11 Freedom or Slavery: How Peter Exposes False Promises (2 Peter 2:17–22)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is the podcast where we explain not only what scripture means, but show you how we figure that out. This is the 11th talk in our series on the book of 2 Peter. Today we're gonna cover chapter 2, verses 17 to 22. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, or just go to wednesdayintheword.com slash 2 Peter 11. Glad to have you along. As always, we'll start with a little review. Peter is writing to churches who are troubled by false teachers, and these false teachers are distorting the apostolic gospel and teaching believers that they can lead immoral lives. And we are finishing chapter two. In chapter two, Peter has been discussing the certainty of judgment that is coming on the false teachers, and he has denounced them using very strong language. In the last podcast, we looked at how Peter compared the false teachers to the Old Testament story of Balaam. Balaam wanted to personally profit by leading the people of God to their destruction, and that is exactly what the false teachers are doing. They are profiting by leading others astray. Like Balaam, they are covetous and greedy, they are seeking their own personal profit and gratification, and like Balaam, they don't care if they lure the people of God to their destruction as long as they get what they want. Peter is still on that thought, he's going to finish that thought in the section we're looking at today. So we're going to pick up in chapter two verse seventeen he is still talking about the false teachers, and let me read that section for you. These are waterless springs and mist driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For speaking loud boasts of folly they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, for whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them, the dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. Remember, Peter is concerned about the impact the false teachers are having, and he is very concerned that his readers not be deceived by them or taken in by them, and I think that's what's behind the imagery he uses here. Go back to two seventeen. These are waterless springs and mist driven by a storm, for them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. Now he's still talking about the false teachers. That's who the these is referring to. And people need water to live. You have to live by a well or you have to live by a source of water. And when you're traveling you have to carry water with you or you have to find a source to replenish your stock on the way. So travelers, especially in Peter's Day, would seek out streams and springs in order to survive. A spring without water is a terrible thing. It invites you in with this promise of containing the source of life and then it proves to be empty. It promises you the water you need to survive, and then in reality it offers nothing. The same ideas behind mist driven by the storm. In the parallel passage in Jude, Jude writes clouds without water swept along by the wind, and I think that's what Peter means by the mists. We look to the clouds to bring much needed rain. When we see clouds coming we think we'll be blessed by rain, but these clouds just pass on by on the wind without dropping any water. When the wind drives in an insubstantial mist, it promises the rain we need, but then it delivers nothing in reality. And you can see why this is an apt metaphor for the false teachers. Like springs which promise water and clouds which promise rain, but then in reality deliver nothing, so the false teachers are promising to show you how to find life, but their promises are empty. They're deceiving you. They look like they have something to offer, they look like they have an attractive promise and a way of living, but in fact they offer nothing, and the way they promise leads to destruction. So they are attractive in some ways, but if you follow them, you end up with nothing, and that makes them dangerous. And that's why their destiny is destruction. He says in seventeen, for them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. Now this word reserved recalls the same idea of waiting that we saw back in chapter two verse three, when he talked about their destruction not being asleep. Right now it may seem like they're getting away with their lives, it may seem like they're profiting by them, but judgment is going to catch up with them. God has marked and kept and reserved them for it. The wisdom of a course of action is determined by how it ends, and you see this theme frequently in the Bible. The wisdom of a course of action is not how attractive it looks right now, but where that action takes you, where you end up. The false teachers may look attractive now, but they are on the wrong road and black darkness or utter darkness is their destiny. Now I'm not sure how far to take this imagery of utter darkness or black darkness. I think the scripture is clear that judgment is coming, and those who fail judgment because they have not cast themselves on the mercy of God through the blood of Jesus Christ are going to be destroyed. They will not live eternally with God because they have turned away from God, God is going to turn away from them. And the language the Bible uses to describe what happens after judgment is more or less metaphorical. The interpretive question is, is it more metaphorical or is