2 Peter 2:22

But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.

The apostle opens this paragraph by picturing the deceitful manner of alluring men which the false teachers use: These are springs without water and fogs driven by a storm-wind, for whom the gloom of darkness is reserved. In the teaching and preaching of the false prophets there is much sound, sputtering and bubbling, but there is no substance which will quench the thirst of the soul, a characteristic which is demanded of the true teachers, Isaiah 58:11; John 7:38. The false teachers are like banks and billows of fog as it rolls in from the ocean, driven by a strong gale, but all their promises do not result in such a rain as is needed to cause spiritual fruits to grow, Isaiah 55:10. Their end, therefore, will be everlasting destruction in the darkness of hell.

The manner of teaching affected by the false teachers is now described: For, uttering ponderous things of vain speaking, they deceive by the lascivious lusts of the flesh those that had but recently escaped (from) those that live in error. Here the heartless heinousness of the offense is brought out with great force. The false teachers use great, swelling, but empty words and phrases; their sophistry is clothed in language whose grandeur is designed to impress the unlearned. But the bait which they use is, after all, filthy lust, the sensuous desires of the flesh. Thus they caught people, managed to win them for their views, who had but recently been impressed with the truth of the Christian religion, but who had not yet found strength to separate themselves from their old surroundings and customs. The glittering compromises offered by the false teachers were just the thing to impress such as had but recently escaped their old heathen companionships and were loath to give up all their former delights.

For the insidiousness of the danger lay in this: While they promise to them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for to that by which a man is vanquished, to this he is a slave. The false teachers themselves confused liberty and license, and in this sense made alluring promises to those whom they could persuade to listen to them. They held out to possible converts freedom from all legal restraint, intimating that the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free consists in this, that everybody acts as he likes. But herein lies the service of sin; in this respect these men were themselves slaves of corruption, of destruction. For since they willingly performed the lusts of the flesh, deeming this the proper expression of their Christian liberty, therefore they were in subjection to the flesh, they were slaves of sin and on the way to damnation.

The consequences of such behavior are brought out in a striking manner by St. Peter: For if, after having escaped the pollutions of the world in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again taken captive and vanquished by these, their latter state is worse than the first. The men whom the apostle had in mind had probably been converted to Christ in all good faith. They had fled from the pollutions, the profanations, the sins of the world, and taken refuge in the redemption of Christ. Having learned to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they had truly abhorred their former sinful life. It is for this reason that the apostle speaks such solemn words of warning. For if a person has had the sound, saving knowledge of Jesus the Savior, if he has chosen Jesus as his Lord, and then deliberately turns back to his former lusts, permits himself to be governed by the sinful desires which he knows to be wrong, then, indeed, his spiritual state after such defection is worse than it was before his conversion, Matthew 12:45. Note that the false teachers are described as belonging to the truly converted Christians, to the Christian congregation. It is the false teachers that have fallen away from the truth which they formerly confessed that are the most dangerous, the most hostile to the truth.

Therefore St. Peter rightly says of them: For better it would have been for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to know it and yet to turn from the holy commandment committed to them. The people that never hear anything of the way of salvation, that have never heeded the voice which bids them search for the true God, Acts 14:17; Acts 17:27, will indeed receive stripes, Luke 12:48. But he that has become acquainted with the way of righteousness, that knows the way of salvation, and then deliberately spurns the will of God and refuses to be obedient to the Gospel-message, will be in greater condemnation and will be subject to a worse fate, Luke 12:47. In the case of such people, as St. Peter writes with some show of irony: It happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog turns back to his own vomit; and the sow, having been washed, to her wallowing in the mire. As a dog will eat what he himself has just vomited, as swine delight in wallowing in the deepest filth, even though they have just been washed, so people such as have just been described will leave the purity and the glory and the salvation of the Gospel-message and of a life of sanctification and return to the filth of a life of sin and shame. What a stern warning to all Christians not to sell their immortal souls for a few bits of dross, not to abandon themselves to the sins which they have so freely renounced!

Summary

In warning against the false teachers of all times, the apostle depicts them and their punishment, substantiating his statements by examples taken from Old Testament history; he characterizes them as followers of Balaam and describes the curse of their spiritual slavery.