You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.
2 Peter 3:17
As Peter draws the epistle to its close he gives a word of warning to his readers against being led away by the false teachers. Once again he insists that doctrinal leads to moral declension. It is strange, is it not, that when such a consistent emphasis is made to this in the Scriptures, so little heed seems to have been paid to it in modern times. The prevailing attitude nowadays seems to be, 'it does not matter so much what you believe, as long as your life is right': Surely Peter has exposed the dangerous fallacy underlying this! Wrong doctrine can never produce right living, and when experience sometimes seems to teach otherwise (as, for example, in the 'good' living of those with no religious convictions) we need to recognise that such people are living on borrowed spiritual capital far more than they realize. It is only when the spiritual capital of a former heritage is exhausted that such lives will come to be seen in their proper colours. We are beginning to see now in our society the real effects of generations of wrong belief and loss of faith. The truth of the scriptural position and of its warnings in this area is becoming only too clear, and the loss of steadfastness of life and real integrity can now be traced to its proper source.