it less metaphorical? Some of the metaphors used are contradictory. For instance, we see this language of eternal fire, and we see language like this in Peter of utter darkness. Well we know a fire is not dark, so how do those two fit together? Which one is more metaphorical and which one is less metaphorical? In my reading, some scholars take this utter darkness as very literal, and others take it as very metaphorical. Everyone agrees the language is metaphorical up to a point. The question is just how far the metaphor goes. Where is that point? For instance, fire is often used as a metaphor for destruction. Whatever you put in fire gets consumed and turns to ashes. You throw dead branches into a fire because you don't want them anymore. You burn up yard debris to get rid of it. But in our world, fire is temporary. We can burn something in the fire, and then God can raise whatever we burn and make it whole again. The saints who are burned at the stake are not lost to God. He can resurrect them and give them glorious new bodies and eternal life. If the biblical writers wanted to talk about final destruction, they might use a metaphor like eternal fire, a fire that is unlike our temporary fires, a fire that destroys eternally in such a way that what it consumes never comes back. Eternal fire could be a metaphor for that kind of ultimate destruction, and it could have nothing to do with light at all. The same is true for utter darkness. It could be a literal place without light, or we could take it more metaphorically. We often picture the place where we find life and abundance as a place of light. We work in the light, we feast in the light, we find joy and gladness and goodness in the light. In contrast, we find danger and evil deeds in the dark. Especially in a culture without electricity, everything shuts down when darkness falls. Work and life have to stop until dawn. Utter darkness then could be a metaphorical way of describing that kind of nothingness, the end of life, the end of abundance, the kind of darkness that has no dawn. So which one of those is more metaphor and which one of those is more literal? I think you can make a reasonably good argument for metaphorical language in both cases, but traditionally scholars have tended to take these descriptions more literally. I tend to lean toward the more metaphorical. But however you take them, whether you take them literally or you take them metaphorically, you can see his point. We don't want to end up there. We don't want to be on the wrong side of judgment. This is a destruction that is worse than death as we know it, and we ought to flee into the arms of our loving, merciful Savior. Peter presents a very stark choice in this chapter. There is a road that leads to destruction and black darkness, and there is a road that leads to life and godliness, and those are the only two choices. The road the false teachers are traveling is the one that leads to destruction. The road the apostles and all those who have faith in Jesus are traveling, that one leads to life and godliness. If you want to find life, you want to stay true to the apostolic gospel and not follow the way of the false teachers. Why is the end of the false teachers destruction? I think that's what Peter goes on to explain. Look again at eighteen and nineteen. For speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, for whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. So why are the false teachers like springs without water? Why is there in destruction? They promise something attractive, they promise something life giving, but their promises are empty. They are enticing others to follow the wrong path. They have these grand sounding promises, these loud boasts of folly. They promise hedonism and sensuality, they promise freedom, but they are lying, they are wrong. Now Peter has alluded to this false promise of sensuality several times now in the letter, and he has talked about how the false teachers are committed to a life that lacks self-control. They don't want to deny themselves any physical gratification, they don't want to listen to what God says about the proper place of our desires. They just want what they want. What's new here in this verse is the language of promising freedom. It gives us this picture that the false teachers are claiming, hey, I'm a believer too, I follow Jesus, and we all know Jesus came to set us free, so eat, drink, and be merry. Don't be trapped by all that old fashioned morality of the Jews and the Old Testament. That's the old way. Live life to the fullest, indulge, enjoy, it's all good, we're free, we have no more restrictions, we can do what we want. And that seems to be the kind of picture they're painting. Later in chapter three, Peter's going to say that the ignorant and unstable twist the words of Paul to their own destruction, and that might give us a clue to what's going on here in chapter two. In Paul's letters, we find Paul denying the claim that because we are forgiven by the blood of Christ, we are now quote free, unquote, to do whatever we wish with our bodies. Paul specifically argues against that kind of a claim in Romans and in Galatians. In part he argues that part of the gift of faith is a desire for life and godliness, and therefore we no longer want to pursue sin and selfishness and unrestrained sensuality. Paul argues that being free from the law does not mean that we are free to pursue sin. Rather, we