He foretelleth them of false teachers, shewing the impiety and punishment both of them and their followers; from which the godly shall be delivered, as Lot was out of Sodom: and more fully describeth the manners of these profane and blasphemous seducers, whereby they may be the better known, and avoided.
Anno Domini 67.
THE entrance of false teachers into the church, their impious doctrines, their success in perverting many, and the influence of their doctrines in corrupting the morals of their disciples, were all very early made known by the Spirit to the apostle Paul; as we learn from his speech to the elders of Ephesus, and from his Epistles to the Thessalonians, to Timothy, and to Titus. The same discoveries were made to the apostles Peter, and John, and Jude, who as well as St. Paul published them in their writings, that the faithful might oppose these false teachers, and confute their errors, as soon as they appeared.
With this benevolent design, therefore, St. Peter, in his second chapter, recorded the revelation which was made to him, concerning the false teachers who were to arise in the church, and concerning their destructive ways. But, lest the prospect of these great evils might have grieved the faithful too much, as if God had forsaken his church, he observed, by way of preface, that in the Jewish church there were false prophets, even as among the disciples of Christ there would be false teachers, who, in a covert manner, wouldintroduce most destructive heretics, denying even the Lord who bought them, 2 Peter 2:1.—and, by their vicious manners, would occasion the gospel to be evil spoken of, 2 Peter 2:2.—These false teachers, St. Jude describes, as in part actually come when he wrote his epistle, and mentions their perverting the grace of God to lasciviousness. Both apostles, I suppose, spake particularly of the Nicolaitans, whose deeds our Lord hated, Revelation 6:15 and of the pestilent sects which sprang from them; namely, the Gnostics, Carpocratians, and Menandrians.—Farther, St. Peter foretold, that these teachers, actuated by an insatiable love of gain, would make merchandise of the people with feigned words; but should at length suffer condign punishment, 2 Peter 2:3.—Of these feigned words, the most destructive it seems were, their confidently affirming, that God is merciful in such a sense, that he will not punish men for their sins. For, in confutation of that pestilent error, St. Peter appealed to the punishment of the angels who sinned, and of the old world, and of Sodom and Gomorrha, as clear proofs from facts, that sooner or later God will not spare impenitent sinners, 2 Peter 2:4-6.—By what other feigned wordsthe false teachers were to make merchandise of the people, St. Peter has not so plainly insinuated; but from his appealing to the punishment of the antediluvians and men of Sodom, in proof that heretical teachers and their disciples shall not escape, and from what he says, 2 Peter 2:10 and downwards, concerning the practices of these men, it may be presumed that they were falsehoods, contrived to make the indulgence of their lusts consistent with their hope of salvation.
But lest it might be alleged, that the flood which destroyed the old world, and the fire which fell on the cities of the plain, were natural events, in which the wicked were no more concerned than the righteous, St. Peter, in describing the destruction of the antediluvians and men of Sodom, took care to mention the deliverance of Noah and Lot, as evident proofs, that these punishments fell on the wicked by the immediate interposition of God, 2 Peter 2:7-8.—And from the whole he draws this conclusion; that the Lord is able and willing to deliver the godly, and to reserve the wicked to the day of judgment to be punished, 2 Peter 2:9.—So that the righteous have noreason to fear their being involved with the wicked, in the everlasting destruction which in the end is to fall on them.—Farther, that the faithful might know who the false teachers and wicked men are, that shall be punished at theday of judgment, the apostle told them, that they are those especially who go after the flesh in the lusts of pollution, and who despise government, that is, the wholesome laws of the countries where they live, and speak evil of magistrates, 2 Peter 2:10.—characters, by which false teachers inall ages have been distinguished. For their errors have constantly ended in the gratification of their lusts; and they themselves have always hated laws and magistrates, because they restrained and punished their enormities. But the apostle justly observed, that persons of this stamp, by their own corruptions, destroy themselves, both in the present and future life, 2 Peter 2:12.—Then he described the rioting of the false teachers, at the love-feasts of the church, 2 Peter 2:13-14.—And, by remarking that they followed in the way of Balaam, he insinuated, that, in opposition to their own knowledge and conscience, they, for the sake of drawing money from their disciples, taught them to indulge themselves in all kinds of sensuality, 2 Peter 2:15-16.—Next, because these teachers never delivered any instructions really useful, the apostle compared them to wells without water, and to clouds driven by the wind, which yield no rain, 2 Peter 2:17.—while in the mean time, to draw disciples after them, they boasted of the excellency of their doctrine, by which they permitted those to live in lasciviousness, who, by receiving the gospel in the love of it, had separated themselves from the wicked Heathens, and had been saved from their errors and their sins, 2 Peter 2:18.—But of the miserable state into which they brought their disciples by promising them liberty from the restraint of all laws human and divine, these teachers were glaring examples; being themselves slaves to their own lusts, 2 Peter 2:19.—He therefore told the disciples of these teachers, that if, after fleeing away from the pollutions of Heathenism, and cordially embracing the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, they were again entangled in the same pollutions through the base arts of their teachers, they would become even worse than ever before, 2 Peter 2:20.—So that it had been better for them, never to have known the way of righteousness, than, having known it, to forsake it, 2 Peter 2:21.—For, in that case, they would be like to dogs who turn again to their own vomit, and to the washen sow which returns to its wallowing in the mire, 2 Peter 2:22.