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, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing,
2 Peter 2:10-15
If we are tempted to gasp at the vehemence of Peter's denunciations of these evil men, we should remember that he has in mind the deadly danger they were proving to the very life and existence of the early Church. Christ Himself taught that it was better for a man to have a millstone hung round his neck and be cast into the midst of the sea than that he should harm any of His 'little ones', and it is just this sentiment that the Apostle is giving expression to here. We note once more the combination of false doctrine and wrong living. In relation to l0b and 11, one thinks of Paul's description in Romans 3 of the ungodly, which he sums up in the significant phrase, 'there is no fear of God before their eyes'. Peter uses the phrase 'gone astray' in 15a and the whole passage indicates the terrifying possibilities that are involved. What we need to realise is that in going astray, in deliberately stepping out of the divine will, we set in train a chain of events which presently we are quite powerless to control and which gather momentum as time goes on. It is this that explains the extremes of sin to which these evil teachers had gone in Peter's day. It is the essence of sin that it gets out of hand, and this is why we must learn to dread it, and shun it, especially in its subtly attractive guises.