are now free to pursue holiness and we want holiness. The false teachers could be making these same kinds of claims. Look, God wants you to be happy. If sleeping around makes you happy, you're free to do it. If divorcing your wife and finding a new younger version makes you happy, no problem. You don't have to follow all those laws anymore. As Paul says, you're free from the law, and that's a distortion of the gospel, that's a distortion of the teaching of Paul, and that could be what Peter has in mind here. That may or may not be what Peter is referring to, but at least he says they are offering you a false freedom. They are suggesting that believers can pursue all desires without restriction, without restraint, without listening to what God says about their proper place, and Peter has argued from the beginning that that kind of lifestyle is not compatible with the gospel. With the coming of Christ we are no longer under the law, but we are now children of God, and as his children, we seek to obey our Father. We seek to obey what he says about the way to life and godliness. We seek to listen to him about the right way and the wrong way to express our physical desires. The purpose of the gospel is to lead us to life and godliness, and God has told us how that comes about, and it is not through unrestrained, unrestricted pursuit of every desire we have. The tragic irony of the false teachers is that they promise freedom but they are slaves of corruption. Look at two nineteen. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, for whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. Now, this idea of being overcome by sin and corruption is a rather terrifying concept. Because if we're honest, each of us has to admit that we have not yet defeated all sin in our lives. We can all look back and remember to our shame many, many times of moral failure. And we can look back and remember times where we think we've got it all together, maybe we're managing our anger or we're displaying lots of patience and we think, hey, I'm doing great, and then we get confronted with some other sin or some other failure that wasn't even on our radar. So what's Peter saying here? How can anyone claim not to have been defeated by sin? How can anyone claim not to have been overcome by moral failure? Well, I think there is a sense in which believers can make this claim, and Peter explains that sense in the next verses. I'm going to start back at eighteen and go through twenty two. For speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, for whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them, the dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow after washing herself returns to wallow in the mire. Okay, let's start with a couple of minor interpretive questions. In two eighteen, for speaking loud boasts of folly they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. The interpretive question is how are we to understand this word barely? In this context, what does it mean to barely escape? And there are two main options. We could think of this as just barely escaping, or we could translate this just recently escaping. If it's just barely escaping, then Peter is saying the false teachers are trying to entice those who just barely escape from them. In other words, they're enticing true believers who are really, really tempted to give in, to listen and to follow them, but they don't give in because they are true believers and God preserves them in faithfulness. In that sense, they just barely escape. They dance right up to the line, very, very tempted, but they do not cross the line. And this language would echo the language of Jesus we find in Matthew twenty four twenty four. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Under that interpretation, the idea is that the children of God will not ultimately be deceived, but they will come very close because of the deceptively attractive ideas the false teachers present. And that could be what Peter's getting at here. The other option is he could be referring to recent converts, those who just recently escaped. He could be saying that the false teachers are trying to entice those who just recently escaped from their way of error and just recently came to faith in the gospel. In this view, Peter would be emphasizing their pagan background. They lived among other pagans, they followed a certain hedonistic lifestyle, and they just recently in time abandoned that lifestyle. So the false teachers see them as easy prey to lure back into the lifestyle. They just recently escaped from the moral corruption of their culture, and they meet these teachers claiming to be fellow believers who are saying, Oh yeah, you can you can still live like that. It's okay because now you're forgiven. And so they might easily be enticed because they are new to faith and they lack maturity. Both these options work in the context, both of them make sense of the language, and which one we choose might be swayed by the second interpretive question that comes up in two twenty. