2 Peter 2
(1) False Teachers will be Judged
Fake prophets showed up among the people, just as false teachers will show up among you. They’ll introduce their destructive opinions and even deny the Ruler who purchased them, bringing quick destruction upon themselves. Lots of people will follow after the fake teachers’ sexual looseness, and the way of the truth will be belittled because of them. They’ll sell you lies as they follow their desires for gain. But their judgment was declared long ago, and today that judgment isn’t just waiting around or sleeping on the job.
(4) God Saves the Good & Assesses the Bad
God didn’t even spare angels when they defied Him. He threw them into hell and put them in deep, gloomy pits where they’re still waiting to be assessed.
And He didn’t spare the ancient world either. He only saved Noah (who was an emblem of uprightness) and 7 others when He drowned the rest of the anti-God world.
God also condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to catastrophe by reducing them to piles of ash. He made them an example to all their successors who might want to live a godless life. God drew Lot to Himself and rescued him, even though he was oppressed by the sexual antics of his peers who were violating the laws of nature and the laws of their own consciences. (Lot was an upright man who could feel his upright soul being tormented as he witnessed the lawless actions of his society.)
So as you can see, the Master knows how to rescue godly people from temptation, and He knows how to keep the wicked restrained for the day of assessment—especially those who chase after the flesh’s defiling desires and those who despise having a ruler.
(10b) Bad People will be Judged
Those kinds of people are overly assertive and self-pleasing. They don’t even shudder after bad-mouthing the splendor of angels, whereas the angels who surpass them in strength and power don’t bring a bad report of them to the Ruler. But these kinds of people are like irrational animals. They were born as creatures of instinct only to be captured and waste away. They criticize things they don’t understand. They’ll waste away along with the rest of the animals, and endure misery as a payment for their wrongful actions. They think enjoying luxuries is great while the sun still shines. They are smudges and stains who take pride in their deceitfulness. As they feast with you, their eyes are filled with adultery—their eyes can’t stop doing the wrong thing. They lure in people who are insecure and then put their hearts through a training program for selfishness. They are cursed children who have abandoned the right path and gone completely astray. They followed in the footsteps of Balaam (Beor’s son) who loved the wages of evil, but Balaam was chewed out for his offenses when an unintelligible donkey spoke in a human voice to restrain the prophet’s madness.
(17) We’re Enslaved to Whatever Overpowers Us
Those kinds of people are like fountains without water or like the mists that accompany a hurricane—and the gloomiest darkness has been saved just for them. They use arrogant-yet-empty words to entice people with the appeal of physical desires and sex. When they find people who have escaped misguided lifestyles, they go up to them and promise them freedom—yet they themselves remain enslaved to corruption. After all, we’re enslaved to whatever overpowers us. If someone escapes the world’s corruption by knowing Jesus, but they become re-entangled in it and overpowered by it, then their latest condition is even worse than their original condition. It would have been better for that person to have never known the right way than to have known it and turned away from the sacred guidelines they were given.
What happens to them is in line with the true sayings,
“A dog returns to its own vomit”
And
“After a pig takes a bath, it goes back to rolling around in the mud.”