2 PETER 2: 17-22 [Our Precious Faith Series]
EMPTY FREEDOM
[John 7:37-38 / Revelation 21:1-8]
Though the ultimate judgment of heretics is assured, Peter wrote as he did because of the damage they wreak in the church. It is a frightening fact that many people who are now zealous members of cults were at one time attending churches that at least professed to believe the Christian Gospel. They participated in the Communion service and saw the death of the Lord Jesus portrayed in the bread and the cup, many even recited the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's' Prayer. Yet today, these people will tell you that they "feel free" now that they have been "liberated" from the Christian faith.
You will also meet people who have rejected all religious faith and now profess to enjoy a new freedom. They boldly confess, “I used to believe that stuff, but I don't believe it anymore. I've got something better and I feel free for the first time in my life.”
Freedom is a concept that is very important in today's world, yet not everybody really understands what the word means. In fact, everyone from the Communist to the "playboy" seems to have his own definition. Nobody is completely free in the sense of having the ability and the opportunity to do whatever he wants to do. Yet even if you could do whatever you wanted, that would not lead to freedom, but to the worst kind of bondage. [Wiersbe, Warren. The Bible Exposition Commentary. Vol 2. 1989. Victor Books. Wheaton IL. P. 457.]
Apostates offer freedom to their converts, and this "bait" entices them to abandon the true faith and follow false teachers. The teachers promise them liberty, but this not a promise they can fulfill (CIM). These misguided converts eventually find their freedom causes terrible bondage. The freedom they offer is an empty freedom, and Peter gave three reasons that explain why it is an “Empty Freedom.”
I. THE FREEDOM OF EMPTY SUBSTANCE, 2:17-18.
II. THE FREEDOM OF EMPTY PROMISES, 2:19-20.
III. THE FREEDOM OF AN EMPTY LIFE, 2:21-22.
Verse 17 pictures the cruelty of empty substance. “These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved.
Faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed. A pagan may have great faith in his idol, but the idol can do nothing for him. I have a friend who put his faith in a certain investment scheme and lost almost everything. His faith was strong but the company was weak. When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, that faith will accomplish something, because God always keeps His promises. "There hath not failed one word of all His good promise" (1 Kings 8:56). [Ibid, p. 457.]
Peter uses two vivid illustrations to em¬phasize the apostates’ empty offerings. Despite the great claims of their teachings they bring only emptiness. A thirsty traveler is filled with gladness coming upon a spring expecting cool refreshing water, but finds it dry, empty, with nothing to sustain him. The dry land awaits in anticipates as mists are driven by a storm, yet the clouds drop no nourishing rain. So it is with the claims of false teachings. They picture satisfaction from their “truths” but the reality is they have only empty allusion to offer. They offer a great deal, but produce emptiness.
In both cases one would look for some benefit or blessing (a cool drink from an overflowing spring; a refreshing shower from the clouds) but in each case he is disappointed.
False teachers are like clouds which you see coming your way, but they have no life-giving substance. These teachers may seem to offer spiritual refreshment, but their words are full of vain, empty claims which extract hope for sustaining spiritual life. [The very nature of hypocrisy is that one does not have what he pretends to have.]
Unlike these false teachers, it is only the one who is drawing water from the ever living spring of Christ who can truly supply living water. Those who have come to Christ can not only drawn from the wells of salvation, but they have the source of life give life sustain refreshing living in them (John 4:13-14, 7:37-38). [A drink from a spring is used to describe the satisfaction the saints will expe¬rience for all eternity (Rev. 7: 17; 21:6).]
But those who would mislead people concerning such a life and death issue have perpetrated great evil upon them and the society in which they live. So once again (2 Peter 2:1, 3, 9, 12–13) we are warned of their coming judgment. “Black darkness” denotes the darkness regions of hell. The description suggests a darkness that is so black that there is no hint of light. Since they have rejected the light of God’s revelation and have chosen to live in darkness, God will give them the desires of their fruitless lives and let them live in the blackness of hell forever.
In His parable on the talents, Jesus concluded by stating that the master “cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt. 25:30). The implication is clear. A second death filled with Destruction, doom, judgment, and a gloomy darkness await those who would lead others astray from the truth.
We find in verse 18 that these teachers of arrogance compounded their guilt by leading others astray. “For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error,
Their speaking out is arrogant [boastful] or “swollen” [hupérogka, great swelling, only here and Jude 16]. The word indicates excessive bulk. It fits well with the type speaking that denotes a high-sounding verbiage without substance. These are “words of vanity.” Vanity (mataiotçtos) could be translated “empty, futile, worthless, without results” (Eph. 4:17).