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. So the second interpretive question is who is the they in two twenty if after they have escaped from the defilements of the world, who are the people who after escaping go back to their prison? Who does that pronoun refer to? Well we know that pronouns refer backwards, and so we want to look backwards to see who Peter was just talking about. The problem is Peter was just talking about two groups, and this pronoun could refer to either of them. In two hundred nineteen he says they promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. So they, the false teachers, were promising them, their listeners, those being enticed freedom, but they, the false teachers, are slaves of corruption. So in the preceding phrase, the preceding sentence, we see two groups. We see the false teachers and we see their listeners, and this pronoun could refer back to either of them. If it refers back to false teachers, then Peter is saying the false teachers promise freedom while they are actually slaves. Why would we say they're actually slaves? Because 220, the false teachers have become entangled again in the defilements of the world and the last state is worse than the first. If two hundred twenty refers to the listeners, then Peter is saying the false teachers promise freedom while they are actually slaves of corruption. And that's why these young converts should not listen to the false teachers, because if those young converts return to their previous way of error, then the last date will be worse than the first. Again, either of these makes sense of the language and the context, and which one you pick does not really change the big picture. I think either option ends up in the same interpretive place, they just take a slightly different path to get there. I tend to lead toward the young converts, but whichever one you decide, you can see Peter's point. You don't want to go down that road. You don't want to follow the false teachers into their corruption. So I lean toward the options that would take this as young converts in both cases, as they are the most susceptible to the false teachers and the most likely to be deceived. But either way, his point is you don't want to follow the path of the false teachers, their path ends in judgment and destruction. So what exactly is Peter urging his readers to avoid? I think the key statement is 220. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last date has become worse for them than the first. mean when he says they have escaped the defilements of the world? What's he describing? We've already seen that Peter is not a perfectionist. We talked about this in chapter one. Peter does not believe that becoming a believer ends our struggle with sin once and for all. So I would rule that option out. I would argue that Peter is not saying when you become a Christian you now have perfect victory over sin. And if you don't have perfect victory over sin then you're doing something wrong. And if you let sin conquer you again, your last date is worse than the first. I don't think that is what he's saying. In what sense has a believer escaped the defilements of the world? Well he gives us a clue. He tells us this escape comes through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And that is language we ought to recognize from chapter one This is chapter one verses two through four may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. Now notice that it's very similar language everything we need to gain life and godliness comes through the knowledge of Him who called us and granted us His precious and great promises. We talked about this in chapter one we gain life by knowing and embracing and understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ. The knowledge of Christ that comes through the gospel message gives us everything we need for life and godliness. The knowledge of the gospel gives us an understanding of God's promises, the hope of the gospel that will lead to our ultimate rescue from sin and corruption and ultimately grant us life and godliness. The gospel is all about understanding that we're sinful and that one day we will stand before our Creator who is holy and just and the way to escape his judgment the way to have our sins forgiven and our debt paid is through trusting in the cross of Jesus Christ. So the way to escape sin, the way to escape the defilements of the world is through the knowledge of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As he says in 2 20 for if after having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ they are again entangled in them and overcome the last date has become worse for them than the first okay in what sense then can believers say they have escaped the defilements of the world? Well we can say we've had our eyes opened and we now understand that we're sinners we can say we're forgiven because of the blood of Jesus Christ. We can say that we have set our hope on the gospel and set our goal as godliness through the power of God's Spirit at work within us. And we can say that we live a life characterized by repentance. We can say we now hate sin, we despise the sin, we repent of the sin we see in ourselves and we long to be holy. And we can say that one day we will escape God's judgment because of the blood of Jesus Christ and we will be made holy as God is holy. So yes we still struggle with sin now but we are not deceived by it the way we used to be we are not deceived by it anymore like the rest of the world is deceived by it. Now we know sin is our enemy we know it is wrong and we repent of it and we trust in the gospel of Jesus Christ to free us from that sin one day. Now that makes sense of this language about the last state being worse than the first it's one thing to have never heard the gospel, to have never heard the