Free Bible Commentary
“Second Peter 2:4-10”
Categories: Second Peter“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment: and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority.”
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God’s “judgment…is not idle” against false teachers, and their “destruction is not asleep” (verse 3). The same God who judged and condemned gross immorality “long ago” will most assuredly convict those who corrupt His perfect word and despise His righteous authority in the latter days. Peter cited three examples of God’s intolerance of abject wickedness and His austere treatment of it, two of which are clearly portrayed in the book of Genesis.
God did not tolerate the “angels when they sinned” but hurled them into hell (“Tartarus”) where they await His Final Judgment (verse 4). There has been much speculation made as to when, why and how this happened, but the Bible does not specify the details. It is obvious that angels have a free will and some elected to sin against the Lord in some way. Jude, the Lord’s brother, tells us they “did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode” (Jude 1:6). Many Bible students tie this statement in with what is said in Genesis 6:2, but that kind of speculation is inconclusive at best.
“God did not spare the ancient world…when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly” (verse 5), and He reduced “the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah…to ashes” because of their ungodliness (verse 6). In Noah’s day “the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and…every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Peter doesn’t specify the hideous nature of the sinfulness of Lot’s contemporaries, but Jude makes it clear that it involved homosexuality: “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7).
God destroyed “the ancient world” with “a flood” and Sodom and Gomorrah with “fire and brimstone” (Genesis 19:24), and the destruction of “the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire” (2 Peter 37), “in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). God did not ignore the world’s sinfulness in the past and He is not turning a blind eye to it now. He is withholding final destruction because He desires all to repent (2 Peter 3:9), but sooner or later the world’s wickedness reach its fullness and be ripe for obliteration.
But please do not miss the words of hope and good news that are saturated within this passage of doom and despair. “The Lord knows how to” and most certainly will “rescue the godly from temptation” and the punishment that awaits the “unrighteous” who “despise” is holy “authority” (verses 9-10). God “preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness,” and “He rescued righteous Lot,” and He will deliver you too if you have righteous, obedient faith as they did. These men were obviously not perfect but they committed and entrusted their lives to the Lord. We should also be preaching righteousness to the lost as Noah did, and have our souls “tormented” by the “lawless deeds” of the corrupted culture in which we live. We simply cannot allow ourselves to be desensitized to sinfulness and blend in with the sinful world around us! God did not tolerate unrighteousness in the past and He will not tolerate it from us either!
Please read 2 Peter 2:10-16 for tomorrow.
Have a great day!
- Louie Taylor
