In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn’t linger, and their destruction will not slumber. For if God didn’t spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness to be reserved for judgment; and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live in an ungodly way; and delivered righteous Lot, who was very distressed by the lustful life of the wicked (for that righteous man dwelling among them was tormented in his righteous soul from day to day with seeing and hearing lawless deeds): the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,
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2 Peter 2:3-9 sits inside this longer paragraph.
But false prophets also arose among the people, as false teachers will also be among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result, the way of the truth will be maligned. In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn’t linger, and their destruction will not slumber. For if God didn’t spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness to be reserved for judgment; and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live in an ungodly way; and delivered righteous Lot, who was very distressed by the lustful life of the wicked (for that righteous man dwelling among them was tormented in his righteous soul from day to day with seeing and hearing lawless deeds): the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, but chiefly those who walk after the flesh in the lust of defilement and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries; whereas angels, though greater in might and power, don’t bring a railing judgment against them before the Lord. But these, as unreasoning creatures, born natural animals to be taken and destroyed, speaking evil in matters about which they are ignorant, will in their destroying surely be destroyed, receiving the wages of unrighteousness; people who count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, spots and defects, reveling in their deceit while they feast with you; having eyes full of adultery, and who can’t cease from sin; enticing unsettled souls; having a heart trained in greed; children of cursing; forsaking the right way, they went astray, having followed the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of wrongdoing; but he was rebuked for his own disobedience. A mute donkey spoke with a man’s voice and stopped the madness of the prophet. These are wells without water, clouds driven by a storm; for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever. For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping from those who live in error; promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for a man is brought into bondage by whoever overcomes him.
Parallel Translations
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In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn’t linger, and their destruction will not slumber.
For if God didn’t spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness to be reserved for judgment;
and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly;
and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live in an ungodly way;
and delivered righteous Lot, who was very distressed by the lustful life of the wicked
(for that righteous man dwelling among them was tormented in his righteous soul from day to day with seeing and hearing lawless deeds):
the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,
-
and thorow coveteousnes shall they with fayned wordes make marchandyse of you whose iudgement is not farre of and their dampnacion slepeth not.
For yf god spared not the angels that synned but cast them doune into hell and delyuered them in chaynes of darknes to be kept vnto iudgement.
Nether spared the olde worlde but saved Noe the ryghte preacher of rightewesnes and brought in the flud vpon the worlde of the vngodly
and turned the cities of zodom and Gomor into asshes: overthrewe them damned them and made on them an ensample vnto all that after shuld live vngodly.
And iust Lot vexed with the vnclenly conversacion of the wicked delivered he.
For he beynge ryghteous and dwellynge amonge them in seynge and hearynge vexed his righteous soule from daye to daye with their vnlawfull dedes.
The lorde knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptacion and how to reserve the vniuste vnto the daye of iudgement for to be punisshed:
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And through couetousnes shall they with fained words make marchandise of you, whose condemnation long since resteth not, and their destruction slumbreth not.
For if God spared not the Angels that had sinned, but cast them downe into hell, and deliuered them into chaines of darkenes, to be kept vnto damnation:
Neither hath spared the olde worlde, but saued Noe the eight person a preacher of righteousnesse, and brought in the flood vpon the world of the vngodly,
And turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrhe into ashes, condemned them and ouerthrewe them, and made them an ensample vnto them that after should liue vngodly,
And deliuered iust Loth vexed with the vncleanly conuersation of the wicked:
(For he being righteous, and dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soule from day to day with their vnlawfull deedes.)
The Lord knoweth to deliuer the godly out of tentation, and to reserue the vniust vnto the day of iudgement vnder punishment.
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Historical claims about the natural world, weighed against the scientific record.
Contradictions (5)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (123)
- Jude 1:6 (v4) Angels who didn’t keep their first domain, but deserted their own dwelling place, he has kept in everlasting bonds under darkness for the…
- Psalms 34:15-19 (v9) Yahweh’s eyes are toward the righteous. His ears listen to their cry. Yahweh’s face is against those who do evil, to cut off their memory…
- 1 Corinthians 10:13 (vv7, 9) No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able,…
- Matthew 25:41 (v4) Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his…
- Revelation 3:10 (v9) Because you kept my command to endure, I also will keep you from the hour of testing which is to come on the whole world, to test those who…
Show all 100 cross-references
- Romans 8:32 (v4) He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things?
- Revelation 20:1-3 (v4) I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, the old serpent,…
- Revelation 12:7-9 (v4) There was war in the sky. Michael and his angels made war on the dragon. The dragon and his angels made war. They didn’t prevail. No place…
- Jude 1:7 (vv3, 6) Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having in the same way as these given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone…
- 2 Timothy 3:12 (v9) Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
- Jude 1:14-15 (vv5, 9) About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute…
- Isaiah 14:12 (v4) How you have fallen from heaven, shining one, son of the dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, who laid the nations low!
- 2 Peter 3:7 (v9) But the heavens that exist now and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and…
- Revelation 20:10 (v4) The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are also. They will be…
- Ezekiel 7:4 (v4) My eye will not spare you, neither will I have pity; but I will bring your ways on you, and your abominations will be among you. Then you…
- Luke 17:28-30 (v6) Likewise, even as it was in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but in the day that…
- 2 Corinthians 5:10-11 (v9) For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has…
- Hebrews 11:7 (v5) By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared a ship for the saving of his house, through which…
- 2 Peter 3:6 (v5) by which means the world that existed then, being overflowed with water, perished.
- Genesis 19:16 (v7) But he lingered; and the men grabbed his hand, his wife’s hand, and his two daughters’ hands, Yahweh being merciful to him; and they took…
- Job 5:19 (v9) He will deliver you in six troubles; yes, in seven no evil will touch you.
- Proverbs 16:4 (v9) Yahweh has made everything for its own end— yes, even the wicked for the day of evil.
- Ezekiel 5:11 (v4) Therefore as I live,’ says the Lord Yahweh, ‘surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things, and with all…
- Luke 10:18 (v4) He said to them, “I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven.
- Genesis 19:29 (v7) When God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow, when he overthrew the…
- 2 Corinthians 2:17 (v3) For we are not as so many, peddling the word of God. But as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.
- Deuteronomy 29:23 (v6) that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn’t produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow…
- Deuteronomy 32:35 (v3) Vengeance is mine, and recompense, at the time when their foot slides; for the day of their calamity is at hand. Their doom rushes at them.”
- Job 4:18 (v4) Behold, he puts no trust in his servants. He charges his angels with error.
- Romans 16:18 (v3) For those who are such don’t serve our Lord, Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by their smooth and flattering speech, they deceive the…
- Titus 2:14 (v9) who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for…
- 2 Peter 2:4 (v9) For if God didn’t spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness to be reserved for…
- 1 John 3:8 (v4) He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. To this end the Son of God was revealed: that he might…
- Psalms 4:3 (v9) But know that Yahweh has set apart for himself him who is godly: Yahweh will hear when I call to him.
- Luke 8:31 (v4) They begged him that he would not command them to go into the abyss.
- Luke 17:26-27 (v5) As it was in the days of Noah, even so will it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, and they were…
- Romans 2:5 (v9) But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath, revelation, and of the…
- 1 Thessalonians 2:5 (v3) For neither were we at any time found using words of flattery, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness (God is witness),
- 2 Peter 2:5 (v4) and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world…
- Job 21:30 (vv4, 9) that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, That they are led out to the day of wrath?
- Jude 1:15 (vv3, 6) to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have done in an ungodly way, and of…
- Genesis 19:24-25 (v6) Then Yahweh rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from Yahweh out of the sky. He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the…
- Numbers 26:10 (v6) and the earth opened its mouth, and swallowed them up together with Korah when that company died; at the time the fire devoured two hundred…
- Psalms 119:158 (v8) I look at the faithless with loathing, because they don’t observe your word.
- 2 Peter 2:11 (v4) whereas angels, though greater in might and power, don’t bring a railing judgment against them before the Lord.
- Genesis 19:7-8 (v7) He said, “Please, my brothers, don’t act so wickedly. See now, I have two virgin daughters. Please let me bring them out to you, and you…
- Psalms 32:6 (v9) For this, let everyone who is godly pray to you in a time when you may be found. Surely when the great waters overflow, they shall not…
- Isaiah 13:19 (v6) Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, will be like when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
- Jeremiah 50:40 (v6) As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and its neighbor cities,” says Yahweh, “so no man will dwell there, neither will any son of man…
- Ezekiel 9:4 (v8) Yahweh said to him, “Go through the middle of the city, through the middle of Jerusalem, and set a mark on the foreheads of the men that…
- Zephaniah 2:9 (v6) Therefore as I live, says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, surely Moab will be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, a…
- Matthew 8:29 (v4) Behold, they cried out, saying, “What do we have to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”
- Mark 5:7 (v4) and crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have I to do with you, Jesus, you Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, don’t…
- John 8:44 (v4) You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn’t stand…
- 1 Corinthians 10:11 (v6) Now all these things happened to them by way of example, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come.
- 1 Timothy 6:5 (v3) constant friction of people of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. Withdraw yourself…
- Titus 1:11 (v3) whose mouths must be stopped: men who overthrow whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for dishonest gain’s sake.
- 2 Peter 2:9 (vv3–4) the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,
- Genesis 7:1-24 (v5) Yahweh said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation. You…
- Genesis 13:13 (v7) Now the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinners against Yahweh.
- Genesis 19:22 (v7) Hurry, escape there, for I can’t do anything until you get there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.
- Psalms 12:1 (v9) Help, Yahweh; for the godly man ceases. For the faithful fail from among the children of men.
- Psalms 119:136 (v8) Streams of tears run down my eyes, because they don’t observe your law.
- Matthew 24:37-39 (v5) “As the days of Noah were, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and…
- Titus 1:7 (v3) For the overseer must be blameless, as God’s steward, not self-pleasing, not easily angered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for…
- 1 Peter 3:19-20 (v5) in whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah,…
- 1 Peter 5:2 (v3) Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily, not for dishonest gain, but…
- Genesis 19:28 (v6) He looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and saw that the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a…
- Proverbs 25:26 (v8) Like a muddied spring and a polluted well, so is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.
- Jeremiah 9:1-6 (v7) Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh…
- Jeremiah 23:9 (v7) Concerning the prophets: My heart within me is broken. All my bones shake. I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine has overcome,…
- Ezekiel 7:9 (v4) My eye won’t spare, neither will I have pity. I will punish you according to your ways. Your abominations will be among you. Then you will…
- Ezekiel 16:49-56 (v6) “ ‘ “Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease was in her and in her daughters. She…
- Hosea 11:8 (v6) “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart…
- Amos 4:11 (v6) “I have overthrown some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a burning stick plucked out of the fire; yet…
- 2 Corinthians 12:17-18 (v3) Did I take advantage of you by anyone of those whom I have sent to you? I exhorted Titus, and I sent the brother with him. Did Titus take…
- 2 Peter 1:16 (v3) For we didn’t follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were…
- 2 Peter 2:1 (v3) But false prophets also arose among the people, as false teachers will also be among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies,…
- 2 Peter 3:17 (v7) You therefore, beloved, knowing these things beforehand, beware, lest being carried away with the error of the wicked, you fall from your…
- Jude 1:4 (v3) For there are certain men who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, turning the…
- Genesis 6:1-8 (v5) When men began to multiply on the surface of the ground, and daughters were born to them, God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were…
- Deuteronomy 29:20 (v4) Yahweh will not pardon him, but then Yahweh’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this…
- Job 22:15-16 (v5) Will you keep the old way, which wicked men have trodden, who were snatched away before their time, whose foundation was poured out as a…
- Psalms 18:44 (v3) As soon as they hear of me they shall obey me. The foreigners shall submit themselves to me.
- Psalms 66:3 (v3) Tell God, “How awesome are your deeds! Through the greatness of your power, your enemies submit themselves to you.
- Psalms 81:15 (v3) The haters of Yahweh would cringe before him, and their punishment would last forever.
- Psalms 119:139 (v8) My zeal wears me out, because my enemies ignore your words.
- Proverbs 28:12 (v8) When the righteous triumph, there is great glory; but when the wicked rise, men hide themselves.
- Isaiah 5:19 (v3) who say, “Let him make haste, let him hasten his work, that we may see it; let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come,…
- Isaiah 30:13-14 (v3) therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly in an…
- Isaiah 56:11 (v3) Yes, the dogs are greedy. They can never have enough. They are shepherds who can’t understand. They have all turned to their own way, each…
- Isaiah 60:22 (v3) The little one will become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation. I, Yahweh, will do this quickly in its time.”
- Jeremiah 6:13 (v3) “For from their least even to their greatest, everyone is given to covetousness. From the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals…
- Jeremiah 8:10 (v3) Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to those who will possess them. For everyone from the least even to the…
- Ezekiel 13:19 (v3) You have profaned me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to kill the souls who should not die, and to save the…
- Micah 3:11 (v3) Her leaders judge for bribes, and her priests teach for a price, and her prophets of it tell fortunes for money: yet they lean on Yahweh,…
- Habakkuk 3:3 (v3) God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens, and his praise filled the earth.
- Malachi 1:10 (v3) “Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you,”…
- Malachi 3:15-17 (v8) Now we call the proud happy; yes, those who work wickedness are built up; yes, they tempt God, and escape.’ Then those who feared Yahweh…
- Luke 18:8 (v3) I tell you that he will avenge them quickly. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
100 distinct cross-references across this passage (123 total citations).
