Dr. Lawrence Butler

The Bridge Church, Pembroke

Lesson 9 Chap. 2:19-22

We are still examining the character of the false teachers that Peter prophesied would be coming. We have learned that they are portraying themselves as great leaders, but in reality are empty and void of any ability to help others. 

They are depicted as wells without water, and clouds carried about by a storm. Therefore, being unable to really help anyone, they have simply become servants, in reality just slaves, to their own lusts and sinful desires. They promise their followers liberty to enjoy life and do whatsoever their flesh desires. They distort the gospel of Christ and the freedom from the Old Testament Law to being free to do anything the flesh desires as long as the spirit of man remains true to Christ. Paul never taught this, but rather that being free from the Law meant becoming a servant to Christ.

We are free to do His will, but nothing else.

Promising a false liberty resulted in falling into the bondage of sin. When once someone has been delivered from the destructive chains of sin, the worse thing that could happen is to fall back into that same enslavement again.

Peter describes it this way: “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 than the beginning” (II Pet.

2:20). To avoid such a failure, we must walk in servitude to Christ. “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”

Luke 9:23).

There are those who teach that once a sinner is released from the power of sin and born again, that person will always be a child of God. It matters not the lifestyle of the person, only the fact that once he became a child of God nothing could ever change that relationship. However, listen to the words of Peter, “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” (II Pet. 2:22). Not a pretty picture, but one that presents the truth of God’s word, we can fall away from our Savior after having been delivered from sin. What happens to such a soul is a tragedy. Falling back into the same sin, and yet becoming worse that ever before. Remember the warning of Jesus, “Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first” (Matt. 12:45). Falling back into sin leads to a worse scenario than what occurred in the beginning.