2 Peter 2
False Teachers Will Intrude among You (2:1–3a)
1 And there were false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will covertly bring in destructive heresies, repudiating the master who has purchased them and bringing upon themselves an impending destruction. 2 Many shall follow in the immoral ways of these teachers, and on account of them, the way of truth will be reviled. 3 In their greed they will take your money in exchange for their counterfeit ideas.
God Willingly Delays Their Punishment (2:3b–9)
The judgment against them issued by God long ago does not cease; their destruction does not slumber. 4 For if God did not spare fallen angels, but committing them to the underworld in chains of darkness in the underworld where they are being held for judgment; 5 and if God did not spare the ancient world but protected only Noah (a herald of righteousness) and seven others, when God brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; 6 and if God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha, turning them to ashes, making their destruction an object lesson of what happens to ungodly people; 7 and if God rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was oppressed by the licentious behavior of the lawless, 8 for this righteous man, living day after day among them, was tortured in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard— 9 then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly from temptation and how to retain the unrighteous to be punished at the day of judgement.
Telltale Sins and Doom of False Teachers (2:10–22)
10 Especially, he will punish those who walk after the flesh in the lust of impurity and who despise leadership. Bold and arrogant, they are not afraid to blaspheme against the dignitaries. 11 Even angels, who are greater in might and power, do not bring such a slanderous judgment against them before their Lord. 12 But these people, acting like irrational animals, naturally born to be caught and killed, blaspheme about things of which they are ignorant; in their own destruction, even they shall be destroyed. 13 Being unrighteous, they shall receive a reward of unrighteousness. They consider it pleasure to indulge themselves in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, indulging themselves in their own deceptions as they feast together with you. 14 They have eyes full of adultery, eyes that never cease from sin. They beguile souls who are not well grounded. They have hearts trained to be covetous. Cursed children! 15 Having abandoned the straight way, they wander, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the reward of unrighteousness. 16 But Balaam was stopped short in his own misconduct: his mute donkey spoke in man’s voice and restrained the prophet’s insanity.
17 They are springs without water, mists of darkness that are blown in by a windstorm; to them the gloom of darkness has been held in store. 18 Speaking excessive boasts of vanity with indecent lusts of the flesh, they entice those few who had escaped from those who continue in error. 19 Promising liberty to them, they themselves are slaves of corruption: for by whom a person is overcome, by the same he has been enslaved. 20 For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world by a recognition of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in and overcome by them, their final state has become worse for them than where they started out. 21 For it would have been better for them to have not recognized the way of righteousness than, after they had recognized it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 Then it has happened to them as it says in the true proverb, “The dog has returned to his own vomit” [Prov. 26:11]; and, the sow, having been washed, to her wallowing in the mud.