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 3. With feigned words. Peter endeavors by all means…
3. With feigned words. Peter endeavors by all means to render the faithful displeased with ungodly teachers, that they might resist them more resolutely and more constantly. It is especially an odious thing that we should be exposed to sale like vile slaves. But he testifies that this is done, when any one seduces us from the redemption of Christ. He calls those feigned words which are artfully formed for the purpose of deceiving. Unless then one is so mad as to sell the salvation of his soul to false teachers, let him close up every avenue that may lead to their wicked inventions. For the same purpose as before he repeats again, that their destruction delayed not, that is, that he might frighten the good from their society. For since they were given up to a sudden destruction, every one who connected himself with them, must have perished with them.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 8, 9 Covetousness for the most part is a companion of…
Covetousness for the most part is a companion of heresy, and maketh merchandise even of souls.
They will abuse you, and sell you as they sell cattle in a Fair.
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A comfort for the godly: God who cast the Angels that fell away from him headlong into the darkness of hell, at length to be judged, and who destroyed the old world with the flood, and preserved Noah the eight person, and who burned Sodom, and saved Lot, will deliver his elect from these errors, and will utterly destroy those unrighteous.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv3–9 3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words…
3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.
Ver. 3. With feigned words] Covetousness is never without a cloak and flattering words {1Th 2:5} for a colour; as, what wool is so coarse, but will take some or other colour? Seducers pretend the glory of God and good of souls to their worldly and wicked practices, Php 3:18-19. And hereunto they want not fine set words, forms of speech, whereby they first carry captive silly souls, and then make price or merchandise of them; driving a trade with hell, and being factors for the devil, who will thank them well one day for their diligence; like as in the days of Hildebrand letters of thanks were said to be sent from hell to the Popish clergy for those great numbers of souls every day sent thither by their means. (Mat. Paris, 4. D. 1072.)
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv3–9 With feigned words; deceitful speeches, which have a show…
With feigned words; deceitful speeches, which have a show of truth to hide their errors.
Make merchandise of you; as of slaves or beasts: it seems to be a metaphor taken from merchants that speak great things of bad wares, the better to vend them; the sense is, with specious words, and pious pretences, they shall deceive you to make a gain of you.
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Whose judgment; or, condemnation.
Now of a long time; being of old determined by God, and foretold in the Scripture, and so nearer than they themselves imagine.
Lingereth not; i.e. goes on apace, and hastens on them.
And their damnation; or, destruction.
Slumbereth not: i.e. watcheth, as ready to overtake them in its time: it may be a metaphor taken from a traveller, as Pro 6:11; or the apostle alludes to Deu 32:35, where the like expression is found: see 2Pe 2:1.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 7, 9 Observe here, 1. What is the root of all…
Observe here, 1. What is the root of all heresy; it is covetousness, which the apostle calls the root of all evil; they are covetous worldy-minded men generally, who hope some way or other to make an advantage of their opinions, who broach errors and false doctrines.
Observe, 2. The miserable condition of the seduced, they are sold by heretics like beasts; they make merchandise of you: The business of heretics to sell their own and others souls, as Judas did Christ, for some outward benefit.
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Observe, 3. The arts which heretics and seducers use to circumvent and deceive, and that is feigned words, artifically composed to seduce, drawing into error with a deceitful eloquence.
Observe, 4. The dreadful punishment which attends their sin, swift destruction; their damnation slumbereth not; their judgment lingereth not.
Learn, That the righteous judgment of God brings damnation upon the wicked, and their damnation will come swiftly, very swiftly upon them.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv3, 7 Men are apt to think that a reprieve is…
Men are apt to think that a reprieve is the forerunner of a pardon, and that if judgment be not speedily executed it is, or will be, certainly reversed. But the apostle tells us that how successful and prosperous soever false teachers may be, and that for a time, yet their judgment lingereth not. God has determined long ago how he will deal with them. Such unbelievers, who endeavour to turn others from the faith, are condemned already, and the wrath of God abideth on them. The righteous Judge will speedily take vengeance; the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. To prove this assertion, here are several examples of the righteous judgment of God, in taking vengeance on sinners, proposed to our serious consideration.
I. See how God dealt with the angels who sinned. Observe, 1. No excellency will exempt a sinner from punishment. If the angels, who excel us vastly in strength and knowledge, violate the law of God, the sentence which that law awards shall be executed upon them, and that without mercy or mitigation, for God did not spare them. Hence observe, 2. By how much the more excellent the offender, by so much the more severe the punishment. These angels, who had the advantage of men as to the dignity of their nature, are immediately punished. There is no sparing them for a few days, no favour at all shown them. 3. Sin debases and degrades the persons who commit it. The angels of heaven are cast down from the height of their excellency, and divested of all their glory and dignity, upon their disobedience. Whoever sins against God does a manifest hurt to himself. 4. Those who rebel against the God of heaven shall all be sent down to hell. There is no place nor state between the height of glory and the depth of misery in which they shall be allowed to rest. If creatures sin in heaven, they must suffer in hell. 5. Sin is the work of darkness, and darkness is the wages of sin. The darkness of misery and torment follows the darkness of sin. Those who will not walk according to the light and direction of God's law shall be deprived of the light of God's countenance and the comforts of his presence. 6. As sin binds men over to punishment, so misery and torment hold men under punishment. The darkness which is their misery keeps them so that they cannot get away from their torment. 7. The last degree of torment is not till the day of judgment. The sinning angels, though in hell already, are yet reserved to the judgment of the great day.
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II. See how God dealt with the old world, even in much the same way that he dealt with the angels. He spared not the old world. Here observe, 1. The number of offenders signifies no more to procure any favour than the quality. If the sin be universal, the punishment shall likewise extend to all. But, 2. If there be but a few righteous, they shall be preserved. God does not destroy the good with the bad. In wrath he remembers mercy. 3. Those who are preachers of righteousness in an age of universal corruption and degeneracy, holding forth the word of life in an unblamable and exemplary conversation, shall be preserved in a time of general destruction. 4. God can make use of those creatures as the instruments of his vengeance in punishing sinners which he at first made and appointed for their service and benefit. He destroyed the whole world by water; but observe, 5. What was the procuring cause of this: it was a world of ungodly men. Ungodliness puts men out of the divine protection, and exposes them to utter destruction.
III. See how God dealt with Sodom and Gomorrah; though they were situated in a country like the garden of the Lord, yet, if in such a fruitful soil they abound in sin, God can soon turn a fruitful land into barrenness and a well-watered country into dust and ashes. Observe, 1. No political union or confederacy can keep off judgments from a sinful people. Sodom and the neighbouring cities were no more secured by their regular government than the angels by the dignity of their nature or the old world by their vast number. 2. God can make use of contrary creatures to punish incorrigible sinners. He destroys the old world by water, and Sodom by fire. He who keeps fire and water from hurting his people (Isa 43:2) can make either to destroy his enemies; therefore they are never safe. 3. Most heinous sins bring most grievous judgments. Those who were abominable in their vices were remarkable for their plagues. Those who are sinners exceedingly before the Lord must expect the most dreadful vengeance. 4. The punishment of sinners in former ages is designed for the example of those who come after. "Follow them, not only in the time of living, but in their course and way of living." Men who live ungodly must see what they are to expect if they go on still in a course of impiety. Let us take warning by all the instances of God's taking vengeance, which are recorded for our admonition, and to prevent our promising ourselves impunity, though we go on in a course of sin.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv3–9 And through covetousness;.... Which is generally a prevailing vice…
And through covetousness;.... Which is generally a prevailing vice among false teachers, they having no other end in view than themselves; either to gain popular applause and vain glory, which they are always covetous of; or to amass riches to themselves, after which they have an insatiable desire:
shall they with feigned words; made words, words of their own devising, and not which the Holy Ghost teacheth; whereby they cover themselves, and privily introduce their pernicious principles; and therefore new words and phrases are always to be suspected and guarded against, especially in articles of moment and importance: or with flattering words and fair speeches, great swelling words of vanity, having men's persons in admiration, because of worldly advantage; and in this way they gain their point:
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make merchandise of you; deal with the souls of men, as merchants do with their goods, carry them to market and sell them; so false teachers deal with the souls of their followers, draw them, and sell them to Satan, and they themselves pay for it; see Zac 11:5 but in the issue, and that in a short time, they will be no gainers by such practices:
whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not: that is, their condemnation, which God in righteousness has determined, "from the creation of the world", as the Ethiopic version reads, or from all eternity, see Jde 1:4, to bring them into, for their vile principles and practices, is not retarded and delayed; it does not linger and stay behind, or slacken its pace; it will not tarry, it will come upon them at the appointed time:
and their damnation slumbereth not; an avenging God, who has appointed them to damnation for their sins, slumbers not; the justice of God is not asleep, nor careless and negligent, but is awake, and watches over them, to bring the evil upon them they have deserved, and is in reserve for them, and will hasten to perform it; the determined destruction does not lie dormant, but in a little time will be stirred up, and fall with dreadful weight on such sinners, as may be concluded from the following awful instances.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 9 They will make merchandise of you - Only use…
They will make merchandise of you - Only use you to gain by you, as merchants do their wares. Whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not - Was long ago determined, and will be executed speedily. All sinners are adjudged to destruction; and God's punishing some proves he will punish the rest.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv3–9 Verse 3. And through covetousness] That they might get…
Verse 3. And through covetousness] That they might get money to spend upon their lusts, with feigned words, πλαστοις λογοις, with counterfeit tales, false narrations, of pretended facts, lying miracles, fabulous legends. "In this single sentence," says Dr. Macknight, "there is a clear prediction of the iniquitous practices of those great merchants of souls, the Romish clergy, who have rated all crimes, even the most atrocious, at a fixed price; so that if their doctrine be true, whoever pays the price may commit the crime without hazarding his salvation." How the popish Church has made merchandise of souls, needs no particular explanation here. It was this abominable doctrine that showed to some, then in that Church, the absolute necessity of a reformation.
Whose judgment now of a long time] From the beginning God has condemned sin, and inflicted suitable punishments on transgressors; and has promised in his word, from the earliest ages, to pour out his indignation on the wicked. The punishment, therefore, so long ago predicted, shall fall on these impure and incorrigible sinners; and the condemnation which is denounced against them slumbers not-it is alert, it is on its way, it is hurrying on, and must soon overtake them.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 9 2Pe 2:4. For if — Or since, as ει…
2Pe 2:4. For if — Or since, as ει γαρ may be here rendered; God spared not the angels that sinned — “The angels seem to have been placed originally in a state of trial. Those who stood are called in Scripture, the holy angels. The sin of the angels is spoken of likewise, Joh 8:44, and Jude, 2Pe 2:6, as a thing well known. Perhaps it was handed down by tradition from Adam and Eve, for the memory of it seems to have been preserved among the heathens in the fable of the Titans warring against the gods. What the sin of the angels was is not well known. Jdg 1:6, says, They kept not their first estate, or their own principality, as την εαυτων αρχην may be properly rendered, but left their proper habitation. Hence their sin, by many, is thought to have been pride, and a discontent with their station. See 1Ti 3:6. But whatever it was, considering their high intellectual powers, they might easily have avoided it; and therefore God did not spare them, as he spared Adam and Eve, who, on account of the greatness of the temptation spread for them by the evil angels, and their own inexperience, were fit objects of mercy.” But cast them down to hell — The bottomless pit, a place of unknown misery. The original expression, αλλα σειραις ζοφου Ταρταρωσας, is rendered by Macknight, But with chains of darkness confining them in Tartarus. The word Tartarus, he observes, is not found in the LXX., nor anywhere in the New Testament but here. Its meaning, therefore, must be sought for among the Greeks. Homer represents Tartarus, Iliad, 8. ver. 13, as “a deep place under the earth, where there are iron gates and a brazen entrance.” It is derived from a word expressive of terror, and signifies the doleful prison in which wicked spirits are reserved till they shall be brought out to public condemnation and execution. In like manner, Hesiod speaks of Tartarus as a place far under ground, where the Titans are bound with chains in thick darkness. But on other occasions the Greek writers speak of Tartarus as in the air, and at the extremity of the earth. Hence the epithet Ταρταρον ηεροεντα, airy Tartarus. The Jews, as appears from Job 2:2, thought that at least some of the fallen angels were permitted to wander up and down the earth, and to tempt men. This was the doctrine of the evangelists likewise, who speak of the devil tempting our Lord; and of Peter, who represents him as a roaring lion walking about, &c., 1Pe 5:8; as also of St. Paul, who insinuates that evil spirits have their habitation in the air, Eph 2:2; Eph 6:11-12. Wherefore seeing the Greeks named the place where they supposed the Titans, the enemies of the gods, were confined, Tartarus, it was natural for Peter, when writing in the Greek language, concerning confining the evil angels in the place where they were shut up, to call it Tartarus, although his idea of Tartarus was different from that of the Greeks. Because it is said, Rev 20:3, that Satan was cast, εις αβυσσον, into the abyss, and Luk 8:31, that the devil besought Jesus that he would not command them to go out, εις αβυσσον, into the abyss, Estius infers that Tartarus and Hell are the same; and that the greatest part of the angels who sinned are confined there, though some of them are allowed to roam about on the earth, tempting men. See Macknight and Doddridge. Reserved unto judgment — The full execution and open manifestation thereof. From this it follows that the angels who sinned are not at present suffering the punishment due to them for their crimes; but, like malefactors, they are kept in durance till the time come when they are to be punished with the wicked of mankind, whom they have seduced. Whitby hath shown that this was the opinion of all the Christian writers for five centuries. And it is agreeable to our Lord’s doctrine, who says, the fire into which wicked men are to be cast, is fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv3–9 And through covetousness - This shows what one of…
And through covetousness - This shows what one of the things was by which they were influenced - a thing which, like licentiousness, usually exerts a powerful influence over the teachers of error. The religious principle is the strongest that is implanted in the human bosom: and men who can obtain a livelihood in no other way, or who are too unprincipled or too indolent to labor for an honest living, often turn public teachers of religion, and adopt the kind of doctrines that will be likely to give them the greatest power over the purses of others. True religion, indeed, requires of its friends to devote all that they have to the service of God and to the promotion of his cause; but it is very easy to pervert this requirement, so that the teacher of error shall take advantage of it for his own aggrandizement.