These false teachers seek to entice or lure [Gk. deleazousin from deleazô, a fishing term “baiting, enticing,” 2 Peter 2:14] the ungrounded by appealing to the lustful (aselgeiais; v. 7) desires of sinful human nature. The teachers themselves threw off self-control and they encourage others to do the same. In the contemporary world this kind of teaching is becoming familiar today under the umbrella title ‘New Age’.
False teachers may develop a great presentation by which they draw people after them, but despite the influential words, their message is devoid of any eternal help. They may appear as insightful scholars, spiritual leaders, or even claim direct revelations from God, but in all cases, they avoid the historic understanding and interpretation of God’s Word, as the sole source of God’s message to a fallen world. The end result is a deception so great, so profoundly disguised, that many are led astray, seduced by language that diminishes the impact of sin, and promise power, prosperity, health and, in many cases, condoning sexual perversions that are contrary to God’s laws. In this way, they acquire a great throng of followers who, like their leader, are headed for eternal destruction in “the gloomy darkness.” [Easy-To-Read Commentary Series. The General Epistles: A Practical Faith.]
A New York City couple received through the mail TWO TICKETS to a Broadway musical. Oddly, the gift arrived without a note, and they won¬dered who had sent it. But they attended the show and enjoyed it immensely.
Returning to their apartment, they discovered that their apartment had been ransacked, Valuables, furs and jewels were missing, On the pillow in the bedroom was this simple note: "Now you know."
Like that nameless thief, a false teacher knows what people want and appeals to their desires. He doesn't wear a lapel pin to warn of his lies, but he comes disguised as a rep¬resentative of the truth. He claims he will enrich lives, but those who follow him often learn at a high cost that they have been deceived.
Jesus, however, is a teacher we can trust completely. He offers us the gift of eternal life because He truly loves us. Accepting His gift of salvation is the first step in protecting ourselves from the deceptive gifts that false teachers offer.
But even believers can be deceived by false teaching. That's why God's Word exhorts us to study the Scriptures (1 Peter 2:2), to test what we hear (1 John 4:1), and to grow in the faith (2 Peter 1 :5-9). [HWR. Our Daily Bread.] That way, our spiritual life won’t be ransacked.
II. THE FREEDOM OF EMPTY PROMISES, 2:19-20.
Verse 19 says they attract folk by the potent promise of “freedom” but they can’t deliverer what they do not have. “promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.”
God’s freedom means a release from the bondage of one’s earthly lusts, not the freedom to engage in them. This deliverance is the thrust of the Christian gospel. Jesus came to save the world from its bondage to sin by His sacrifice on the cross, where He paid the penalty for man’s sins before a righteous and holy God. However, these unholy teachers preached the exact opposite. They urged people to a freedom from the constraints of God’s Word, to a freedom of indulging their sensual fantasies [1 Cor. 6:12-13; Gal. 5:13]. Liberty was turned into license.
The cry for academic freedom and liberty is not unusual for false teachers. Their empty and boastful promises of liberty are reminiscent of Satan’s words to Eve (Gen. 3:5). Heretical and progressive teachers still promise liberty, oblivious to their own slavery to corrupt, nonredemptive systems.
Many people go through life believing that they have the answers to its mysteries. They simply cannot exist without trying to make some sense of it. Even those who deny God believe that they understand the “truth” about our human existence, and they want to free those that are religious from the bondage of their false belief system. In many minds, only science has the answers that man needs. In their attempt to undermine religion, they have also abolished the moral codes that have generally been accepted throughout human history.
So Peter reminds Christians that they are slaves to whatever they give in to. Though freedom is promise, they themselves are slaves of corruption and sin. The principle [of Romans 6:16] is: if anyone is conquered by something, he is actually a slave to it. True liberty from the death grip of depravity [phthora] comes through divine power, the result of personally knowing God in Jesus Christ. This relationship alone provides the way to escape corruption [phthora] in the world caused by our fallen desires (1:3-4). [Hillyer, Norman. 1 & 2 Peter, Jude. 1992. Henrickson Publ. Peabody, Mass, p.205.]
Verse 20 indicates in that day most false teachers had a head-knowledge of God’s power which could free from the defiling sin of the world. “For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.”
