Salvation Summaries

In my last blog (2 Peter – Part 1 of 3) I answered the first two of five questions about salvation: Where does faith come from? And, once you become a Christian, does this mean “you made it” and can therefore act any way you want to?  In this blog, I’ll answer the third question, and save the final two for my last blog on 2 Peter.

The false teachers had at one time known the way of righteousness and then turned away from it. They had escaped the corruption of the world by knowing Jesus, but then became entangled in it.  Does this mean that they once were saved, and then lost their salvation (and if they lost their salvation, does that mean we can lose ours too)?

Let me begin by saying that there is no question that the false teachers that Peter describes in chapter 2 are not Christians. In 2:17, Peter says that “black darkness”, or hell, has been reserved for them.  Peter describes them as greedy (2:3), sensual (2:2), adulterous (2:14), who despise authority (2:10), have no knowledge (2:12), revel in their deceptions (2:13) and are unrighteous (2:9).

However, the question is not whether they are unsaved now, but whether they were previously saved and then lost their salvation.  There are two sets of verses that, at least on the surface, seem to indicate that this is what had happened to them.

2 Peter 2:15 They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness.

2 Peter 2:19-22 19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity– for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22 Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”

In the first set, we learn that these false teachers had at one time been on the “straight way” and then wandered off to follow the wrong way.  If the straight way is another way of saying that the false teachers were saved, then it would appear that they had lost their salvation. However, while “straight way” may be associated with salvation, it does not appear to be mean salvation.

From reading John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible and Matthew Henry’s commentary, they define straight way as the way of truth, the gospel, the way to eternal life, or Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life.   From using this interpretation (which seems reasonable), these false teachers knew the way to be saved, and they were on the road that leads to salvation – likely from their knowledge about it – but they were not saved.  

We also learn from this verse that the false teachers followed the way of Balaam.  Balaam is a good example of someone who may have appeared to be saved, but was not.  Balaam spoke directly with the Lord, and even obeyed the Lord to some degree.  But just because God used Balaam in this way does not mean that God saved him.  Balaam was a diviner, a heathen diviner, and not a true believer. At a later date, I hope to “come back” to this issue and provide more reasons as to why Balaam was not a believer, but time does not allow for this now.

In the second set, the case for the false teachers having lost their salvation is a little stronger, for we learn that they “had escaped the defilements of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”  In 2 Peter 1:4, Peter uses a very similar phrase (but says corruption in the world rather than defilements of the world) to describe who? Christians. In addition, as we will learn from studying other books in the Bible, knowing Jesus appears to be how a person is saved (John 17:3  Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent).  

However, a big problem with this interpretation is that it is inconsistent with how one should interpret the clear examples Peter uses in verses 22 to describe these false teachers.  Peter compares them to a dog returning to its vomit, and a sow going back to wallow in the mud.  Dogs and sows are not illustrations of Christians; sheep are.  Further, that each animal returned to doing something unclean shows that they had never really changed.

Warren Wiersbe, in his Bible Exposition Commentary on 2 Peter, well summarizes the meaning of these illustrations: “To use Peter’s vivid images, the pig was washed on the outside, but remained a pig; the dog was ‘cleaned up’ on the inside, but remained a dog. The pig looked better and the dog felt better, but neither one had been changed. They each had the same old nature, not a new one. This explains why both animals returned to the old life: it was part of their nature.”

In addition, I think it’s helpful to look at other verses in 2 Peter to see if Peter describes these false teachers with Christian terms and phrases that he applied to the Christians to whom he wrote.  For example, Peter describes the Christians as having “received a faith” (1:1), been “called” and “chosen” (1:10) and as being “partakers of the divine nature” (1:4). However, he does not describe the false teachers in this way.  

Last, I believe Jesus’ Parable of the Soils (Luke 8:4-15) can be applied to these false teachers.  In this parable, Jesus describes four different locations on which the seeds fell: beside the road, on rocky soil, among thorns, and on good soil.  The seed which fell among the thorns represents people who have heard the word, but they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit.  In the same way, the false teachers heard the word, and knew the word, but they bore no fruit, and thus were not saved.  

Years ago, when our  family lived in Kansas City, a group of three teenagers was going door-to-door in our neighborhood selling framed paintings.  They said that an art store was going out of business, and they were selling paintings at a big discount.  We looked at the paintings, and thought they were good.  In fact, with all of the lighting in some of the paintings, we thought that they were Thomas Kinkaid paintings, and the teenagers told us that they were.  When we questioned them as to why we didn’t see his signature on the paintings, we were told that the mat around the painting covered it up.  Looking back, it’s hard to see how we could have been so ignorant and foolish to believe this, but, at the time, we simply did, and thought we had a real bargain.  Not long after we came to our senses, we realized that we had bought fake Kinkaid paintings.  They looked like the real thing, but weren’t. In the same way, these false teachers at one time had looked like real Christians, but in the end we learned that they never were.