Shall they with feigned words - Greek formed, fashioned; then those which are formed for the occasion - feigned, false, deceitful. The idea is, thug the doctrines which they would defend were not maintained by solid and substantial arguments, but that they would make use of plausible reasoning made up for the occasion.
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Make merchandise of you - Treat you not as rational beings but as a bale of goods, or any other article of traffic. That is, they would endeavor to make money out of them, and regard them only as fitted to promote that object.
Whose judgment - Whose condemnation.
Now of a long time lingereth not - Greek, “of old; long since.” The idea seems to be, that justice had been long attentive to their movements, and was on its way to their destruction. It was not a new thing - that is, there was no new principle involved in their destruction; but it was a principle which had always been in operation, and which would certainly be applicable to them, and of a long time justice had been impatient to do the work which it was accustomed to do. What had occurred to the angels that sinned, 2Pe 2:4 to the old world, 2Pe 2:5 and to Sodom and Gomorrah, 2Pe 2:6 would occur to them; and the same justice which had overthrown them might be regarded as on its way to effect their destruction. Compare the notes at Isa 18:4.
And their damnation slumbereth not - Their condemnation, (Notes, 1Co 11:29) yet here referring to future punishment. “Mr. Blackwell observes, that this is a most beautiful figure, representing the vengeance that shall destroy such incorrigible sinners as an angel of judgment pursuing them on the wing, continually approaching nearer and nearer, and in the mean time keeping a watchful eye upon them, that he may at length discharge an unerring blow” - Doddridge. It is not uncommon to speak of “sleepless justice;” and the idea here is, that however justice may have seemed to slumber or to linger, it was not really so, but that it had on them an everwatchful eye, and was on its way to do that which was right in regard to them. A sinner should never forget that there is an eye of unslumbering vigilance always upon him, and that everything that he does is witnessed by one who will yet render exact justice to all men. No person, however careful to conceal his sins, or however bold in transgression, or however unconcerned he may seem to be, can hope that justice will always linger, or destruction always slumber.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 9 They shall make merchandise of you, preaching such lying…
They shall make merchandise of you, preaching such lying doctrine as might please the people, but through a motive of covetousness, and for their own gain. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3–9 through, &c.--Greek, "IN covetousness" as their element (Pe2 2:14,…
through, &c.--Greek, "IN covetousness" as their element (Pe2 2:14, end). Contrast Co2 11:20; Co2 12:17.
of a long time--in God's eternal purpose. "Before of old ordained to condemnation" (Jde 1:4).
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lingereth not--though sinners think it lingers; "is not idle."
damnation--Greek, "destruction" (see on Pe2 2:1). Personified.
slumbereth not--though sinners slumber.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv3–9 3. Through covetousness—Rather, in it, living and moving in…
3. Through covetousness—Rather, in it, living and moving in it as their atmosphere.
Feigned words—Crafty, oily speeches.
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Merchandise—Gain; make money out of you. St. Paul found their parallels. See 1Ti_6:5; Tit_1:11. The commentators find them pervading Roman Catholic history.
Whose judgment—God’s condemnation of such sinners.
Lingereth not—It may seem to be doing nothing, but it is really at work.
Damnation—Eternal destruction. Years before, when Simon Magus sought to traffic with him for the power of conferring the Holy Ghost, St. Peter used the Greek of this very word: “May thy money be with thee unto destruction.” Act_8:20.
Slumbereth not—It is not nodding, as if in a doze, but awake, to overwhelm them.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–9 3. through covetousness shall they with feigned words make…
3. through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you] Better, in or with covetousness. The adjective for “feigned” is not found elsewhere in the New Testament. This greed of gain, found in strange union with high-flown claims to a higher knowledge and holiness than that of others, seems to have been one of the chief features of the heresies of the Apostolic age. Comp. 1Ti_6:5; Tit_1:11. If they made proselytes it was only that they might get profit out of them.
whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not] Better, for whom judgment for a long time idleth not.
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damnation] Better, destruction, as keeping up the continuity of thought with the preceding verses. The thought involves a half-personification of the two nouns. “Judgment” does not loiter on its way; “destruction” does not nod drowsily, like the foolish virgins of Mat_25:5. Both are eager, watchful, waiting for the appointed hour.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–9 (3) And through covetousness.—Better, In covetousness. This is the…
(3) And through covetousness.—Better, In covetousness. This is the atmosphere in which they live. (See Notes on 2Pe_2:18 and 2Pe_1:1-2; 2Pe_1:4; 2Pe_1:13.) Wiclif and Rheims have “in.” Simon Magus offering St. Peter money, which no doubt he was accustomed to take himself for his teaching, may illustrate this (Act_8:18; comp. 1Ti_6:5; Tit_1:10-11). These false teachers, like the Greek Sophists, taught for money. A bombastic mysticism, promising to reveal secrets about the unseen world and the future, was a very lucrative profession in the last days of Paganism, and it passed over to Christianity as an element in various heresies. (Comp. the Shepherd of Hermas, Sim. IX. xix. 3.)
Make merchandise of you.—The verb means literally to travel, especially as a merchant on business; and hence “to be a merchant,” “to trade,” and, with an accusative, “to deal in,” “make merchandise of.” (Comp. our commercial phrase, “to travel in” such and such goods.) It may also mean simply “to gain,” or “gain over,” which would make good sense here; but our version is perhaps better. The word occurs elsewhere only in Jas_4:13. “With feigned words” possibly refers back to “cunningly devised fables” (2Pe_1:16).
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Lingereth not.—Literally, is not idle, the cognate verb of the adjective in 2Pe_1:8. Their sentence has long since been pronounced, is working, and in due time will strike them. We have a similar thought in 1Pe_4:17.
Their damnation slumbereth not.—Better, their destruction. (See fourth Note on 2Pe_2:1.) Wiclif and Rheims have “perdition.” The destruction involved in the judgment pronounced by God is awake and on its way to overtake them. The word for “slumbereth” occurs in Mat_25:5 only.
We now pass on to see how it is that this judgment “of a long time” has been working. It was pronounced against all sinners, such as they are, from the first beginning of the world.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv3–9 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make…
And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you; rather, in covetousness. Covetousness was their besetting sin, the sphere in which they lived. St. Paul warned Titus against false teachers who taught "things which they ought not, for filthy lucre"s sake" Tit_1:11; see also 1Ti_6:6 and. (Jud_1:16) Simon Magus, the first heresiarch, sought to trade in holy things; the like sin seems to have been characteristic of the false teachers of apostolic times. The word translated "feigned" (plastoiv) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament; the words of these men were not the expression of their real thoughts and feelings; they were invented, craftily contrived to deceive men, and that for the sake of money. The last words of the clause will admit another sense: "shall gain you," i.e., " shall gain you over to their party;" and this view derives some support from the use of the verb ejmporeuesqai in the Septuagint Version of Pro_3:14. But the verb is often used in classical writers in the sense of making a profit out of people or things, and this meaning seems most suitable here. The false teachers will work hard, as the Pharisees did, to make proselytes; but their real motive is, not the salvation of souls, but their own selfish gain. Whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not; literally, for whom the sentence of a long time idleth not. The sentence of judgment is for them, for their condemnation; in the foreknowledge of God it has been pronounced long ago, and ever since it has been drawing near; it doth not tarry. (comp. Jud_1:4 and. (1Pe_4:17) The word rendered "of a long time" (ekpalai) occurs only here and 2Pe_3:5. And their damnation slumbereth not; destruction: it is the word which has been used already twice in verse 1. The verb means literally "to nod," then "to slumber;" it is found elsewhere in the New Testament only in the parable of the virgins. (Mat_25:5)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv4, 8 If God spared not the angels that sinned.
2Pe_2:4-10
If God spared not the angels that sinned.
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Angelic sinners
I. That they are the most ancient sinners. They were the first transgressors of Heavens eternal law.
1. The uniqueness of their circumstances. They had no tempter. Adam had; so has his race ever since; so have we. All their propensities were in favour of holiness.
2. The force of their freedom. Having neither an outward tempter nor an inward propensity to wrong, they must have risen up against all the external circumstances and internal tendencies of that being.
II. That they are the most influential sinners.
1. They were the original introducers of sin to this world.
2. They are the constant promoters of sin in this world.
III. That they are the most incorrigible sinners. Instances of mans conversion from sin are numerous. Their incorrigibility shows two things.
1. That intellectual knowledge cannot convert.
2. That an experience of the evil of sin cannot convert.
IV. That they are the most miserable of sinners. There are three things which indicate the extent of their misery.
1. Contrast between their present and past condition.
2. The vastness of their capacity.
3. The utter hopelessness of their state. (Homilist.)
Fallen angels a lesson to fallen men
These are ancient things. Most men hunger after the latest news; let us on this occasion go back upon the earliest records. It does us good to look back upon the past of Gods dealings with His creatures; herein lies the value of history. We should not confine our attention to Gods dealings with men, but we should observe how He acts towards another order of beings. If angels transgress, what is His conduct towards them? This study will enlarge our minds, and show us great principles in their wider sweep.
I. Consider our text for our warning. God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell. Behold here a wonder of wickedness, angels sin; a wonder of justice, God spared them not; a wonder of punishment, He cast them down to hell; a wonder of future vengeance, for they are reserved unto judgment! Here are deep themes and terrible.
1. Let us receive a warning, first, against the deceivableness of sin, for whoever we may be, we may never reckon that, on account of our position or condition, we shall be free from the assaults of sin, or even certain of not being overcome by it. Notice that these who sinned were angels in heaven, so that there is no necessary security in the most holy position. This should teach us not to presume upon anything connected with our position here below. You may be the child of godly parents who watch over you with sedulous care, and yet you may grow up to be a man of Belial. You may never enter a haunt of iniquity, your journeys may be only to and from the house of God, and yet you may be a bond slave of iniquity. The house in which you live may be none other than the house of God and the very gate of heaven through your fathers prayers, and yet you may yourself live to blaspheme.
2. The next thought is that the greatest possible ability, apparently consecrated, is still nothing to rely upon as a reason why we should not yet fall so low as to prostitute it all to the service of the worst of evils. A man may not say, I am a minister: I shall be kept faithful in the Church of God. Ah me! But we have seen leaders turn aside, and we need not marvel; for if angels fall, what man may think that he can stand?
3. Neither must any of us suppose that we shall be kept by the mere fact that we are engaged in the sublimest possible office. Apart from the perpetual miracle of Gods grace, nothing can -keep us from declension and spiritual death.
4. I want you to notice, as a great warning; that this sin of the angels was not prevented even by the fullest happiness. The most golden wages will not keep a servant loyal to the kindest of masters. The most blessed experience will not preserve a soul from sinning. No feelings of joy or happiness can be relied upon as sufficient holdfasts to keep us near the Lord.
5. This warning, be it noted, applies itself to the very foulest of sin. The angels did not merely sin and lose heaven, but they passed beyond all other beings in sin, and made themselves fit denizens for hell. Oh my unrenewed hearer, I would not slander thee, but I must warn thee: there are all the makings of a hell within thy heart! It only needs that the restraining hand of God should be removed, and thou wouldst come out in thy true colours, and those are the colours of iniquity.
6. The text may lead us a little farther before we leave it, by giving us a warning against the punishment of sin as well as against the sin itself. God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell: They were very great; they were very powerful; but God did not spare them for that. If sinners are kings, princes, magistrates, millionaires, God will cast them into hell. You unbelievers may combine together to hate and oppose the gospel, but it matters not, God will deal with your confederacies and break up your unities, and make you companions in hell even as you have been comrades in sin. Neither did He spare them because of their craft. There were never such subtle creatures as these are--so wise, so deep, so crafty; but these serpents and all the brood of them had to feel the power of Gods vengeance, notwithstanding their cunning.
II. But now I want to ask all your attention to this second point for our admiration.
1. I want you to admire the fact that though angels fell the saints of God are made to stand. Oh, the splendour of triumphant grace! Neither the glory of our calling, nor the unworthiness of our original, shall Cause us to be traitors; we shall neither perish through pride nor lust; but the new nature within us shall overcome all sin, and abide faithful to the end.
2. Now let us learn another lesson full of admiration, and that is that God should deal in grace with men and not with angels. One would think that to restore an angel was more easy and more agreeable to the plan of the universe than to exalt fallen man. I rather conceive it to have been the easier thing of the two if the Lord had so willed it. And yet, involving as it did the incarnation of the Son of God and His death to make atonement, the infinitely gracious Father condescended to ordain that He would take up men, and would not take up the fallen angels. It is a marvel: it is a mystery. I put it before you for your admiration. Behold how He loves us! What shall we do in return? Let us do angels work. Let us glorify God as angels would have done had they been restored and made again to taste Divine favour and infinite love. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The punishment of the wicked
I. The certainty of the sinners future punishment might be argued from that attribute of justice which belongs to the Divine character, and the entire purity of which is in Scripture so frequently insisted on. For it is manifestly contrary to justice, that no distinction should be made between the righteous and the wicked.