Don’t overlook the if which begins verse 20. Peter not saying it is true, but if it were true. He is not saying that these false teachers have escaped from the pollutions of the world. These false teachers had never really escaped the pollutions of the world like true believers have. [The main verb is overcome (Gk. hçtaomai) ]
We assume that these people had learned about the message of salvation through Jesus Christ and may have even intellectually acknowledged its claims on their lives. On the basis of this knowledge, they began to turn away from their pagan or worldly ways. There is a sense in which these people acknowledged the error of their ways and saw the genuineness of the Christian faith. But these people were never truly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. If they had been born again they would have persevered in their faith. John 10:27-30 and Romans 8:28-30 makes it clear that no genuinely saved person can be lost. Thus according to my understanding the persons described here could not have been genuinely saved.
These church goers or members made a complete return to the world’s way of living. They were able to rationalize their behavior and returned to living the way they wanted to live.
Peter warns not only against the false teachers but also reminds us of the fact that we bear responsibility for ourselves. We are responsible and accountable for our own spiritual welfare, and if we allow ourselves to be led astray, we will pay a high price for our sin.
III. THE FREEDOM OF AN EMPTY LIFE, 2:21-22.
Peter’s comment in verse 21 reflects the severity of the situation. “For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.
Remember, those referred to in verses 20-21 are only “professing” Christians whose false teachings provide evidence that they never truly belonged to Christ. Therefore, they cannot lose what they never had.
Someone who has never been taught the right way to live has less responsibility to walk in it that someone who has been taught. Knowledge of the truth calls one to walk in the truth. It increases one’s ability and responsibility to respond. After receiving the power of the call of God it takes greater resistance to pull away from God’s truth so it also increase the hardness of those who turn away from it. Once they had heard the gospel and repeatedly deafened or hardened their heart by turning away into the enslavement of their passions again, it seems that there is diminished hope for true salvation.
Whenever a person rejects the truth and returns to his or her way of life. This person is worse off than before, because he or she has rejected the only way out of sin, the only way of salvation. Like a person sinking in quicksand who refuses to grab the rope thrown to him or her, the one who turns away from Christ casts aside his or her only means of escape (Luke 11:24).
Peter gives two graphic examples in verse 22 that unmistakably illustrate the terrible reality of these people’s misdirected lives. “It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”
Peter employs two proverbs regarding animals that were generally despised by the Jewish culture—dogs and pigs. The dog does what comes naturally to a dog. When it regurgitates, it will lick up and consume its own vomit. Certainly the dog felt better once it emptied its stomach of what was bothering it, but that didn’t keep it from returning and lapping up it’s own vomit. That’s because it is in his nature to do so. Proverbs 26:11 says, “As a dog goes back to its vomit, so a fool repeats his stupidity.”
Similarly, pigs wallow in the mud. You can wash a pig clean, but it will immediately return to the mud. It is in the very nature of dogs and pigs to return to unclean living. Likewise, people who hear the truth but will still not allow Christ into their lives will return to their sinful ways.
IN CLOSING,
The whole chapter warns believers to secure the faith which had been preached to them by the apostles against the savage attack by obvious frauds who have shown themselves to be worthy of the certain judgment of God which will come upon them.
There is only one way to enter into Christ’s kingdom. A person must enter through the narrow way, the more difficult way (Matthew 7:13-14). The pathway to Christ’s kingdom is found only through the person of Christ (John 14:6). All other pathways lead to destruction, death, and eternal punishment. It is utterly impossible to reject a genuine commitment to Christ and still achieve salvation.
There is in mankind an inborn thirst for re¬ality, for God. "Thou hast made us for Thy¬self, " said Augustine, "and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." People at¬tempt to satisfy this thirst in many ways, and they end up living on empty substitutes. Only Jesus Christ can give inner peace and satisfaction.
Jesus extended an invitation to come to Him instead of trying to find satisfaction in the way of the world. He said in John 4:13-14, “Whosoever drinketh [present tense, "keeps on drinking"] of this water [meaning the well of the world] will thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.” What a contrast! You may drink repeatedly at the broken cisterns of the world and never find true satisfaction, but you come to Christ Jesus and take one drink of the Living Water through faith in Jesus Christ, and you will be satisfied forever.
Come, and drink of this Living water from the eternal Spring of Christ’s salvation that comes from the Eternal Spirit of Christ. As the Spirit leads, you come... and drink from the well of salvation, & satisfy your thirst.
