2 Peter Chapter 2

Watch Out for False Teachers

¹ As false prophets arose among the people before, false teachers will arise among you. Under false pretenses they’ll bring in destructive heresies. They’ll even deny the Master who bought them and bring swift destruction on themselves. ² Many will follow their sensual practices, and people will slander the true Way because of them. ³ In their greed they’ll exploit you with their made-up ideas. Their sentence from of old won’t delay; their destruction won’t sleep.                                                                                  

2 Pet 2:1-3

God’s Judgment on Evil

⁴ God didn’t spare angels that sinned; he imprisoned them with chains in the dark underworld [Tartarus] to hold them for judgment. ⁵ God didn’t spare the ancient world; he preserved Noah, one of eight, a man who preached righteousness when God brought a flood on the ungodly world. ⁶ God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and reduced them to ashes. He made an example out of them for ungodly people later on. ⁷ But he rescued righteous Lot; their corrupt conduct weighed on that good man. ⁸ While he lived among them, the immoral deeds he saw and heard about day after day tormented him. ⁹ So, the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from temptation and keep ungodly ones under punishment till judgment day— ¹⁰ especially those who chase after physical lusts and despise authority.                        

2 Pet 2:4-10a

Evil People Described

Daring and arrogant, they rail at angels without qualms. ¹¹ But angels, though more powerful, don’t rail out condemnations at them in front of the Lord. ¹² People like that are like wild animals that can’t reason, creatures that live by instinct from birth who need to be trapped and exterminated. They rail out about things they don’t know. In their destroying, they’ll get destroyed. ¹³ They’ll suffer wrong as payback for doing wrong. They think it’s fun to carouse in broad daylight. They are stains and blemishes who enjoy deceiving you while they eat with you. ¹⁴ They’re always looking around for someone to commit adultery with. They sin without ceasing, they lure unsteady souls, they have hearts well-practiced in greed. They’re accursed offspring ¹⁵ that forsake the right way to follow Balaam son of Beor that loved to make money from his sin. ¹⁶ But a donkey, talking like a person, reprimanded him for it and stopped him from carrying out his madness.   

2 Pet 2:10b-16

            ¹⁷ They’re springs without water, fog swirled by the wind. It’s pitch dark where they’re going. ¹⁸ They say arrogant, meaningless things, and lure with lust the ones just escaping from error. ¹⁹ They promise freedom while themselves being slaves to corruption. What overcomes people puts them in servitude. ²⁰ If they’ve escaped the defilements of worldly living by knowing the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up in them again, they’re worse off than before. ²¹ They’d been better off not to know how to live God’s way, than to know it and turn away from the holy commandment they’d received. ²² They illustrate the proverb,

                        “The dog returned to its vomit” [Pro 26:11],

and,

                        “the washed sow went back to wallowing in the mud.”                         

2 Pet 2:17-22