It had been better for them not to have known. — There are many things of which the well-known lines.
“’Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all,”
do not hold good. To have loved a great truth, to have loved a high principle, and after all to lose them, is what often causes the shipwreck of a life. To have loved Jesus Christ and lost Him is to make shipwreck of eternal life.
The way of righteousness. — The life of the Christian. That which from a doctrinal point of view is “the way of truth” (2 Peter 2:2), from a moral point of view is “the way of righteousness.” So also “the faith delivered to the saints” of Jude 1:3, is the doctrinal equivalent of “the holy commandment delivered unto them” of this verse.