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False Prophets and Their Punishment

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ²Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers the way of truth will be maligned. ³And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

⁴ For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment; ⁵and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; ⁶and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly; ⁷and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless ⁸(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), ⁹then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment ¹⁰—especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

Bold and willful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones, ¹¹whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring against them a slanderous judgment from the Lord. ¹²These people, however, are like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed. They slander what they do not understand, and when those creatures are destroyed, they also will be destroyed, ¹³suffering the penalty for doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their dissipation while they feast with you. ¹⁴They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! ¹⁵They have left the straight road and have gone astray, following the road of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of doing wrong, ¹⁶but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

¹⁷ These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the deepest darkness has been reserved. ¹⁸For they speak bombastic nonsense, and with licentious desires of the flesh they entice people who have just escaped from those who live in error. ¹⁹They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for people are slaves to whatever masters them. ²⁰For 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 overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. ²¹For 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 that was passed on to them. ²²It has happened to them according to the true proverb,

“The dog turns back to its own vomit,”

and,

“The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud.”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

20. For if after. He again shews how pernicious was the sect which led men consecrated to God back again to their old filth and the corruptions of the world. And he exhibits the heinousness of the evil by a comparison; for it was no common sin to depart from the holy doctrine of God. It would have been better for them, he says, not to have known the way of righteousness; for though there is no excuse for ignorance, yet the servant who knowingly and wilfully despises the commands of his lord, deserves a twofold punishment. There was besides ingratitude, because they wilfully extinguished the light of God, rejected the favor conferred on them, and having shaken off the yoke, became perversely wanton against God; yea, as far as they could, they profaned and abrogated the inviolable covenant of God, which had been ratified by the blood of Christ. The more earnest then ought we to be, to advance humbly and carefully in the course of our calling. We must now consider each sentence.

By naming the pollutions of the world, he shews that we roll in filth and are wholly polluted, until we renounce the world. By the knowledge of Christ he no doubt understands the gospel. He testifies that the design of it is, to deliver us from the defilements of the world, and to lead us far away from them. For the same reason he afterwards calls it the way of righteousness. He then alone makes a right progress in the gospel who faithfully learns Christ; and he truly knows Christ, who has been taught by him to put off the old man and to put on the new man, as Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4:22 ¹⁷⁴¹⁷⁴ The end of this verse is not explained, but the words of the version, facta sunt illis postrema pejora prioribus, seem to mean, that their last pollutions would become worse to them than their former pollutions; and this is the rendering of Macknight. The sentence is commonly taken in the same sense as in Matthew 12:45, but the words are somewhat different. — Ed.

¹⁷⁴ The end of this verse is not explained, but the words of the version, facta sunt illis postrema pejora prioribus, seem to mean, that their last pollutions would become worse to them than their former pollutions; and this is the rendering of Macknight. The sentence is commonly taken in the same sense as in Matthew 12:45, but the words are somewhat different. — Ed.