1. The first instance he adduces is that of the angels that sinned. The angels, it may be admitted, fell from a loftier elevation in the scale of being than man did; but the final fall of those who perish through their own neglect of the salvation of the gospel, will be more terrible than that of angels.
2. But the apostle deduces the same inference from the Divine judgments at sundry times inflicted upon men--specifying particularly the general deluge, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha. And the inference on this latter ground is as just as in the former. For in the first place there can be no reasonable doubt that these remarkable events were purposely intended to manifest in a conspicuous manner the Divine displeasure against sin.
3. But while they serve as manifestations of the general truth, that God cannot look upon sin with allowance, they serve more particularly, as argued by the apostle, to remind us that a day of still more awful judgment is approaching, in which the ungodly shall be subjected, not to the calamity of a temporal destruction, but to a punishment commensurate with the magnitude of their guilt.
II. The magnitude of the evil and suffering in which their punishment is to consist.
1. It has already been apparent in some degree, that the punishment is indescribably dreadful; and it is farther manifest from the fact that it is a punishment which cannot be inflicted upon them in the present life. Our nature in its present state, if subjected to such a torment, would faint, and be consumed; and the punishment, so far at least as the body is concerned, would presently be ended.
2. There is another terrible indication on this subject, in the circumstance that the punishment is one in which man will be associated with the fallen angels. What must be the nature of that torment which constitutes an adequate punishment to fallen angels I
3. And then to all these considerations is to be added the tremendous thought that the punishment is everlasting. The fearful characteristic of those who die under the curse of the law is that they die without mercy. Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever. (T. Crowther.)
The punishment of the angels that sinned
1. He delivered them: but into whose hands? Indeed, He delivers guilty mortals into the hands of guilty angels (Mat_18:34; 1Co_5:5; 1Ti_1:20). Some answer, that themselves are the instruments to torture themselves. After a sort, every transgressor is his own tormentor; and wickedness is a vexation to itself. Ambition racks the aspiring; envy eats the marrow of his bones that envieth; the covetousness which would be most rich, keeps the affected with it most poor; sobriety begets the headache; lust afflicts the body that nourishes it; and we say of the prodigal, he is no mans foe but his own.
2. Into chains of darkness. Into darkness--there is their misery; into chains--there is their slavery.
(1) Darkness signifies tile wrath of God, and is opposed to that favour of His which is called the light of His countenance (Psa_4:6).
(2) Chains.
(a) The power of Divine justice.
(b) The guiltiness of their own conscience. (T. Adams.)
Noah … a preacher of righteousness.
Noahs preaching
1. Noah had his calling immediately from God; whereas we are mediately ordained by the imposition of hands.
2. The Lord honoured Noah in conferring his office upon him. Certainly a ministers life is full of honour here and hereafter, too; so it is full of danger here and hereafter, too.
3. Noah faithfully executed this calling, and continued preaching a hundred years. Both in his doctrinal instructions and exemplary life he was a preacher of righteousness.
4. He had not such happy success of his preaching as his own soul desired, and he might in reason have expected. A man may be lawfully called by God and His Church, and yet not turn many souls. It is the measure, not the success, that God looks to; our reward shall be according to our works, not according to the fruit of our works; which is our comfort.
5. So long as Noah preached, the world was warned. God needed not to have given them any warning of His judgments; they gave Him no warning of their sins. Yet, that He might approve His mercy, He gives them long warning that they might have space enough of repenting. Oh, how loth is He to strike that threatens so long before He executes! (T. Adams.)
Sodom and Gomorrha.--
Sodom and Gomorrha
1. The strongest cities are not shot-proof against the arrows of God; but even things ordained for refuge are by His justice made destructive. There is nothing peaceable where God is an enemy.
2. Sin can bring down the most magnificent cities.
3. None of these wicked cities escaped. Men, women, children, houses, plants, monuments, all that grew on the earth were destroyed (Gen_19:25).
4. Great is the danger of living in opulent and delightful places. Where is no want is much wantonness; and to be rich in temporals hastens poverty in spirituals. In a scantiness, the things themselves do stint and restrain our appetites; but where is abundance, and the measure is left to our own discretion, our discretion is too often deceived. (T. Adams.)
Sodom and Gomorrha an example of the fate of the ungodly
1. No society of men or policy can hinder the judgment of God, which He will bring upon them for their sins.
2. The same judgments of God are executed by contrary causes. The old world was destroyed by water, these cities by fire. Sinners should not think themselves safe because they have escaped one judgment, for when they are farthest off from one evil, another is ready to fall upon them (Amo_5:19).
3. Extreme judgments follow extreme sins.
4. They that are unto others examples of sin shall be also unto them examples of punishment. (Wm. Ames, D. D.)
Delivered just Lot.--
Lot in Sodom
I. The spirits testimony concerning lot. Lot was a just man and a godly. What disclosures shall the last day make! What changes in our views of individuals!
1. His state before God. Only as justified by faith can we be accounted righteous.
2. Lots character. The bent and purpose of his soul was towards God. He ran not as he should have done in the way of Gods commandments; trial upon trial was needed to keep alive the flickering lamp of spiritual life.
II. His situation in sodom. He first pitched his tent towards it, and the next step was downwards--he dwelt in Sodom.
1. I ask of that residence, was it profitable? I would not make it the chief motive to serve the Lord, that it shall be well with you here; but i would yet say lose not this world and that which is to come.
2. I ask, further, concerning that residence, was it happy? Did it bring peace to his soul? could he rejoice whilst there abiding? What saith the Word of God? It speaks of him as vexed from day to day. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and He did deliver Lot; but He suffered His servant to feel that an evil and a bitter thing it is to depart from the narrow way; whilst dwelling in Sodom, happiness must not be his.
3. Nay, was that residence safe? He came forth from it a fugitive who had entered it as a prince. Are you seeking to avoid reproach by some concession contrary to Gods truth? Are you planning for the worlds aid? Cast off your vain confidences, safety is not in them!
III. The hindrances to his removal might be these.
1. The tie of property. There Lot had laid up his goods. For a time, doubtless, worldly prosperity was his, and the entanglement was strong. How strong that tie is to all! How great the grace to those who have burst from its hold!
2. The ungodly amongst whom he dwelt would be opposed to Lots departure. He evidently stood in fear (if them, and he might dread to give them any excuse for violence.
3. His family had, fearful to relate, formed alliances in that city of evil; these would cling around him, and prevent the determination to depart.
4. But far more than all was that lethargy of soul the hindrance, which nourished by the atmosphere in which he lived--increased by each days sojourn ill the infected city--would make him less and less capable of the effort needed for his escape.
Conclusion:
1. What a God is He with whom we have to do!
2. What a world is that with which we have to contend! We dwell as it were on enchanted ground.
3. What depths of heart-deceit does the history of man bring to light! (F. Storr, M. A.)
Just Lot
I. His grace--a just man.
1. What this justice is.
(1) Legal righteousness is of three sorts--
(a) Perfect, which consists in an absolute completion of the law: this is lost beyond all recovery.
(b) Civil, which consists in an outward deportment conformable to the law (Mat_5:20).
(c) Internal, when a man by repentance, and by endeavour after repentance, inwardly serves God. This may justify our faith; it cannot justify us.
(2) Evangelical righteousness is that which is revealed in the gospel; and should never have been revealed if that of the law could have saved us.
2. Thus is a man just before God, but Lot was also just before men; and there is a visible justice, as well as the invisible.
(1) There is a righteousness of preparation, which is a resolution of heart to be righteous (Psa_119:106). Though he do sometimes admit sin, he doth never intend sin.
(2) There is a righteousness of separation, because it is seen to decline the places of temptation (1Jn_5:18).
(3) There is a righteousness of reparation which consists in the reforming of errors and conforming of manners, salving past defects by a bettered life, and is indeed the righteousness of repentance. Righteous, not because there is no sin committed, but because there is no sin that is not repented.
(4) There is a righteousness of comparison; so was Lot just comparatively among the Sodomites.
(5) There is an operative righteousness. The best traveller may stumble in his journey, yet have his eye observant and his foot constant on his way.
(a) If we will be delivered, let us be just.
(b) Never did man serve God for nothing; if Lot be just, he shall now find the benefit of it.
(c) The Lord first makes us just and then saves us.
II. His place, which was sinful. But why would Lot stay in such a wicked city? Not as a neighbour affected with their customs, but as a physician to cure their diseases. But he that looked for a paradise found a hell, and the cup of his prosperity was spiced with the bitter fruits of a cursed society. What doth Lot in Sodom--a saint among sinners? Fishes may be fresh in salt waters; live in the sea and not partake the brinish quality. It is not so with man; rather some evil for neighbourhoods sake. Can a man be clean among lepers? Sooner are the good corrupted by the bad than the bad are bettered by the good.
III. His case. Vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked.
1. The matter of his vexing was their sin; the evil of the place came from the persons, who were fully, filthily, palpably wicked.
(1) The impudence. It was manifest wickedness; their faces did not blush at it (Isa_3:9).
(2) The continuance. As their sins were extant, so constant; their ways were always grievous (Psa_10:5). It is not so much sin, as the trade of sin, that is damnable.
(3) The uncleanness. Their sin was not only palpable and durable, but detestable. They were exposed to turpitude, their bodies prostituted to fleshly pollutions.
2. Vexed. This was no ordinary disturbance, nor common displeasure; but oppressed, excruciated, tormented; his senses, his very soul, exceedingly afflicted. He was not an idle looker-on, as if he minded not what they did; nor in a timorous observation of the proverb, Of little meddling comes great rest; but knowing it to be the cause of God, his heart was perplexed about it. He was not vexed with them, but with their deeds; we are to hate none for their creation, but perverting the end of their creation. Vexed. That which is here passive is in the next verse active: he vexed his righteous soul. Who bade him stay there to be vexed? He vexed himself when he might have quitted himself. Yet because he was vexed he is delivered. Because he avoided their sins he escaped their judgments. And surely they were both miraculous; for his declining their sins was no less a wonder than his deliverance from their flames. As the latter was Gods gracious prevention, so the former was His prevenient grace. (Thos. Adams.)
Vexed his righteous soul.--
A saints vexation
I. The incentives.
1. Causal or radical--He being righteous. As in natural things, like things are not opposed by like things, fire fights not against fire, but against water; so in moral things, the innocent are not opposed by the innocent; one good man does not persecute another. Wolf and wolf can agree, lamb and lamb fall not out; but who can reconcile the wolf to the lamb?
2. Occasional--Dwelling among them. One reason why God suffers evil men is to try the good. They are the best lilies that thrive amongst thorns.
(1) Amongst them that hate righteousness, and him for it.
(2) Among them that thought Lot to be the only man that molested them.
(3) Among them that thought Lot a proud and imperious fellow.
(4) Among them that thought him a fool for his labour.
(5) Among them that thought him exorbitant, because he walked not after their rule.
(6) Among them that hated the truth, and loved the prophecy of wine and strong drink. Among these bad men dwelt this good Lot, and still he was righteous. It is likely they endeavoured to win him to them, either by rewards or menaces.
3. Objectual--Their unlawful deeds. Sin is the object or matter of a saints vexation. That which grieves God should also vex us: this hath tried the zeal of the saints. (Exo_32:19; 1Ki_19:14; 1Sa_4:22; Num_25:7-8).
4. Organical or instrumental--In seeing and hearing. The eye and ear are those special doors that let into the heart its comfort or torment.
(1) The sight of sin makes a man either sad or guilty; if we see it, and be not sorrowful, we are sinful.
(2) The most offensive sins are such as be objected to sight and hearing. Spiritual and internal sins may be more culpable, outward are more infamous.
(3) He did see and not see, hear and not hear. Connivance at rank impiety is bad in all men, in tolerable in some; such are the ministers of either gospel or justice.
(4) Sodoms sin was so much the more heinous to God, for offending man, and vexing the heart of His servant Lot.
(5) He that would not be vexed with evils, let him turn his eyes and ears another way. Let us frequent their company, where in seeing and hearing we may reap comfort.
II. The fire itself. Vexed his righteous soul.
1. Its property.
(1) It is the argument of a righteous man to be far from his Makers service. As sails to the ship and wind to the sails, so is fervency to righteousness. A soldier without courage,, a horse without mettle, a creature without vivacity, such is a Christian without fervency.
(2) It doth also improve righteousness; like the fire which came down from heaven upon the sacrifices, causing them to ascend thither in acceptation. Fervency is that mark which God would have us set on all His services, that so they may be discerned to be His own.
(3) It honours righteousness; many thousands have been righteous whose names are not on record; but of those who have been zealous in their piety, the Scripture takes special notice.
2. Its sincerity. As this was no common fervency, so no counter feit; he little dissembles whose soul is moved.
(1) There be some that vex them selves out of envy; Lot did not so. This is a black zeal, reckoned among the works of the flesh (1Co_3:3; Act_5:17; Gal_5:21; Jam_3:14; 1Co_13:4; Rom_13:13).
(2) There be that vex themselves out of choler; transported with in temperate passions. We do not read that Lot was cruel and turbulent, vexing others; but he vexed himself.
