  |
|
Commentary
|
 2 Peter Chapter 2 As in the old covenant there were false prophets of false gods and faulty religion there will be false prophets amongst the people of God in the new covenant who lead them astray (v1) even to the denying of Christ's self, inviting swift damnation upon themselves before God's judgement seat. Many shall follow after their heresies: so that the true way of God shall be slandered on the basis of their poor obedience to God. (v2) Through coveting the gifts of God they make ownership of God's people as deciding themselves what is God's will for them, whose judgement has been always to destruction; after the fashion of false religions, whose damnation is just (v3). For God spared none of the angels that sinned, damning them, (v3) and spared only eight people of the whole disobedient world within Noah's ark (v5) and destroyed the cities of the plains, (64) only letting Lot escape who was tried in faith daily by their lascivious behaviour (v7,v8) (As also will be the believers of God by false doctrine from false teachers) The Lord knows how to deliver the chosen from among the disobedient and the temptation to which they succumb, by gently training them in repentance with His Spirit. The following verses castigate false teachers for interrupting the ministry of the Holy Spirit, frustrating the grace of God, and condemning the formerly godly among the believers, altogether as blemishes on the intent for God's people to patiently work out their own salvation in their predestination: which is too hard for a man to do a second time if he fall away from the faith completely. (All the while reserving the disobedient to damnation.) (v9) The chiefest of the damned being those that follow after the satisfaction of their own lusts, despising even earthly authority as having no God either to obey - By which their presumptuousness in conceiving a lack of absolute authority makes in them a willingness to speak evil of those with publicly recognised authority over them. (v10) Who even angels do not slander, being higher in authority than those dignitaries and knowing their faults. (v11) But false teachers, as utterly contemptible speak evil things of that which is good; (The correctness of God's laws and the requirements on Christ's bride to be spotless) which they misconceive in similar disobedience, not knowing the supremacy of God and of His sovereignty and shall perish in their self made corrupt religions. (v12) They shall receive damnation alongside those that are cheifest of the damned as above, being just as damnable; themselves being spots and blemishes in the body of the wider fellowship of believers, (v13) even as upon the appearance of Christ's body (His bride), to them that are without (c.f. v2) Having chiefly sought after their own lusts, being motivated by sin, preying upon the weak of faith with the laws of their own devising to the purpose that they satisify theirselves in their continuing practice of their own lusts. (v14) - justly to be excised from Christ's body. They have forsaken the right way (by choosing instability and any justification in a "G v p" statement to refashion God to their own lusts) so that they are totally double minded, preferring instead a false God to the true as Balaam, (v15) who was rebuked by one who could not speak; and to His madness in allegory - in replying to the mad with the only voice he would recognise in His madness, having ignored God. (v16) Such force by allegory God rebuked him with! As teachers, these are without merit (v17) being borne by striving, whose end is just, for whilst they offer teaching that swells the pride of individuals upon whom they prey; through their approval of lusts of the flesh they lure away those who would have by the Holy Spirit had clean escaped judgement in false religion (v18) (swaying others to follow after the same "p" statements in "G v p" systems) Whilst promising them the freedom to do disobedience, they destroy their rightly grounded faith exampled by Christ, denying Him. In luring weak believers away they are become ministers of corruption, denying Christ and perverting the gospel and the sanctification of the elect. (v19) So that the weaker of the faithful brethren are now in bondage because of false doctrine. Whilst promising liberty, they are in fact encouraging licentiousness. In being overcome and drawn away from the grace of God they are imprisoned in sin. If a man be saved by Christ and has been given the Holy Spirit and returns to sinning only to come to Christ once more, then the last state of that man is worse than the first. (v20) For they had been better off if they had not tasted of the good things of God the first time, to turn away from it (v21) But it has happened to them that the attractiveness of sin and the satiation of the lusts of the flesh are more appealing than the ministry and election of God. (v22) For if God's perfect work need be done again a second time, it is too hard to bear: as they have openly put Christ's obedience to shame and crucified Him twice by completly rejecting Him again. By rejecting the Holy Spirit for a false God it is too hard to show that the grace of God was "too weak" and that God tempted them rather than staying silent on their disobedient heart to test them: For if God were to accept a sinner His grace would be more abundant, and the bands of grace once broken for a disobedient sinner evidence that man as contrary to the perfect ministering of the Spirit - a reprobate even under grace. Such men are brute beasts as Peter writes. However, all were once slaves to such lusts and those who tempt them from the Holy Spirit with false teaching deserve the greater condemnation as Jesus taught Himself, better for a millstone to be tied round his neck than for Him to be born in the first place. |
 |
|