message of Jesus, but it's worse to have heard it and rejected it. The state of rejecting the gospel is worse than the state of never having considered it at all. In theory the false teachers and their listeners have embraced the gospel at least they claim to have embraced the gospel and this kind of understanding of sin but what they are actually embracing is a licentious and greedy selfish lifestyle. They are claiming to have the freedom to pursue sin and pursue selfishness as a lifestyle choice. Rather than pursuing a life of godliness and repentance they are pursuing a greedy self-indulgent lifestyle and claiming that's the gospel and this last state of distorting and mixing up the gospel is worse than the first because one of the central features of the gospel is repentance and they have lost it. Saving faith involves a turnaround it involves recognizing that I'm sinful and I need to change but left to myself I can't change myself. Saving faith involves realizing that God is not required to change me he doesn't owe me anything but he has promised to change me because of his grace and mercy and the blood of Jesus Christ. So central to belief is this stopping my former way of life and striving after and seeking a new way of life. But the false teachers by the way they're living and the way they're encouraging others to live have eliminated this need for repentance this turning around and for them the gospel has lost its power to confront because they have redefined the gospel into a concept that no longer confronts them or requires repentance. And if you believe a watered down version of the gospel then you stop thirsting after the real gospel. You stop seeking a solution to your sinfulness because you think you're good and that state is worse than the first it's like you vaccinated yourself against the gospel so that even if someone tells you the truth you disregard it because you think you're already covered and I think that's what Peter means by the last state is worse. It's better not to believe it all than to believe a false gospel because a false gospel deceives you into thinking that you're good. It gives you a false sense of complacency such that the real gospel can't break through and confront you with the truth. So we become deceived by our false gospel into thinking we already know the truth when in fact what we're drinking from is a spring without water. Peter illustrates this with a proverb in 222 what the true proverb says has happened to them the dog returns to its own vomit and the sow after washing herself returns to wallow in the mire. What's behind these pictures? Well you've probably had the experience that after throwing up you feel better. We've all had the experience where our stomach is upset and you feel queasy you just feel terrible and you just wish you could throw up and get it over with and then when you finally do throw up you feel better. At that point the last thing you're interested in is going back and feeling nauseous again. That's what's so strange to us about dogs who go back to their own vomit. That's just how dogs are but to us it's like why would anyone do that? Likewise we wash the dirt off so that we can be clean that's the point. The last thing you want to do after you take a shower is get dirty again. If you're up and you're dressed and someone says hey let's go running you know that feeling of oh I just got all clean I don't want to get sweaty again. It seems strange to us that pigs after washing are happy to go back and flop down in the mud. I mean didn't that defeat the purpose wasn't the purpose to get clean and yet here the pig is back in the mud and for a Jew like Peter we can say that these true proverbs are rich in imagery because dogs and pigs were unclean animals and they were often used as metaphors for the ungodly so going back to the vomit like a dog or dirt like a pig is a strikingly harsh statement. That's the point of the analogy to the false teachers and their followers people who have truly embraced the gospel see themselves as healed and clean. They don't want to go back to being sick and dirty. Being sick and dirty is disgusting to us now. Why would we want to go back to being sick and dirty as if it were something good our eyes have been opened by the gospel and we know that we were sick and dirty we know that we were sinful and guilty why would we want to go back to that state when we are now healed and clean we are now forgiven and saved and that's the point of the analogy why would we embrace sin as a friend when we have recognized that it is our enemy why would we want to pursue a sinful selfish hedonistic lifestyle when we have recognized that the end of that lifestyle is destruction? Now I'm not saying why would we sin? I know why we still sin. We sin because the hope of the gospel is still a hope. We have not yet been freed completely from the power of and the presence of sin. The question I think on this table is why would I embrace sin as a friend when I have come to know through the gospel that sin is my enemy the false teachers are returning to the very things that a genuine believer now knows are shameful and will end in destruction Alright let me paraphrase this section let's to try to put it all together. This is my understanding of it in paraphrase The false teachers are like springs without water they seem to offer the promise of life when in fact their promises are empty. If you follow them you end up with