(3) There be that vex themselves without cause, and strike their friends for their enemies. Let our zeal come in to part, not to par take the fray; all endeavouring and praying, that peace may be within the gates of Zion.
(4) There be that vex themselves out of hypocrisy; they have other ends than Gods glory.
(5) There be that vex themselves out of Ignorance; for there is a zeal not according to knowledge. Here is a pitiable fervency, like mettle in a blind horse, or a sting in an angry bee.
(6) The very name of a counterfeit pre-supposeth an original. That virtue which even hypocrites put on to grace them, is, questionless, some rare and admirable thing. The true Lot, whose fervency is in the spirit, not in show; in substance, not in circumstance; for God, not for himself; guided by the Word, not by humour; tempered with charity, not driven with turbulency; such a mans praise is of God, though it be not of men; and through all contempts on earth, it shall find a glorious reward in heaven.
3. Its singularity. One Lot will be righteous amongst and against all Sodom, and express this righteousness in the midst of their vicious customs. It hath been the lot of fervent holiness to be rare, as to be excellent: adherents may hearten, opposites must not dash zeal out of countenance.
(1) So near as we can, let us make choice of the good; for man naturally produces works conformable to the objects before his eyes.
(2) If, like Lot, we be necessitated to the society of bad people, yet let us be good still; yea, therefore the more holy, because in the midst of a perverse generation, shining as lights in a dark place.
(3) Let us follow the examples of the best, not of the most. Who had not rather be righteous with one singular Lot, than perish with all ungodly Sodom?
4. Its constancy. From day to day. The fixed stars are even like themselves, whereas meteors and vapours have no con-tinned light. To run with the stream, or sail with the wind, or, like the marigold, to open only with the sunshine, is no praise of piety. Give me that Job that will be as honest a man among his thousands as under the rod, when the number of his present ulcers exceeds his former riches. (Thos. Adams.)
How ought we to bewail the sins of the places where we live
It is the disposition and duty of the righteous to be deeply afflicted with the sins of the places where they live.
I. For the obvious Scripture examples.--Our Lord (Mar_3:5) was grieved for the hardness of their hearts, namely, in opposing His holy and saving doctrines. David professeth that rivers of waters ran down his eyes, because men kept not Gods law; and that when he beheld the transgressors, he was grieved; because they kept not His Word (Psa_119:136; Psa_119:158). The next example shall be Ezras, who, hearing of the sins of the people in marrying with heathens, in token of bitter grief for it, rent his garment and his mantle, and plucked off the hair of his beard and of his head, and sat down astonied (Ezr_9:3); and he did neither eat bread, nor drink water: for he mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away (Ezr_10:6). To these I might add the example of Jeremiah (Jer_13:17). I shall conclude this with that expression of holy Paul (Php_3:18).
II. The manner how this duty of mourning for the sins of others is to be performed.
1. In our mourning for the sins of others in respect of God, we must advance--
(1) His great and unparalleled patience and long-suffering extended toward those whose sins we lament. This was evident in Nehemiahs bewailing the sins of the sinful Jews (Neh_9:30).
(2) In mourning for the sins of the wicked, advance God in the acknowledgment of His justice and spotless righteousness, should He with utmost severity take vengeance upon offenders.
(3) In spreading before God the wickednesses of great sinners, admire His infinite power, that can not only stop the worst of men in, but turn them from, their course of opposing God by their rebellions. We are not so to mourn for, as to despair of the conversion of, the worst. They are as much within the converting reach as the destructive reach of Gods hand.
(4) In mourning admire that grace and power that hath kept thee from their excesses. It should more comfort thee that thou sinnest not with them, than trouble thee that thou sufferest from them.
2. The second branch of the manner how we must bewail the sins of others is as it respects those for whom and for whose sins we lament and mourn.
(1) We must bewail the sins of our bitterest enemies, as well as of our most beloved relations--a rare and seldom-practised duty I fear that this will be found.
(2) We ought to bewail the sins of our near and dear relations in a greater measure than those of mere strangers--natural affection, sanctified, is the strongest.
(3) They that mourn for others sins, especially the sins of those they most love, must mourn more for their sins than their afflictions and outward troubles.
(4) We ought to bewail the sins of others according to the proportion of the sins of the times and places where we live.
(5) We ought to mourn for the sins of others advantageously to those for whom we mourn, with the using of all due means to reclaim and reduce them.
(a) By prayer for their conversion and Gods pardoning them.
(b) We must endeavour to follow the mourning for sinners with restraining them from sin (if we have it) by power.
(c) We must mourn for sinners with advantaging them by example, that they may never be able to tax us with those sins for which we would be thought sorrowful.
(d) We must follow our mourning for others sins with labouring to advantage them by holy reproof for the sins we mourn for.
(e) With expressing that commiseration toward a sinner in private which thou expressest for him before God in secret.
(6) We must mourn for those sins of others that are in appearance advantageous to ourselves.
3. I shall consider how we should mourn for the sins of others in respect of ourselves.
(1) They whom God hath set in any place or station of superiority over others, either more public or in families, should be the most eminent mourners for the sins of those committed to their charge.
(2) Those who, now converted, have been the most open sinners in their unconverted state should more lay to heart the sins of the openly wicked than those who have lived more civilly and without scandal.
(3) They that mourn for others sins must more mourn because those sins are offensive and dishonourable to God and hurtful to sinners, than because they are injurious to themselves that mourn over them.
(4) They that mourn for others sins should mourn more in secret than in open complaining.
(5) They that mourn for others sins must mourn to a high degree who have been the occasions and promoters of their sins--either by neglecting to reprove them for, restraining them from, or giving them examples of, sinning. This sanctified conscience will make one of the bitterest ingredients into sorrow for the sins of others.
(6) They that mourn for the sins of others must mourn with a holy reflection upon themselves.
(a) They must reflect upon themselves with sorrow, because they have the same impure natures that the most-to-be-lamented sinner in the world hath.
(b) With a reflection of examination.
(i) Whether you have not some way or other furthered this sinner in his much-to-be-lamented impieties.
(ii) Whether the same open sins that are acted by him--the noted offender--or sins almost or altogether as bad, are not acted and entertained by thee in secret places, or at least in thy heart.
(c) With a reflection of care and watchfulness that thou mayest never dare to fall into the sins that thou bewailest in another; that thou who labourest to quench the fire that hath seized upon thy neighbours house, mayest be careful to preserve thine from being set on fire also.
III. To show why this holy mourning is.
1. The disposition, and
2. Duty of the righteous,
I shall express the reasons of both distinctly.
1. It is their disposition, and that under a threefold qualification--
(1) Because they are a knowing people. They know what tears and heart-breakings sin hath stood them in; they know that sin will cost the wicked either tears of repentance or damnation; they know that sin is but gilded destruction, and fire and brimstone in a disguise (2Co_5:11).
(2) As to a saints disposition: he is compassionate and tender-hearted. If sinners mourn, he mourns with them; if not, he mourns for them.
(3) The righteous are a purified, sanctified people. A saint, as such, hates nothing but sin.
2. It is the duty as well as the disposition of the righteous to mourn for the sins of others; and that as they are considerable in a threefold relation.
(1) In their relation to God. As the sons of God they are commanded to be blameless, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation (Php_2:15).
(2) Their relation to the Mediator, the Lord Christ. Here I shall mention only a double relation between Christ and saints, that engageth them to mourn for the sins of others.
(a) The first is His relation to us as a suffering Surety, in respect whereof He paid the debt of penalty which we owed to Gods justice; for it was sin in man that made Christ a man of sorrows.
(b) There is a second relation between Christ and saints that should make them mourn for the sins of the wicked; and that is the relation of Teacher and Instructor. We are His disciples and scholars; and it is our duty as much to make Him our Example as to expect He should obtain our pardon. Christ never had a pollution, but oft a commotion, of affection; Christ never wept but for sin or its effects.
(3) Their relation to the wicked, for whose sins they should mourn.
(a) The saints are men with the worst; they have the relation of human nature to the greatest sinners upon earth (Heb_13:3). It is a wickedness to hide ourselves from our own flesh (Isa_58:7).
(b) The righteous are the same with the wicked in respect of corrupt, depraved nature; born in sin as much as they, with a principle of inclination to all their impieties (Eph_2:3). Should it not, then, make thee mourn to consider, by the wickedness of others, thine own inbred depravation? what thou hadst done thyself if God had not either renewed or restrained thee? yea, what thou wouldest do if God should leave thee, and withdraw His grace from thee?
(c) Perhaps the holiest men have been, some way or other, furtherers of the sins of the wicked among whom they live; perhaps by their former sinful example when they lived in the same sins themselves which now the wicked wallow in. Shouldest not thou, then, mourn for killing that soul which God so severely punisheth, though free grace hath pardoned thee? Should we not quench that fire with our tears which we have blown-up with our bellows of encouragement?
(d) In this relation of saints, to sinners that should put them upon mourning for them, it is very considerable that the godly and the wicked make up one community, or political body, in the places where they live. In which respect the sins of some particular offender or offenders may pull down judgments upon the whole body. So that every one had need do his utmost, by mourning, and in whatever other way he can, to redress the sins, and so to prevent the plagues, of the place where he lives.
IV. Application.
Use
I. Of information in sundry branches.
1. Godliness is uniform in all times, places, and companies. A righteous man is not, as the swine in a meadow, clean only in clean places; he will maintain opposition to sin in the midst of inducements to sin. His goodness may justly be suspected that only shows itself in good places, companies, and times.
2. The greatest sinners cannot constrain us to sin. The greatest temptation is no plea for committing the least sin: if we give not away, none can take away our holiness.
3. One cause may produce contrary effects. Others sins draw the wicked to follow them, but they put the saints upon bewailing them.
4. It is our duty to rejoice in the holiness, if to mourn for the sins, of others. Love to Gods house in others was Davids gladness (Psa_122:1). It was the greatest joy of holy John that his spiritual children walked in the truth (3Jn_1:4). Holy ones were Pauls joy, crown, and glory (1Th_2:19-20).
5. Christianity abolisheth not affection, but rectifies it. Grace is like the percolation or draining of salt water through the earth; it only takes away the brackishness and unsavouriness of our affections and faculties.
6. Everything betters a saint. Not only ordinances, word, sacraments, holy society, but even sinners and their very sinning. Even these draw forth their graces into exercise, and put them upon godly, broken-hearted mourning.
7. The great misery that sill hath brought into the world, to make sorrow and mourning necessary. It should make us long for a better world, where that which is here our duty to practise shall for ever be our privilege to be freed from.
8. There must needs remain a better state for the saints.
9. How ought sinners to mourn for their own sins! The nearer the enemy is, the more dreadful he is. Nothing more dismal than to see a sinner to go, not swiftly only, but merrily, to eternal mourning. He that hath no tears for himself, should be helped by others.
Use
II. The second use is of reprehension; and that to sundry sorts.
1. To those that reproach the holy mourning of saints for others sins. They are falsely esteemed the incendiaries in a state whose great study is to quench Gods burning wrath. If sinners kindle the fire, let saints quench it.
2. This doctrine of mourning for the sins of others speaks reproof to those that take pleasure in the sins of others (Rom_1:32).
3. This doctrine reproves those that mourn for the holiness of others. I have known some parents that have greatly desired their children should be good husbands, to get and increase their estates; but then have been very fearful lest they should be too godly; and it hath been the righteous judgment of God that their children proved spendthrifts, neither godly nor good husbands. It is often seen that, as gardeners with their shears snip off the tops of the tallest sprigs, so men most labour to discountenance the tallest in Christianity.
4. This doctrine reproves those that put others upon sin, so far are they from mourning for their sins. Poor souls! have they not sins enough of their own to answer for? If is little enough to be a leader to heaven, but too much to be a follower to hell; what, then, to be a leader!
Use
III. of exhortation, to mourn for the sins of the wicked among whom we live.
1. If we mourn not for others sins, theirs become ours.
2. Mourning for others sins is the way to awaken thy conscience for thine own former sins.
3. Without mourning for sinners you will never seek the reformation of sinners.
4. This mourning for others sins will make us more fearful to admit sin into ourselves.
5. Mourning for others sins speaks thee a man of public usefulness to thy country.
6. Mourning for others sins makes the sins of others beneficial to thee.
7. Holy commotion of soul for others sins sends forth a most acceptable and fragrant savour into the nostrils of God.
Use
IV. I shall add one use more; and that is direction to the means of practising this duty of holy mourning for others sins:
1. Look not upon this duty with self-exemption. As if it belonged only to the highest in the practice of religion, or persons in office. All desire to bc marked, and therefore should be mourners (Eze_9:4).
2. Look upon mourning for sin to be no legal practice, but an evangelical duty. The gospel-grace makes tears sweeter, not fewer.
3. Preserve tenderness of conscience in respect of thine own sins.
4. Strengthen faith in divine threatenings against sin.
5. Be holily, not curiously, inquisitive into the state of the times.
6. Take heed of being drowned in sensual delights. (W. Jenkin, M. A.)
Distress of the pious at the wickedness of the godless
The pious are distressed at the sins of the godless because--
1. These sins sully the glory of God;
2. They show the tyranny of Satan over men;
3. They conduce to the condemnation of the godless. (J. Fronmuller.)
Grief at sin
John Bunyans wife having, after several previous applications to different judges, made a specially importunate appeal to Judges Hale and Twisdon for the release of her husband from Bedford gaol, and being again unsuccessful, said: I remember that though I was somewhat timorous at my first entrance into the chamber, yet, before I went out, I could not but break forth into tears, not so much Because they were so hard-hearted against me and my husband, but to think what a sad account such poor creatures will have to give at the coming of the Lord, when they shall then answer for all things whatsoever they have done in the body, whether it be good or whether it be bad. (Tinlings Illustrations.)
