For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones,
God knows how to keep the righteous safe in the midst of evil. But, believers often torment their souls while living in the midst of that evil until God does rescue them. In the above passage the Apostle Peter is making a very important point in regard to the false teachers of his day. That is the context of the above verses. False teachers had come into the church and were leading the believers away by enticing them to live corruptly. They were teaching that grace covered sin, so it doesn’t matter how we live. Peter, wanting to show the church the falsehood of their teaching, pens the above verses by the power of the Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21). In the above passage Peter makes the argument that IF God did not spare all these false teachers and unrighteousness people, He WILL NOT spare the false teachers now in the church. However, a key line in the above argument is about Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who made his home in Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah, in Scripture, is a picture of wickedness and transgression. God pour fire down on the two cities and destroyed them. Peter’s argument is that God will soon do that again with these false teachers. But, notice what it says about Lot:
“... Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); ...”.
It states that day after day Lot allowed the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah to “torment his righteous soul.” That is what we are doing every day in this country when we indulge in the wickedness of the world around us. We are entertained by it. We are enticed by it. We are in awe of it. We need to believe the truth Peter is teaching us here in this passage. God is going to rescue the righteous out of this wickedness, but we need to guard ourselves to NOT be like Lot and torment our righteous souls. Separation from the world provides protection for our righteous souls.
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