, whereas you have what produces that effect given you by the Apostle Peter here. Man’s great thought is, everything is so stable it can never be moved. Man says mere materialism is the right thing Stop, says Peter, the thing that you are resting upon—the eternal continuance of all things, is a delusion, it is all going to be dissolved.
The very fact of the mistake of the scoffer, and that everything is going to be dissolved, leads the child of God into soberness and a godly walk, seeing what is coming upon the world.
Faith sees these words written over everything that man delights in here on earth “reserved unto fire.”
Verses 12,13. The day of the Lord lasts a long time, and this conflagration is at the end of the day of the Lord, but we look for new heavens and a new earth—wherein dwelleth righteousness.
There are but three passages that allude to the eternal state. 2 Peter 3, Revelation 21, and 1 Cor. 15. Christ rules as Son of God and Son of Man all through the Millennium, but when the Millennium has closed “then cometh the end,” when death itself is destroyed. How does He destroy death? By bringing all the wicked dead to life again, and casting them into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:14.) He then has put every enemy under His feet and gives up the kingdom to God. Every other king has had his kingdom taken from him by death or by violence; Christ alone gives up His kingdom after reigning a thousand years. There are three spheres of righteousness, now righteousness suffers; in the Millennium righteousness reigns; in the eternal state righteousness dwells. It has found repose, it dwells where God is for evermore.
Now says Peter, you who are looking for all that in eternity, you be without spot and blame till He comes.
Verse 15,16. A beautiful touch this about Paul’s writings. He calls Paul’s writings Scripture, which shows the other writings are Scripture likewise. A beautiful touch of grace this, for I do not think Peter forgot how Paul had withstood him to the face at Antioch, and put him to shame before all. This is what grace can do. Grace is a fine thing, and this is a fine touch of it, as the curtain drops on the Apostle Peter.
Verse 17. May God write these words on our hearts because we are surrounded by these elements, by doubt and skepticism and infidelity, and God says to us, “You beware.” Have you doubts? Look to your company. You are in company with the wicked. Beware, God says, lest ye fall.
“But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Oh let Christ be the One that is kept before your heart and mind, growing in the practical knowledge of what this favor is. We live in an evil day, and because we may have been gathered out from the corruptions of Christendom, therefore Satan’s efforts are more persistent to get us drawn aside from the truth of God, because He has taught us more of His truth, but for this very reason remember it would dishonor Him more if you allow Satan to succeed in his endeavors. What can keep the heart? Christ, and nothing but Christ. Grow in the knowledge of Christ, he says.
The Lord fix in our hearts His own truth, and give us to be watchful and prayerful, lest we fall from that steadfastness which He looks for in His people, but let us grow in grace and in the knowledge of that Lord and Christ till the day of His return. “To him be glory, both now and forever, Amen.”