A Christian in the world is like a rose among noxious weeds
Does a rose refuse to grow and to emit a sweet odour because there are noxious weeds in the same field? And does the rose complain and declare that it will not fulfil its mission until every weed is pulled up? A rose is a rose in the midst of thorns and thistles. A Christian is a Christian under all circumstances, and whether the world is full of noxious weeds, and the Church swarming with hypocrites, the man of faith continues to grow and bear fruit, exhaling a sweet and salutary fragrance on all around. A Christian who refuses to shed spiritual fragrance upon the desert air, because of the presence of mean and defective church members, is a mere fungus sort of Christian, being devoid of the seeds of truth, and hence empty of spiritual vitality.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly.--
The Lords knowledge our safeguard
I. The Lords knowledge in reference to character.
1. He knows the godly--
(1) Under trial, when they are not known to others.
(2) Under temptation, when scarcely known to themselves.
2. He knows the unjust--
(1) Though they make loud professions of piety.
(2) Though they may be honoured for their great possessions.
II. The Lords knowledge in reference to the godly. He knows how to let them suffer, and yet to deliver them in the most complete and glorious manner.
1. His knowledge answers better than theirs would do.
2. His knowledge of their case is perfect.
3. He knows in every case how to deliver them.
4. He knows the most profitable way of deliverance.
5. His knowledge should cause them to trust in Him with holy confidence, and never to sin in order to escape.
III. The Lords knowledge in reference to the unjust.
1. They are unjust in all senses, for they are--
(1) Not legally just by keeping the law.
(2) Nor evangelically just through faith in Jesus.
(3) Nor practically just in their daily lives.
2. The Lord knows best--
(1) How to deal with them from day to day.
(2) How to reserve them under restraints. He makes it possible to reprieve them, and yet to maintain law and order.
(3) How to punish them with unrest and fears even now.
(4) How and when to strike them down when their iniquities are full.
(5) How to deal with them in judgment, and throughout the future state. The mysteries of eternal doom are safe in His hand. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Gods dealings with the godly and their persecutors
I. The deliverance of the godly.
1. A deliverance. It is a great comfort in every distress to hope for a deliverance; to believe it, greater; to be sure of it, greatest of all. Thus certain is every Christian, by the assurance of faith, grounded on the infallible promise of God. God often defers His deliverance.
(1) To return us home: when no man will harbour that unthrift son, he Will back again to his father.
(2) To make us seek our deliverance in the right place: while money can buy physic, or friends procure enlargement, the great Physician Helper is not thoroughly trusted.
(3) To set a better price on His benefits; for suddenly gotten are suddenly forgotten.
2. The persons delivered are the godly. Godliness consists in two things:
(1) The devout admiration; and
(2) Sincere imitation of God.
3. From what--out of temptations. They, of all men, are most subject to temptations. The higher a tree shoots up, the more tempest-beaten. To suggest evil is Satans blame; to resist it our praise. The more we are tried in the furnace, the purer gold we shall go to the treasury of heaven. Lord, make us as strong as the devil is malicious.
(1) We that pray for deliverance from evil must endeavour against evil. Let us have wary eyes, for it is not the self-appearing devil, but the same or transformed angel, that doth corrupt us.
(2) Consider what preventions the provident God useth against our sinnings. Sometimes He shortens our own arms, sometimes strengthens others against us. Sometimes reason is heard, when religion sits out; and the dishonesty, inutility, or difficulty of a sin is perpended. But it is best, when the fear of God hath corrected us, or the Word of God averted us, or the Spirit of God recalled us.
(3) Let us meditate how we are blessed of God, and have reason to bless God, for these happy deliverances.
(4) If we love not evil, let us long for our final and plenary deliver ance from it; that immortal court, where sin can no more enter; out of this the tempter is excluded for ever. Here the Lord delivers us from the damnation and domination of sin, there from the temptation and assault; here it shall not over come us, there it shall not come near us.
4. Our deliverer--The Lord. His sovereignty is--
(1) Independent.
(2) Absolute.
(3) Universal.
(4) Necessary. We could not live but by His dominion.
(5) Immutable. What God once is, He is for ever,
(6) Incomprehensible.
(7) Glorious and blessed.
5. The Lord knoweth how. As there is nothing impossible to His might, so there is nothing concealable from His understanding.
(1) He knows our temptations before they be upon us; He sees the preparing of the potion, weighs the ingredients to a scruple, qualifies the malignity of the purgatives with sweet consolations.
(2) He knows them when they be upon us (Exo_2:25; Psa_31:7).
(3) He knows how to rid them from us. They are often so perplexful and intricate, that neither we see, nor the world sees, nor reason apprehends how, yet the Lord knoweth.
II. The end of their persecutors.
1. The malefactors. The wicked are unjust.
(1) To God. Righteousness is an obedience to the will of God, and injustice is no other than disobedience.
(2) To man. Such are they that measure their right by their power, and therefore will do injury because they cannot do it. Unjust--
(a) To the commonwealth.
(b) To the Church.
(c) To private persons.
(3) To a mans self. So is the thriftless, that spends himself into poverty by pride and luxury; the envious, that loses the sweetness of his own by grudging at his neighbours; the covetous, that adds to the continent of his treasure what he should add to the content of his nature.
2. The binding over. Are reserved. Whether they sleep or wake, play or work, stand or walk, their time runs on, their judgment is nearer; and they are more surely kept unto it, than any dungeon, with the thickest walls and strongest chains, can hold a prisoner till his arraignment comes.
(1) Wickedness hath but a time, but the punishment of wickedness is beyond all time.
(2) The unjust are already reserved, the decree is passed against them. They are bound over to the last assizes by a threefold recognisance, as it were with infrangible, though insensible, chains of judgment--the bond of their sins, the bond of their conscience, and the bond of omnipotent justice--and this threefold cable is not easily broken.
3. The assizes. To the day of judgment.
(1) The sufficiency of the Judge
(2) The necessity of the judgment (2Th_1:6-7).
4. The execution. To be punished. In this judgment, God respects no persons; He knows no valour, no honour, no riches, no royalty, in the matter of sin; but Rom_2:9. (Thos. Adams.)
The trial and deliverance of the godly
I. Our religion must be fairly tried.
1. The pleasures of life, as they are generally deemed; present themselves before you; many of them decidedly sinful, others of them, though not directly immoral, yet very ensnaring, they invite you to the indulgence of gratifications which war against the soul. Do you habitually resist these salutations?
2. The world, apart from its disgusting vices, exhibits to your mind, in bright colours, the numerous comforts, the many enjoyments, the family advantages, the great interests, belonging to a state of prosperity and affluence. Do you when thus tempted adhere firmly to the great Christian principle of renouncing the world?
3. Even religion itself, with imposing professions, will invite your attention and adherence for the purpose of ensnaring and deceiving your souls. Do you continue steadfast in the faith, true to your only Lord and Master? Do you reject every substitute for Christ Himself?
4. A persecuting spirit, under the pretext of holy zeal for God and religion, has often been exerted, and has proved a severe trial of faith and sincerity. Do you notwithstanding cleave to the Lord?--hold fast the profession of your faith without wavering?
5. Afflictions generally are a trial of our religion. It is when we are brought low in trouble that the excellency of faith, the sincerity of our hearts, the truth of our profession, the reality of our love to God, and the purity of our faith in the Son of God will be most satisfactorily manifested. Yet, let it be seriously remembered, that it is not the impression of the moment, but the subsequent permanent, abiding effects of affliction that become a real test of godliness.
II. The encouraging promise conveyed in this passage to men of truth and sincerity. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation. A faithful God is not only able to comfort and sustain them that wait upon Him, but He will do it most wisely; He knoweth how to dispense His grace most advantageously to them that really love Him and cast their care upon Him. (S. Morell.)
Deliverance from temptation the privilege of the righteous
1. Who are here to be understood by the godly. He, and he only, can lay claim to so glorious a qualification who is actually in covenant with God, and that not only by external profession, but by real relation. In a word, he, and he only, ought to pass for godly, according to the unalterable rules of Christianity, who allows not himself in the omission of any known duty, or the commission of the least known sin. And this certainly will, and nothing less that I know of can, either secure a man from failing into temptation, or (which is yet a greater happiness) from falling by it.
2. The other thing to be inquired into is, what is here meant by temptation; a thing better known by its ill effects than by the best description. The Greek word signifies trial, and so imports not so much the matter as the end of the dispensation. But (the common and most received use of the word having added something of malignity to its first and native signification) generally in Scripture it denotes not only a bare trial, but-such a one as is attended with a design to hurt or mischieve the people so tried. As for the sense in which the word ought to be taken here, it may be, and no doubt with great truth is, in the full latitude of it, applicable to both sorts of temptation: it being no less the prerogative of Gods goodness and power to deliver men from such trials as afflict them, than from such as are designed to corrupt them. Nevertheless, I think it also as little to be doubted, that the text chiefly respects this latter signification, and accordingly speaks here most designedly of such a deliverance as breaks the snares and defeats the stratagems by which the great and mortal enemy of mankind is so infinitely busy, first to debauch, and then to destroy souls. And now, if it be inquired whether they are the righteous only whom God delivers from temptation, and that no such deliverances are ever vouchsafed by Him to any of the contrary character, I answer that I can find nothing in Scripture or reason to found such a doctrine upon, but that such deliverances both may be and sometimes are vouchsafed to persons far enough from being reckoned godly, either in the accounts of God or man. And first, that they may be so we need no other reason to evince it than this, that God in these cases may very well restrain the actions, without working any change upon the will or affections. And in the next place, that such deliverances not only may be, but sometimes actually are afforded to persons represented under no note of piety or virtue, but much otherwise, those three memorable examples of Abimelech, Esau, and Balaam (Gen_20:1-18; Gen_33:1-20; Num_22:1-41.) sufficiently demonstrate. So that we may rationally conclude that even wicked persons also are sometimes sharers in such deliverances; but still so, that this by all means ought to be observed Withal, that the said deliverances are dealt forth to these two different sorts of men upon very different grounds, viz., to the former upon the stock of covenant or promises; to the latter upon the stock of uncovenanted mercy, and the free overflowing egress of the Divine benignity, often exerting itself upon such as have no claim to it at all.
I. To show how far God delivers persons truly pious out of temptation.
1. God delivers by way of prevention, or keeping off the temptation; which, of all other ways, is doubtless the surest, as the surest is unquestionably the best. For by this is set a mighty barrier between the soul and the earliest approaches of its mortal enemy. Unspeakable are the advantages vouchsafed to mankind by Gods preventing grace, if we consider how apt a temptation is to diffuse, and how prone our nature is to receive an infection. For though the soul be not actually corrupted by a temptation, yet it is something to be sullied and blown upon by it, to have been in the dangerous familiarities of sin, and in the next approach and neighbourhood of destruction. Such being the nature of man, that it is hardly possible for hint to be near an ill thing and not the worse for it.
2. We are now to consider such persons as advanced a step further, and as they are actually entered into temptation; and so also God is at hand for their deliverance. For as it was God who suspended the natural force of that material fire from acting upon the bodies of the three children mentioned in Dan_3:1-30., so it is God alone who must control the fury of this spiritual flame from seizing upon the soul, having always so much fuel and fit matter there for it to prey upon. And for an eternal monument of His goodness, He has not left us without some such heroic instances as these upon record in His Word, that so the saints may receive double courage and confidence, having their deliverance not only sealed and secured to them by promise, but also that promise ratified and made good to them by precedents and examples, like so many stars appearing, both to direct and to comfort the benighted traveller.
3. And lastly, we are to consider the persons hitherto spoken of as not only entered into temptation, but also as in some measure prevailed upon by it. But that I may give some light to this weighty case of conscience, how far a person truly godly may, without ceasing to be so, be prevailed upon by temptation, I will here set down the several degrees and advances by which a temptation or sinful proposal gradually wins the soul, and those all of them comprised in Jam_1:14-15.
1. The first of which we may call seduction.
2. The second degree of temptation may be called enticement or allurement.
3. The third degree is, when after such possession had of the thoughts and fancy, the temptation comes to make its way into the consent of the will, and to gain that great fort also, so that the mind begins to propose, and accordingly to contrive the commission of the sin proposed to it.
4. The fourth degree of prevalence which a temptation gets over the soul is, the actual eruption of it in the perpetration or commission of the sin suggested to it.
5. The fifth and last degree, completing the victory which temptation obtains over a man is, when sin comes to that pitch as to reign, and so by consequence put out of all possibility either of resistance or escape. Having thus reckoned up the several degrees of temptation, and set before you the fatal round of the devils methods for destroying souls, let us now in the next place inquire how far God vouchsafes to deliver the pious and sincere out of them in answer to which, I first of all affirm, that Gods methods in this case are very various, and not to be declared by any one universal assertion. Sometimes by a total and entire deliverance, He delivers them from every degree and encroachment of a temptation. Sometimes He lets them fall into the first degree of it, and receive it into their thoughts; but then delivers them from the second, which is to cherish and continue it there, by frequent pleasing reflections upon it. Sometimes He gives way to this too, but then hinders it from coming to a full purpose and consent of will. Sometimes He lets it go thus far also, and suffers sin to conceive by such a purpose or consent: but then, by a kind of spiritual abortion, stifles it in the very birth, and so keeps it from breaking forth into actual commission. And lastly, for reasons best known to His most wise providence, He sometimes permits a temptation to grow so powerful as to have strength to bring forth and to defile the soul with one or more gross actual eruptions. But then, in the last place, by a mighty overpowering grace, He very often, as some assert, or always, as others affirm, keeps it from an absolute, entire, and final conquest. So that sin never comes to such a height as to reign in the godly, to bear sway, and become habitual. But though its endeavours are not always extinguished, nor its sallyings out wholly stopped, yet its dominion is broken. It may sometimes bruise and wound, but it shall never kill.