nothing. They attract listeners with grand sounding promises and words and ideas like freedom but their way is not freedom it is a way of slavery and defeat. One crucial part of the gospel is to teach us that sin is our enemy and that we need grace and forgiveness. True freedom is understanding the way to escape our sin is through the gospel of Jesus Christ and the holiness and forgiveness and grace He promises. The false teachers think they have freedom because they are doing what they want to do, but in fact they are slaves to sin and corruption. It would be better to have not yet heard the gospel than to have heard it and return to an unrepentant life. At that point the gospel has lost its power to confront. To close I want to talk about some application questions. This is one of the passages that scholars use to try to answer the question can a true believer lose his or her salvation? Because of this language of having just barely escaped and this language about being overcome. Now we all know people who have made a claim to faith and then they walk away from it. We know people who seem to be genuine believers and then give it all up and we all probably realize that at some level only God knows for sure whether any of us have saving faith and whether any of us will have it in the future. So at one level you could say that's just an academic question because from our human vantage point we have no way of knowing if anyone is truly a believer now or will be a believer in the future. But I think the question is still important because it affects the question of assurance and how I view my life and circumstances today. Because behind that question of can a believer lose their salvation is the question can I hinder the process such that I actually lose my salvation? Can I resist the working of God's grace in my life to the point where I am no longer saved? And that has been a question that has been debated since the days of Augustine for most theologians the answer to that question can I lose my faith now depends on how we believe we came to faith in the first place. How you think we come to faith determines whether or not you think we can lose it. Scholars who believe that we cooperate with the initial step typically believe that we then cooperate with the ongoing process of maturity and we can stop cooperating at any time and under that view which I will tell you up front I think is wrong but under that view I come to faith and God gives me his spirit and he is finished. He has done all he intends to do for me in this life and if I continue to believe he will grant me eternal life when I die but the continuing in that view is up to me and that view would claim that God has given me all he can he's given me powerful tools in his spirit but the rest is up to me and the key idea under that view is that God has can only do so much. He has done what he's going to do and it's now up to me to cooperate with his spirit and get to the finish line. Again I don't think that's the biblical view. On the other hand scholars who think that God takes the initial step of giving us faith who think that while I am dead in my sin and unable to cooperate at all God saves me tend to believe that God will ensure the process completes and finishes and that no matter how dark my struggle with sin becomes God will not let me walk away and that's the view I agree with. I would argue that genuine faith itself is a work and a gift of God if I have genuine saving faith it is because God in his mercy decided to give it to me. He has changed my nature such that I am now a person who wants the things of God who recognizes sin as sin and longs to be holy. I am now a person of faith because God has given it to me as a free gift of his grace. But faith is an invisible work of God I can't see it. I don't physically or visibly immediately change when God gives it to me. So lots of people can make a claim to faith and making the claim in and of itself doesn't mean we genuinely have it. However through the testing of our faith God makes his invisible work visible and that is a theme we see over and over again in the Bible God puts us in situations where we are forced to choose to follow him or not. The situation is such that having faith would lead us to act one way and not having faith would lead us to act a different way and we have to choose. So the situation the circumstances force us to confront choices like who am I counting on what am I trusting in what am I hoping for and we have to choose to follow God. And when we choose to follow God it proves it shows it reveals that we do in fact have faith. It tests our faith to see whether it is the real genuine deal or not and through the test we are shown to have genuine faith. As we go through these processes where our faith is refined like gold in the fire as Peter says in his first letter we see that our faith is in fact real and genuine. And the key ingredient is time. Over time we see ourselves growing in maturity and in faith. Over time we see ourselves standing firm in the gospel when life gets hard and standing firm in the gospel when our faith is challenged. Over time and experience we see ourselves facing hard and difficult situations and we turn to God in those situations rather than turn away from him. Those times when we're tempted and we're pushed to walk away from God and we don't walk away from him show us that we have genuine saving faith. And this process