Just as Peter was warning his audience that false teachers and false prophets would infiltrate the church and try to persuade Christ’s followers to chase after their own passions and desires, there are false teachings today in God’s church that are damaging and lead to its destruction. People who secretly slip in and undermine the authority and validity of God’s Word. People who teach that as long as we are happy, wealthy, and healthy then we are in God’s will. People who promote unhealthy, immoral, and unnatural sexual desires as permissible among God’s people. People who are only concerned with getting money from church people while promising abundance in return (“Sow a seed today.”). And before we realize it; many of us are exploited, enticed, enslaved and entangled in deception, sensuality, lawlessness, lust, greed, and corruption.
This chapter is hemmed in with the credibility of God’s Word and the authenticity of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the promise of His imminent return. These are the tools we’ve been given to fight against falsehood in the church. God has also demonstrated through Noah, that those who stay faithful and obedient to God in an immoral culture will be preserved (2:5). He displayed through the life of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah that those who are distressed and tormented by the godlessness surrounding them will be rescued out of corruption (2:6-8). And there is a promise to all godly and righteous people that the Lord knows how to rescue us too (2:9). He has planned a way of escape from the “defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2:20).”
We don’t have to be exploited, enticed, enslaved, and entangled! We can stand on truth and escape the corruption of this world by not giving in to our sinful desires, by clinging to Jesus Christ and His righteousness, by knowing His perfect Word, and by holding fast to the promise that Jesus is coming again.
dailybiblereader2012 