2 Peter 2

Divine truth has been revealed to us, not in a law of the letter, not in a digested summary of specific articles of faith, but in this historical embodiment, this application to individual cases, to specific historical circumstances and social relations, imparted through the instrumentality of individual men, who lived as depositaries of divine truth among their fellow-men; who, in the common intercourse of human life, testified of and revealed the divine, speaking and acting as men, each in his own peculiar human manner, though hallowed indeed by the Spirit of God. Thus was divine truth to be brought humanly near to us. N.—It is a great evidence of the inspiration which held the minds of the apostles in check, while they wrote, that the mere love of sentiment toward Christ is never heard in their writings; Peter and John may be mentioned historically in the gospels as manifesting feeling of this kind on one or two occasions; but in their Epistles you find no trace of love to the human friend. Jesus, viewed under the light of Pentecost, is simply the redeeming God, the one Mediator, the only name given among men whereby we must be saved. E. M. G.

21. Our Bible is both divine and human. It comes to us from God’s Spirit; it comes also from man’s spirit. It is written in the language of earth, yet its words are the words of him “who speaketh from heaven.” Natural, yet supernatural; simple, yet profound; undogmatical, yet authoritative; very like a common book, yet very unlike also; dealing often with seeming incredibilities and contradictions, yet never assuming any need for apology, or explanation, or retraction; a book for humanity at large, yet minutely special in its fitnesses for every case of every soul; carrying throughout its pages, from first to last, one unchanging estimate of sin as an infinite evil, yet always bringing out God’s gracious mind toward the sinner, even in his condemnation of the guilt: such is the great book with which man has to do, which man has to study, out of which man has to gather wisdom for eternity, one of the many volumes of that divine library which is one day to be thrown open to us, when that which is perfect is come, and that which is in part shall be done away. Bonar.

1. But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. 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. 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; 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; 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; and delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: (for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;) the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: but chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities. Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord. But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption; and shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the daytime. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you; having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children: which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; but was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbade the madness of the prophet. These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of

20 whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them 21 than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered 22 unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

WHILE the first letter of Peter arms the Christians chiefly against outward danger from the heathen persecution, which was to proceed from Rome, the seat of the centralized despotism of the world, the second letter has mainly in view the dangers from within, from pseudo-christian and antichristian errorists. It is an earnest prophecy of future conflicts, the germs of which were already beginning to unfold themselves. P. S.

As we pass into the second chapter, we find the tone of this book changed from grave exhortation to stern warning and even severe denunciation. Having set before the brethren the light to which they should take heed, the apostle puts them on their guard against false lights that would lure them to destruction. There had been pseudo-prophets among the people of Israel, and in like manner there would be pseudo-teachers in the Church. The Lord himself had said, “Beware of false prophets.” Paul gave warning that such should arise. John and Jude describe them as already producing a baneful effect on Christian faith and life. Peter here points out their pernicious ways, and affirms their doom. Those who should “bring in heresies” (i. e., divisions) “tending to destruction” he stigmatizes as denying “the Lord,” for by their willfulness and disobedience they would set aside all his authority. Their chief lure would be licentious living, and their chief motive would be avarice. History soon showed that such warnings were required; for in the end of the first century, and in the second, teachers appeared and sects were formed, that brought infamy on the Christian name by their unruly principles and shameless lives. Woe, woe to all who demoralize Christian society! This is the tenor of this chapter, and of the Epistle of Jude. Woe to those who obliterate the distinction between Christian and heathen life, encouraging licentiousness, despising authority, indulging a railing, contemptuous spirit, and attending the love feasts of the Church with impure eyes and hearts. Their course is in harmony with the vile counsel of the prophet Balaam, who was the anti-Moses of his time, and prevailed against Israel not by direct attack, but by a crafty and licentious device. In his steps walked those antichristian men who beguiled and corrupted unstable souls. That they had known Christ made their wickedness all the worse. D. F.

4. This passage and the parallel in Jude 6 are two important texts on the present condition and future destiny of evil angels, and, consequently, of those persons who yield to their solicitations. These two texts declared: 1. That some angels sinned, and, as a penalty for their sin, were cast out of their original habitation. 2. That they have been committed in custody to chains of darkness, and that they are now being kept in them, and they there endure some punishment. 3. That they there remain even to the end of the world, and are reserved there for the judgment of the great day. This appears also from the language of the devils themselves to Christ: “Art thou come to torment us before the season of judgment?” It is also evident from our Lord’s words describing the transactions of the great day. He there preannounces that he will then say to them on the left hand, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, that hath been prepared for the devil and his angels.” They are, therefore, not yet cast into it. It is also further apparent from the Apocalypse, revealing the casting of the devil into the lake of fire, as an event which has not taken place, but is yet future (Rev. 20: 10). 4. Comparing also these texts with other portions of Holy Scripture, where the devil is compared to a roaring lion walking about, seeking whom he may devour, and (Rev. 20: 7) where Satan is described as loosed, and with the clear assertions of the apostolic writings, describing his present liberty, energy, and influence, and designating him as “the prince of the power of the air,” and as “the god of this world,” we must conclude that the chains of darkness, of which Peter and Jude speak, and to which Satan and his associates are now confined, and in which they will be kept even till the day of judgment, are of such power as to restrain them from ever recovering their place in the regions of light, but not such as to prevent them from exercising great power over those persons in the lower world who allow themselves “to be taken captive by them at their will.” W.

7. When Lot was compelled to quit Sodom, he could not count a single convert, nor carry with him one religious friend. The best thing we know of him is what is here said by the apostle Peter, “that his soul was grieved by their conversation”; but if it was so, and if from fear of the consequences, or despair of doing any good, he had left off all efforts to reform them, the sooner he quitted Sodom the better. When a man ceases to strive against evil, he yields to it; and it can be no one’s duty, in such a case, to remain where his holiest feelings are lacerated, his conscience deadened, and his family exposed to the corruption of a debasing atmosphere. Unhappily, the longer he continues, the less able he becomes to move, for conscience offers less remonstrance, associations strengthen their hold, and the only thing that saves him is the shock of some sore judgment. The more carefully therefore should every Christian weigh the first choice. Ker.

14-19. The apostle Peter, speaking of the influence of corrupting and licentious men, who have “eyes full of adultery, and that can not cease from sin,” remarks that, while they promise their dupes “liberty, they themselves are the servants (slaves) of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.” This latter clause explains how it is that an unrenewed man is unable perfectly to keep the law of God, and unable to change his own heart. Sin contains in itself the elements of servitude. In the very act of transgressing the law of God there is a reflex action of the human will upon itself, whereby it becomes less

able than before to keep that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. To do wrong destroys the power to do right. We see this in everyday life, and in hundreds of examples before our very eyes. Hear the following wail and lament from the lips of one of the most genial of English writers, in which he confesses, in a way not to be mistaken, that “whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin”: “The waters have gone over me. But out of the black depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those who have set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth, to whom the flavor of the first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life, or the entering upon some newly discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when he shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will; to see his destruction, and have no power to stop it, and yet feel it all the way emanating from himself; could he see my fevered eye, feverish with the last night’s drinking, and feverishly looking for to-night’s repetition of the folly; could he but feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly with feebler outcry to be delivered, it were enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth, in all the pride of its mantling temptation.” Shedd.