The righteous people spared: (2:7-9)
Three times the word ‘righteous’ was mentioned for Lot. He was tormented, oppressed and even outraged, yet he did not accommodate their sins and lived a separated life because he put his trust in God (Gen.19:16,29). These are the marks of righteousness. The Lord knows how to rescue His children.
The unrighteous people not only will be punished in the lake of fire, but also during their earthly life while they are alive and also in the intermediate place of hades between physical death and the lake of fire.
Learning from Michael the arch angel: (2:10-11)
The reference here is almost certainly to Jude 9 where Michael, the archangel, disputing with Satan over the body of Moses did not revile the Devil but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you.”
The false teachers are recklessly daring, defying both God and man. They are always trying to please themselves and have their own way. They use even the insulting language at unpleasant times. Their consciousness is dead. They think that they can abuse Satan and its helpers but they themselves would be carried away with sinful life.
Some images of the false teachers: (2:12-20):
- Natural brute beasts: (2:12): They are like animals in their behaviour ignoring the realities of death and judgement. They pour abuse on things which they do not understand, like an angered dog attacks someone whom he thinks is threatening him. Since they act like animals they will also end up like animals; their inner corruption, corrupt life will be the cause of their destruction, as a mad dog is sometimes shot to death to keep him from harming others they will be perished.
- Daytime drunkards: (2:13a): They turn the Christian fellowship meals into riotous drinking parties. They are perverse in their display.
- Stains and blemishes:(2:13b): They are heretics. They celebrate their freedom in Christ by drunken revels at the Lord’s Table, degrading the purity of the Lord’s Table.
- Eyes full of adultery: (2:14): The false teachers desire to commit adultery with every woman they saw. They entice unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed hooking the young converts into a lascivious lifestyle.
- They follow Balaam: (2:15-16): They have deliberately trained their practice for money and greed. We cannot serve God and mammon (Matt.6:24). Balaam’s primary downfall was that he loved the wages of unrighteousness. He sold his prophetic powers to the pagan king, Balak, for monetary reward sought to curse the children of God. On his way to do this he was rebuked by his donkey, who saw what Balaam could not see, a mighty angel with drawn sword standing in the path. By this story A dumb donkey possessed real prophetic vision than a religious official whose moral sense had been perverted by gain from wrong doing (Num.22-24). Though Balaam’s subsequent sin of introducing immorality into the camp of Israel is not mentioned here, the false teachers are nothing but the followers of Balaam who are doomed to perish with the world.
- Dried up springs: (2:17a): The barrenness of the false teachers mocks the thirsty soul who sincerely wants to learn God’s way from them.
- Mists driven by storms: (2:17b): They are like mists seem to promise refreshment but in reality do no good. Eternal darkness is reserved for them.
- No moral standards: (2: 18): They practice wrongful ways with heretical teaching that once the soul is saved, what is done with the body is of no account. Paul answered this same teaching by showing that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and one cannot misuse it without giving insult to the Spirit who lived within (1 Cor. 6).
- Slaves of corruption: (2:19): They promise freedom from moral restraints, although they themselves are slaves of such sins, thereby bringing others into bondage with them.
- Pretend to have escaped: (2:20): They had head knowledge and professed the truth without possessing the born-again experience. After sometime they rejected what they have professed, becoming slaves of corruption showing their true natural unchanged condition.
Be diligent to the Word of God: (2:21-22)
Knowledge without obedience is exceedingly dangerous! Jesus said of Judas that it would have been better for him not to have been born, then to have turned from the truth he had known (Matt.26:24). Although they knew what was right and holy but they deliberately chose to keep on doing what was wrong and defiling. They are like dog which got rid of the corruption inside through vomiting it up but cannot leave it. He goes sniffing around the vomit again. The pig that has got rid of the corruption outside by means of a scrubbing, cannot resist rolling in the mud again.
Yielding to the money-mad, sex-obsessed, materialistic and anti-authoritarian drives of modern society are indications that an individual’s heart is not in touch with the lordship of Christ, but has succumbed to the delusions of the devil instead. So a believer must be careful of the false teaching and look to God and the Holy Spirit for clear understanding of the Scriptures.