Now the foregoing particulars, upon a due improvement of them, will naturally teach us these two great and important lessons.
1. Concerning the singular goodness as well as wisdom of our great Lawgiver, even in the strictest and severest precepts of our religion. Certainly it is a much greater mercy and tenderness to the souls of men to represent the first movings of the heart towards any forbidden object as unlawful in themselves, and destructive in their consequence, and thereby to incite the soul to a vigorous resistance of them while they may be mastered, and with tea times less trouble extinguished, than after they are once actually committed, they can be repented of. No doubt sin is both more easily and effectually kept from beginning than, being once begun, it can be stopped from going on.
2. The other great lesson is concerning the most effectual method of dealing with the tempter and his temptations; and that is, to follow the method of their dealing with us. A temptation never begins where it intends to make an end.
II. To show what is the prime motive, or grand impulsive cause, inducing God to deliver persons truly pious out of temptation. NOW this is twofold:
1. The free mercy of God; and
2. The prevailing intercession of Christ.
III. To show why and upon what grounds deliverance out of temptation is to be reputed so great a mercy and so transcendent a privilege. In order to which, as all deliverance, in the very nature and notion of it, imports a relation to some evil from which a man is delivered; so in this deliverance out of temptation, the surpassing greatness of it, and the sovereign mercy shown in it, will appear from those intolerable evils and mischiefs which are always intended by, and naturally consequents upon, a prevailing temptation. Four things more especially are designed and driven at by the tempter in all his temptations.
1. To begin with the greatest, and that which is always first intended, though last accomplished, the utter loss and damnation of the soul. For this is the grand mark which the tempter shoots at, this being the beloved prize which he contends so hard for.
2. In the second place, loss of a mans peace with God and his own conscience, and the weakening, if not extinguishing, all his former hopes of salvation. It confounds and casts a man infinitely backwards as to his spiritual accounts. It degrades him from his assurance; renders his title to heaven dubious and perplexed; draws a great and discouraging blot over all his evidences, and even shakes in pieces that confidence which was formerly the very life and support of his soul, with new, terrible, and amazing objections.
3. The third consequence of a prevailing temptation is the exposing of a man to the temporal judgments of God in some signal and severe affliction. For though in much mercy God may, as we have shown, save such a one from eternal death, yet it rarely happens that He frees him both from destruction and from discipline too; but that some time or other He gives him a taste of the bitter cup, and teaches him what his sin has deserved, by what at present it makes him feel.
4. The fourth and last mischievous consequence of a prevailing temptation is the disgrace, scandal, and reproach which it naturally brings upon our Christian profession. The three former consequences terminated within the compass of the sinners own person; but this last spreads and diffuses the mischief much further: nothing in nature casting so deep a stain upon the face of Christianity as the blots which fall upon it from the lewd and scandalous behaviour of Christians. (R. South, D. D.)
And to reserve the unjust unto the day of Judgment to be punished.--
The reality of future punishment
I. Think of the crisis which is indicated by the text. The day of judgment. At the day of judgment those of whom our text speaks will be present. These unjust ones will avowedly be all there. They are still existing, because then they will be forthcoming. Yes, and all besides these unjust ones are still existing, in order that they may be forthcoming then. Every descendant of Adam is existing unto this hour; living as much as we are living, away amidst the intermediate blessedness or woe; awaiting there the coming of the Lord to judgment. Public pronunciation must there be of the allotted destiny, world without end. The present does not terminate upon itself.
II. Think of the parties designated by the text. The unjust. This word is used to represent the ungodly. To be unjust towards our fellow-man is to do unto him that which should have been avoided, and to neglect to do unto him that which should have been performed. We sustain to him relationships involving manifold obligations. We sustain towards God relationships involving manifold obligations. Certain things are due from us to God; certain tempers of heart; certain modes of thought; certain habits of life. They are in no wise optional Now, in the judgment of the great day inquisition will be instituted accordingly. Not a godly man has lived who will not then be honourably recognised. Not an ungodly man has lived whose ungodliness will not then be brought transparently to light. Compromise will be impossible. Suppression will be impossible. Evasion will be impossible.
III. Think of the doom declared by our text. Punishment unto which they have been reserved. There was, according to the intimation, an idea of ultimate escape. The penalty which had been merited would somehow be averted. So in their folly men imagined they should not surely die. But God was knowing them all the while; preparing, moreover, all the while, as His forewarnings told, to execute His will. Dare any man amongst us to suggest that the great God was inconsiderate when He spoke of a fearful looking-for of judgment? Dare any man amongst us to suggest that He who holdeth us responsible for the full sincerity of our own words has been so far indifferent to the full sincerity of His own as to speak of tribulation in the future life when there is no such thing as tribulation? Real, downright positively real, this future punishment of the unjust. Forecast-ings of the punishment are sometimes realised in the present life. Instances of punishment have now and then occurred among the children of men which are enough to silence the objections which some of you are making now. You want the preacher to remember the goodness of God. I have it in remembrance; but I have in remembrance also the blindness of Elymas the sorcerer, and the latter end of Herod, who was eaten up of worms. You want the preacher to remember the goodness of God. I have it in remembrance; but I have in remembrance also the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise; the cherubim with the flaming sword being placed there to dare them ever to return. (W. Brock.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv3–9 3. And in covetousness. By their “feigned words,” crafty…
3. And in covetousness. By their “feigned words,” crafty speeches, the false teachers shall use their followers as a source of gain.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v9 2Pe_2:10. Despise government.—Dominion. Both self-restraint and restraint of good…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
2Pe_2:10. Despise government.—Dominion. Both self-restraint and restraint of good rules and wise authorities. Those who own no superior. Evil of dignities.—Lit. “They tremble not while railing at glories.” “These men deny the existence of, or irreverently speak slightingly of, those spiritual agencies by means of which God conducts the government of the world.”
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2Pe_2:11. Angels.—See Jude, 2Pe_2:9. Allusion is evidently to some tradition which has not been otherwise preserved. (But see Zec_3:1-2.)
2Pe_2:12. Brute beasts.—R.V., “as creatures without reason, born mere animals, to be taken and destroyed.” Omit “natural.” A denunciation of final ruin against these covetous and corrupting teachers.
2Pe_2:13. Spots.—In a moral sense. Sporting themselves.—Making great show and boasting, as if they were the favourites of heaven.
2Pe_2:14. Beguiling.—Enticing. Decoying as with a bait. Covetous practices.—Plans of fraud and extortion. Cursed children.—Children of the curse: or children of malediction. They are devoted to execration.
2Pe_2:15. Bosor.—R.V., “Beor.” From which it is only a dialectical variation.
2Pe_2:16. Rebuked.—Lit. “But bad a conviction of his own transgression”; was convicted of it. Madness.—Infatuation; conscious and voluntary perversion of mind.
2Pe_2:18. Great swelling words of vanity.—Exaggeration, unreality, boastfulness, emptiness, are expressed by this phrase. Clean escaped.—Better, “who are just escaped,” “almost escaped.” Such were in special peril of these evil things.
2Pe_2:19. Servants.—Bond-slaves. (See Rom_6:16; Rom_8:21.)
2Pe_2:20. They have escaped.—It is not clear whether the deluded ones, or those who delude them, is meant. Probably the latter. “The fullest clearness of spiritual vision had not protected these heresiarchs from the temptations of their sensuous natures.”
2Pe_2:22. The form of the proverbs is participial. “The dog returned to his own vomit; the washed sow to her wallowing in the mire” (see Pro_26:11). “In both cases stress is laid on the fact that there had been a real change. The dog had ejected what was foul; the sow had washed herself; but the old nature had returned in both cases. These who after their baptism returned to the impurities they had renounced, were, in the apostle’s eyes, no better than the unclean beasts. In the union of the two types of baseness we may, perhaps, trace a reminiscence of our Lord’s teaching in. Mat_7:6” (Plumptre).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—2Pe_2:9-22
Denunciations of the Libertines.
I. Confidence in God’s over-ruling.—“The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly.” This involves His recognition of the ungodly, and visitation of them in judgment. The sway and triumph of evil in the world is most perplexing to God’s people; it would be altogether overwhelming if they could not be sure of the Divine overruling with a patience that can wait for fitting opportunities. Delayed judgment is never any sign of indifference, nor is delayed deliverance. As Christ said to impatient disciples, so God again and again says to His people, “My time is not yet come, but your time is always ready.” The overruling of God is even more important than His ruling. It meets us just where we feel our chief difficulty.
II. Denunciation of vices.—The things which naturally follow as the outcome of false teaching—
(1) impurity,
(2) self-assertion,
(3) railing,
(5) wanton and luxurious living,
(5) covetousness. These denunciations can only with great difficulty be made subjects of pulpit exercise. They must be classed with the imprecatory Psalms. There may come times and fitting occasions for publicly denouncing the characteristic iniquities of a nation or a generation; but such work can only be done wisely by specially fitted men, and men who have gained the right to speak. In small spheres of pulpit service, the denunciation of public sins is apt to be taken as directed to certain individuals; and the personal element produces bitterness rather than conviction.
III. The law that increases Divine judgments.—Privilege enjoyed deepens responsibility. When privilege is abused; when men know and do not; when men who have come out of their sinful life go back to it;—then it is as though the stone on which they might have fallen fell on them. The weight of woe heaps up for those who were once “fair for the celestial city,” but turned back to wilfulness and sin.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
2Pe_2:9. The Godly Delivered—the unjust reserved unto judgment. There are only two great classes of people in the world—the godly and the unjust. The godly are those who have been born again, made partakers of the Divine nature, and live unto God. The unjust are those who are ungodly, who live to themselves and to the world. God deals very differently with the two classes.
I. His treatment of the godly.—
1. He allows them to fall into temptations, as
(1) solicitations to sin, and
(2) as trials. This he permits (a) to manifest the reality of His grace, (b) to condemn the world, (c) that we may be conformed to Christ.
2. The Lord knows how to deliver them. It matters not what form the temptation may take.
II. His treatment of the unjust.—“God knoweth how to reserve the unjust to the day of judgment to be punished.”
1. The end of all the ungodly is to be punished.
2. God knoweth how to reserve; He is not in haste to punish.—R. M. McCheyne.
God’s Judgments.—In a general way it may be said that the Old Testament is the book of God’s judgments, and the New Testament the book of God’s mercies. There are stories of judgment in the New Testament (Judas, Ananias, Elymas), and there are stories of God’s mercies in the Old; but this distinction marks off the characteristic of each Dispensation. Few hearers get much good from the histories of God’s judgments read to them from the Old Testament, because they are not felt to be matters of personal concern.
1. We ought to learn from them that God will not forget any godly man whatever, but will save him amid the destruction of all around him.
2. With the ungodly it will be otherwise; for them, so long as they continue in their ungodliness, there is neither mercy nor hope, but a certain looking forward to wrath and punishment at the hand of a mighty and offended God. There is no mercy for the obstinate and impenitent sinner. The two great lessons to be learnt from such histories are: the extent of God’s most fearful judgments, and their certainty. For as the word of God’s mercy is sure, so is the word of His wrath. And who are the cursed? All who are living in any known sin; all who are living in forgetfulness of God; all who are not Christ’s people; all who are not showing forth the blessed fruits of the Spirit in their daily lives. Many trust they shall do well, if they keep from the grosser works of the flesh. Some may say, “This is the old story we have heard so often.” But that should give double cause for trembling, seeing the gospel has been slighted so often and so long. God sends merciful invitations to repentance, that men may be saved from the ruin of a wicked world. It is He who will bring to pass the threatenings of His word against all manner of unrighteousness, and ungodliness, and sin.—A. W. Hare, A.M.
2Pe_2:15. Perversion as Shown in the Character of Balaam.—Repulsive as Balaam’s character is, seen at a distance, when it is seen near it has much in it that is human, like ourselves, inviting compassion, even admiration; there are traits of firmness, conscientiousness, nobleness. And yet the inspired judgment of his character as a whole is one of unmeasured severity. Our main lesson in Balaam’s history must ever be to trace how it is that men, who to the world appear respectable, conscientious, honourable, gifted, religious, may be in the sight of God accursed, and heirs of perdition. Balaam illustrates perversion.
I. Perversion of great gifts.—The inspiration of Balaam was from God. In him Divine powers were perverted—
1. By turning them to purposes of self-aggrandisement. God’s true prophets make no effort to show themselves different from others. Balaam does everything to fix attention on himself. His enchantments were a priest’s man-œuvres, not a prophet’s. He was a self-seeker. Balak struck the key-note of his character when he said, “Am I not able to promote thee unto honour?”
2. By making those gifts subservient to his own greed. His very vaunts show that Balaam half suspected his failing. Brave men do not vaunt their courage, nor honourable men their honesty. By Balaam spiritual powers were degraded in order to make himself a vulgar man of wealth. (Compare the case of Simon Magus.)
