Peter has thrown down the gauntlet. In the first part of chapter two he has given a warning to false teachers, explaining God’s skill at judging the wicked (Noah’s flood and the cites of Sodom and Gomorrah are provided as examples) and at rescuing the righteous (Noah’s and Lot’s families are cases in point). He now turns his attention to warning those who follow false teachers. If false teachers are headed toward destruction and eternal punishment, how can their followers escape the same fate? It may appear that they are escaping self-control and discipline, but are really running toward God’s punishment.

These men are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm, for whom the utter depths of darkness have been reserved. For by speaking high-sounding but empty words they are able to entice, with fleshly desires and with debauchery, people who have just escaped from those who reside in error. Although these false teachers promise such people freedom, they themselves are enslaved to immorality. For whatever a person succumbs to, to that he is enslaved. For if after they have escaped the filthy things of the world through the rich knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they again get entangled in them and succumb to them, their last state has become worse for them than their first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn back from the holy commandment that had been delivered to them. They are illustrations of this true proverb: “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and “A sow, after washing herself, wallows in the mire.” – 2 Peter 2.17-21

What entices people to flee the gospel of grace and embrace false teachings? The promises of relief and release. What is more relieving than a fresh spring, or a wet mist on a hot day? What release is better than being told you can fulfill all your sexual fantasies – guilt free? False teachers are smooth talkers, and promise everything unregenerate man wants to hear. But peter tells us the springs they sell are empty and “waterless”; the cooling mists are produced by the kind of storm no one wants to get caught in. And those sexual freedoms they sell so convincingly? It leaves them enslaved to sin.

It is easy to see the allure of false teachings for the non-believer, the unregenerate, but these teachings even appeal to some we call brothers and sisters in Jesus. How can this be? How can someone who has experienced the grace and forgiveness of God ever want to leave the hope of eternal life for the sordid side of human existence? Perhaps it is pride, the sin that caused Satan to lose his place in heaven. Perhaps it is the promise of knowledge – even sensual knowledge – like that which tempted Adam and Eve. I’m sure there are as many temptations as there are people in the world, and false teachers who are emissaries of the devil are adept at finding our weaknesses.

There is hefty price to pay, however, to turn against the living God. Peter tells us it would have been better if they had never started to follow Jesus than to not finish with Him. The descriptions of this process are clear, a “dog returning to its vomit” and a “sow wallowing in the mire” are graphic depictions and is typical of Peter’s hold-nothing-back form of communication.

One of the three jobs I had my freshman year of college was as a janitor for an office building in Lakewood, Colorado. I still drive by that building every so often and am grateful for the life lessons I learned there. The greatest came from my Christian boss who, on our first and only training day, told us to think of dirt as sin. “You don’t want sin in your life, and you don’t want dirt in your building.” It was a good analogy for the job, but it held a larger meeting when I reversed the advice. By thinking of sin as dirt, or “mire” to use the vernacular of Peter, it becomes less of a temptation. Try it in your life, think of your favorite sin, or greatest temptation as filth and see how appealing it is.

Peter doesn’t specifically say whether those who responded to the call of Christ actually embraced salvation of only came close. The easiest reading of the text is that they had, that they people knew the path of righteousness – and walked it. Peter also doesn’t specify what awaits those that have forsaken their savior, though it isn’t a leap to attach the same level of punishment reserved for false teachers and their other followers. Does this mean that they have lost their salvation? Such a conclusion is in direct opposition to the teaching of other Scriptures, most notably Peter’s own teaching in the last chapter (1.10-11).

Food for Thought

Perhaps this is the reason Peter doesn’t spell out their punishment the way he did the others. A possible answer to this question comes from the apostle Paul who, in his first letter to the Corinthians, had this to say:

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master-builder I laid a foundation, but someone else builds on it. And each one must be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than what is being laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each builder’s work will be plainly seen, for the Day will make it clear, because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what kind of work each has done. If what someone has built survives, he will receive a reward. If someone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as through fire.