Free Bible Commentary
“Second Peter 2:20-22”
Categories: Second Peter“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, ‘A dog returns to its own vomit,’ and, ‘A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.’”
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There are people out there who have “barely escaped from the ones who live in error” (verse 19). Some of our brethren in Christ are exposed to pressures that most of us are not plagued by, and many babes in Christ have established little separation between themselves and the world from which they recently emerged, and that makes them especially spiritually vulnerable. These are prime targets for purveyors of false preaching to prey upon. Once they have “escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge or the Lord and Savior” (verse 20), they are especially susceptible to be “entangled” in those old spiritual snares they are still accustomed to.
The word translated “defilements” is the Greek word “miasma” which signifies “pollution” or “foulness”. Our English word “miasma” means “a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell, vapor or atmosphere.” When someone hears the Gospel, is pierced to the heart by the guilt of their transgressions and obeys God’s commands for salvation, the Lord lifts him up out of the muck and mire of sin and cleanses and purifies him. But friend, the Apostle Peter makes it clear that we can be sucked back into the foulness and contamination of sinfulness and separation from God, and be just as lost as we were before coming to Christ.
In fact, Peter paints an even uglier picture than merely being lost again. He says that “the last state” becomes “worse…than the first” for the one who finds the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45-46), and tastes “of the heavenly gift” (Hebrews 6:4), and “the powers of the age to come” (Hebrews 6:5), and then casts heaven’s best aside for the foulness and cheapness and vileness of the world. It is better to not know “the way of righteousness” at all (verse 21) than to learn of the excellence and pricelessness of Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:8), and then to trample the Savior of the world underfoot (Hebrews 10:29). That not only produces a deeper darkness and hopelessness and a greater hardness of heart for life on earth, but also requires a painful answer on Judgment Day for all the wasted opportunities and broken vows that had previously been made to the Lord.
If all this wasn’t a vivid enough depiction of the horrid nature of abandoning the Lord and forfeiting salvation, the apostle uses two disgusting illustrations to really drive his point home in verse 22. When a sanctified child of God returns to the filth and sludge of the world, it is like a dog throwing up its food and then eating it again (Proverbs 26:11). Friends, that’s just gross, gross, gross! It is like a washed pig rolling around in its own filth and excrement! In case you haven’t gotten the thrust of the Holy Spirit’s message yet, sin is a huge, vile, disgusting, ugly thing to God! Allow the Lord to cleanse you with the holy word that has been “handed on to” you and never, ever, ever go back to the sewage of the world!
Please read 2 Peter 3:1-2 for tomorrow.
May the Lord bless and keep you!