II. Perversion of conscience.—Shown in his second appeal to God. He ought to have been satisfied with his first answer. In duty “first thoughts” are best; they are more fresh, more pure, have more of God in them. Balaam’s problem was how to go to Balak, and yet not offend God. He went to God to get his duty altered, not in simplicity to know what it was. All this rests on the idea that the will of God makes right, instead of being right. The second stage is full of hideous contradictions. God permits him to go, and then is angry with him for going. We notice in him the evidences of a disordered mind and heart. In Balaam we see an attempt to change the will of God. His feeling was, God is mutable. What was wanting for Balaam to feel was, God cannot change; what he did feel was only this: God will not change. See also his attempt to blind himself. We see perfect veracity with utter want of truth. He does not deceive Balak with a spell. He would not utter a falsehood, but tries to get away from seeing the truth. Balaam tried a last expedient, and recommended Balak to use the fascination of the daughters of Moab to entice Israel into idolatry; and a more diabolical wickedness could hardly be conceived. The root of Balaam’s sin was selfishness. Balaam’s self—the honour of Balaam as a true prophet; therefore he will not lie. The wealth of Balak for himself; therefore the Israelites must be sacrificed. Even in his sublimest aspirations he never forgets himself.
1. Learn the danger of great powers. It is an awful thing, this conscious power to see more, to feel more, to know more, than our fellows.
2. Mark well the difference between feeling and doing. A man may be going on finely, uttering orthodox words, and yet be rotten at heart.—F. W. Robertson.
2Pe_2:16. Balaam and the Ass.—An excellent old writer, speaking of Balaam, to whom St. Peter refers in the text, compares him to Redwald, the first Saxon king who professed Christianity, and who set up, in the same church, one altar for the Christian religion, and another for sacrificing to devils. Balaam, beyond, perhaps, any Scriptural personage, was the “double-minded man,” signalised by the apostle James. Balaam was neither an impostor nor a hypocrite. He rather seems to have been a man heartily and honestly bent on the doing of what our Lord declares can never be done: the “serving of two masters.” We must admit that God communicated directly with Balaam, not only giving him orders and prohibitions, but actually furnishing him with the words he was to utter over the Israelites. Perhaps full justice has not been done to Balaam. He had good impulses, which were only unserviceable and abortive because outweighed and counter-matched by covetousness and the love of money. He had a conscience vigorously at work, under whose chastisement his sufferings must have been terrible. Balaam is the nominal Christian of these times, sincerely anxious to stand fair, and to keep terms with disciples of Christ and with men of Belial. When we see men devout in church, and something very different on week-days, we must not set them down as necessarily hypocrites. There is a bona fide struggle to compound with conscience, and run together in the life, man of God and man of the world, as warp and woof—very foolish, no doubt, and impracticable, but not base, not dishonest.
I. Recall to memory the few facts of this miracle.—Whether what happened to Balaam happened to him in vision, or in literal historical fact, the moral and spiritual lessons are exactly the same. There is something to be learned from that strange group on the highway, considered merely as a fact: a wicked man being obstructed in the pursuit of his wickedness by a prodigy. We learn how gracious God is in making the way of transgressors a hard one; just as when Pilate was warned by the dream of his wife, and Saul was warned on the road to Damascus. Regarding the narrative as an allegory, we may see that this is not the only place in the Bible where proud man is humbled and brought to confusion by being outdone and excelled by one of the beasts of the field. How came it that the eyes of the mere brute on which the prophet rode saw the vision of the angel before the prophet himself? There is here a portrait of what takes place in the world, day after day, in all generations. There is hardly a wider gulf between the animal and the man than there is between some unlettered believer in sacred truth and the philosophic doubter or denier of that truth. The difficulty of difficulties in the present state of things is not to exert but to control the faculties of our reason, to persuade ourselves where reason cannot follow, that there reason ought not to try to follow. Faith is the problem of the militant Church. The province of the human mind is to humble itself, to keep the ear wide open, and to be contented that the eye shall remain closed through excess of light. Only when, by nature or through a struggle, the mind prefers listening to understanding, can the glory of Christ crucified be spiritually discerned.
II. This miracle of the text is virtually repeated whenever pride or prescription takes to lording it over some lower rank, guilty of no sins but natural disadvantages.—Illustrated in the history of British colonisation. For many years we considered black and brown and red men to be brutes, and treated them accordingly. Illustrated in our resistance of Providence. We make a miserable blunder whenever we try to force Divine providence, or to urge the events of our lives dead against the angel. If we want to go one way, and our destiny, controlled by guardian angels, is forcing us into another way, our wisdom will lie in succumbing at once. We shall take nothing by contesting it. Things like that living thing under Balaam will crush our foot against the wall, so that we cannot even dismount and walk. Providence will maim us for every pathway but its own.—Henry Christopherson.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
2Pe_2:19. Slavery of Sin.—Men would rather be sin’s drudges than God’s freemen, and neglect that service wherein is perfect freedom for that wherein there is intolerable slavery. They will disturb their consciences, violate their reason, impair their health, in contradicting the laws of God, and prefer a sensual satisfaction, with toil here and eternal ruin hereafter, before the honour of God, the dignity of their nature, or happiness, or peace and health, which might be preserved with a cheaper expense than they are at to destroy them.—Charnock.
2Pe_2:22. The Habits of the Sow.—There is no regeneration for the sow in any amount of washing by water; the ablution over, away she wends again to her wallowing in the mire. Like the canine race (dishonouredly characterised in the same proverb) the porcine is of ill account in Holy Writ. As the flesh of the swine is formally prohibited as “unclean” in Leviticus, so in Isaiah the offering of swine’s blood is, by implication, denounced as almost inconceivably abominable, and the “eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination and the mouse,” are with execration connected together (Isa_66:3; Isa_66:17). Of the Mohammedans we are assured that nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does so much to envenom the hatred of Mohammedans against them as the fact of their eating pork. Besides its being an offence to their religion, their aversion to the flesh of the “unclean beast” resembles an instinctive antipathy, such as the “idea of uncleanness,” when once it sinks into the feelings, seems always to excite in those whose personal habits are scrupulously cleanly.
The Backslider’s Fate.—The Greek poet tells us of Hecuba not daring for shame so much as to lift up her eyes, or look Polymnestor in the face, because she had been a queen, but was then a poor captive. Common captives can easily lift up their eyes and cry to those who are in prosperity for relief and help, whereas others who have lived at ease can with more ease starve than beg. As a downfall from a seeming height in spirituals into the mire of sin hath more wickedness in it than a bare continuance in sin, so a downfall from a real height in temporals into the mire of misery hath more trouble in it than a bare continuance in misery. They who have made a fair show, or an outward flourish, in the faith, and afterwards fall back, are worse than those who never made any show at all. It is sad for any one to live openly in sin; but for such as have made an open profession of godliness to apostatise, and fall back to sin—this is matter of saddest lamentation.—Caryl.
CHAPTER 3
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v5 kosmos = mankind. (See Scofield "Mat 4:8").
world
kosmos = mankind. (See Scofield "Mat 4:8").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v4 Examples from History:
Examples from History:
v. 4. For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto Judgment;
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v. 5. and spared not the old world, but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the Flood upon the world of the ungodly;
v. 6. and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;
v. 7. and delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked;
v. 8. (far that righteous man, dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)
v. 9. the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the Day of Judgment to be punished;
v. 10. but chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government.
St. Peter here substantiates his statement concerning the punishment which is sure to strike the false teachers by a reference to history, which shows that God’s avenging hand always finds those that are guilty of wickedness. The apostle’s first example is that of the evil angels: For if God did not spare the angels that had sinned, but, committing them to pits of darkness, bound them over, reserved for judgment. God had created all angels good and holy in the beginning. But a great number of them, filled with pride, rebelled against His government, became guilty of wickedness. Their punishment was swift and terrible: He committed them to the chains and pits of the darkness of hell. This is, of course, not to be taken literally, since the angels, as spirits, cannot be held with physical chains. But the evil angels have been deprived of the blessed fellowship with God, they have been shut out forever from the hope of eternal bliss in the presence of the Lord; and though they have some liberty of movement under God’s permission, they stand convicted, they are being reserved for the time when God will pronounce the final judgment upon them.
A second example is that of the Flood at the time of Noah: And if God did not spare the ancient world, but kept Noah, the herald of righteousness, as the eighth one, when He brought on the Deluge on the world of godless men. The Lord had shown a great deal of patience in the case of the men of the ancient world. Even after repeated warnings He had granted them a further respite of one hundred and twenty years, during which time Noah made every effort, by the preaching of righteousness, to bring men to repentance, Heb 11:7. But finally the patience of the Lord was exhausted. He spared only Noah, as one of eight, Noah and his family. All other men were swallowed up in the terrible cataclysm which came upon the world in the Deluge. The picture is that of an unloosing of forces which had been held back only with difficulty, and which now, being released, swept everything before them.
A third example is that of the cities Sodom and Gomorrah: And reducing the cities Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, He carried out His sentence by a devastation, thus setting an example for those that are determined to lead a godless life, and delivered the righteous Lot, who was severely afflicted by the lawless people, by the lasciviousness of their conduct; for day after day, by seeing and hearing, the righteous man living among them vexed and distressed his righteous soul at their lawless deeds, Gen 19:1-38. The judgment of God upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, rightly considered, is one of the most awful examples of His avenging justice. So great was the cry of these two cities in the ears of Jehovah, and so very grievous was their sin, that He visited them with a devastating earthquake, at the same time sending down fire from heaven. Thus the cities were completely overthrown and reduced to ashes in a most terrible catastrophe, the effect of which is plainly noticeable to this day. The Dead Sea with the country surrounding it is a warning example to all men that are determined, in spite of all warnings of the Lord, to continue in their godless life. Only one man was found in the cities who was righteous in the sight of God, Lot, the nephew of Abraham. And Lot was able to testify to the insolent lasciviousness of the conduct of Sodom’s citizens. Day after day he had been obliged to see the most revolting sins, to hear the most horrible and filthy talk. The vexation and distress which he thus incurred was magnified, at least in a measure, by the fact that Lot himself had chosen this city for his abode and continued to live there on account of the temporal gain which the rich country brought him. It was a misery and affliction for him to be in the very midst of so much lawlessness and immorality. But God again made a distinction between the just and the unjust by delivering the righteous Lot, thus affording a great measure of comfort to the believers, of all times, Mal 3:13-18.
The apostle now draws his conclusion from the examples offered: The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations, but to keep the unjust for the Day of Judgment under punishment, but especially those walking according to the flesh in the lust of pollution and despising authority. From the discussion presented in the chapter up to this point this double conclusion stands out very plainly. In either case the Lord knows how to deal with the situation. He has ways and means to deliver the godly, those that fear Him and walk righteously before Him, out of the temptations which are due to their surroundings, to the unbelievers in whose midst they are living. But, on the other hand, the fact that He will not be mocked, but that He knows how to avenge any offense to His honor is seen in His keeping the unjust, the unrighteous, in punishment and pain until the great Day of Judgment, Psa 16:4; Heb 2:15. Just as the evil angels are even now condemned to the darkness of hell, so the unrighteous will enter the same damnation, according to their souls, just as soon as they die. And they will be kept in this suffering until the Day of Judgment, when the sentence upon them will be confirmed and their sufferings will continue according to both soul and body throughout eternity. This punishment will be especially severe in the case of such unbelievers as live in open sins of the flesh, in the various forms of immorality, in unnatural lusts as practiced in Sodom, whereby both soul and body are polluted, Rom 1:26-32 and at the same time openly despise all authority, divine as well as human, particularly the Lordship of Christ.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv4, 7 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Peter gives examples of people who acted against God and whom God punished because of what they did.
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did not spare
"did not refrain from punishing" or "punished"
he handed them down to Tartarus
The word "Tartarus" is a term from Greek religion that refers to the place where evil spirits and wicked men who have died are punished. AT: "he cast them into hell" (See: How to Translate Names)
to be kept in chains of lower darkness
This can be stated in active form. AT: "where he will keep them in chains of lower darkness" (See: Active or Passive)
in chains of lower darkness
Possible meanings are 1) "in chains in a very dark place" or 2) "in very deep darkness that imprisons them like chains." (See: Metaphor)
until the judgment
This refers to the day of judgment when God will judge every person.
he did not spare the ancient world
Here the word "world" refers to the people who lived in it. AT: "he did not spare the people who lived in the ancient world" (See: Metonymy)
he preserved Noah ... along with seven others
God did not destroy Noah and seven other people when he destroyed the rest of the people who lived in the ancient world.
reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes
"burned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire until only ashes remained"
condemned them to destruction
Here the word "them" refers to Sodom and Gomorrah and the people who lived in them.
as an example of what is to happen to the ungodly
Sodom and Gomorrah serve as an example and a warning of what will happen to others who disobey God.
translationWords
God
angel
sin
judge
world
Noah
righteous
flood
godly
Sodom
Gomorrah
ash
condemn
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv4, 5, 6, 7, 9 2:4-10 Three Old Testament examples of judgment show that…
2:4-10 Three Old Testament examples of judgment show that God will vindicate those who remain faithful to him and will condemn those who deny him, including the false teachers (see 2:3).
2:4 The first example of judgment is the angels who sinned: The widespread Jewish tradition was that “the sons of God” in Gen 6:1-5 (understood as angels) had intercourse with women and were therefore judged by God at that time (see 1 Enoch 6–10; cp. 1 Pet 3:19-20; Jude 1:6). • in gloomy pits of darkness: This description of the underworld was popular in the ancient world and is probably metaphorical.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.