is part of God's way of assuring us that we are his process of testing our faith is to our benefit. Not only do we grow in wisdom and maturity through it, but we have tangible visible evidence that our faith is real and that we are in fact genuine believers and that all the promises of the gospel are ours. But if I think the process is up to me then this testing offers no assurance at all. If I think that it's up to me whether at any given moment I will remain faithful then I could fall away at any given moment my past success has no relevance because I could just throw it all away in the future. I don't think that's what the Bible teaches. I think the Bible teaches that faith is a gift of God and that God will not let me fall away he will finish what he starts and I can have assurance that he will not let go of me. He will not let me fall away I think the Bible teaches that if the Spirit of God is at work in a person to give them faith and grace that person will not fall away. Now from our human standpoint we might not know who is who and which is which but it will be revealed over time through this process of testing our faith. So in this language in 2 Peter I don't think he's painting a picture of genuine believers falling away rather his picture is of someone who makes a claim of faith and then when the testing comes says forget it I don't want to follow God if he's not going to give me what I want when the testing comes that person says I love my sin more than I love the things of God and I'd rather pursue my sin than holiness. Now notice how central to Peter's argument is this concept of sin and taking sin seriously we've seen that throughout these first two chapters his point is not simply not just that I'm going to die someday and I'd better start figuring out how to get to heaven his point is not that I'm a basically good person. I just have to make sure I check in at church on Christmas and Easter and let God know I'm still here the picture Peter is painting is that judgment is coming and judgment is not a sliding scale. Judgment is not mitigated by good excuses. Judgment is a one strike and you're out deal and we struck out a long time ago we need this fundamental recognition that I will not pass judgment left to myself. I will not find eternal life unless I find mercy and grace and forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ. We aren't doing anyone any favors to emphasize to the world God loves you and you're special to him without also talking about sin. And especially recently I've been in churches where we were told not to talk about sin and the cross we were told not to talk about judgment because oh that's such a turnoff. It's not seeker friendly. We need to just love people and talk about God's love and we'll deal with all that sin stuff later. Well I think from Peter's perspective sin is central to the gospel. I have to have my eyes wide open and see how big my problem with sin is and how I am not capable of solving it myself. I dare not get lulled into complacency thinking I'm good enough and oh hey at least I'm better than those other guys and God's going to be pleased with me. That is not true. Judgment is coming and the only way to escape it is to trust in the blood of Jesus Christ and continue to believe the apostolic gospel Sin is the problem and the gospel is the solution. Sin is the dark terrible truth that the gospel shines its light on. If we don't understand that then we don't really understand the gospel or why it's such good news. And I think that's why Peter is so concerned about the false teachers. The false teachers offer a religion that ignores sin. They offer a religion that says you can live however you want to live now you can live a heed hedonistic greedy life and God's going to bless you. And Peter is saying that path leads to destruction it's not simply saying yes I believe in Jesus that leads to life it is the fundamental recognition that I am sinful and lost and stand under judgment and it is the longing to be made holy. God has said the way to escape judgment and find life is through forgiveness and mercy that is brought about by the blood of Jesus Christ. In this passage Peter calls the gospel the way of righteousness and that ought to strike us. He doesn't call the gospel the way of forgiveness though it is he doesn't call it the way of mercy which it also is he doesn't even call it the way of the cross which is also true. He calls it the way of righteousness because the gospel is about solving the problem of our sin and giving us the hope of righteousness the hope that one day Jesus will fully and finally conquer evil, sin and death and establish righteousness and justice once and for all we need to take sin seriously because judgment is coming and if we don't understand the darkness of sin we won't understand the light of the gospel. You've been listening to Wednesday in the Word. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means but also how I reach those conclusions. If this podcast has been helpful to you and you've enjoyed listening please leave a comment or a positive review on Apple Podcasts, iTunes or your favorite podcast platform. It really does help others find the podcast. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. I encourage you to check out his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for listening today I'm Krisan Marotta and I hope you'll join me next week for Wednesday in the Word