2 Peter 2

Wow. Isn't verse 9 powerful? I mean, if all of those stories in the Bible are true, then God has a seriously air-tight case for being able to handle whatever comes up in our lives. Are we the righteous though? Am I like a Lot or Noah? Living a godly life among the condemned? Or am I using the sinners around me as the measuring stick to prove how good I am on my own? But nothing in this chapter is as pointed and convicting to me than the ending. Just read it again.

And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. They prove the truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.”

Whew. I need to lie down.

I mean seriously, do we structure our ministry efforts this way? No. We behave as if getting people to do a repeat-after-me sinner's prayer is the finish line. According to this they are now worse off than before if they are not led to live a holy life. We just inoculated them against a life of fullness in Christ. They now have just enough Jesus in their system to guarantee that they never actually catch Him.

Do we take seriously our entanglements with sin? No. We talk about how we are "working on our issues" instead of denouncing them and fleeing from any appearance of evil. We allow our souls that have been set free from sin at the cost of Jesus' precious blood to remain in slaver to sin. We just sigh and take another big swig of our own puke. We head out into the lost world day after day, preaching  righteousness, covered in mud and wallowing in our own slop.

I didn't see this coming honestly. This is just a nice little chapter that had the heading of "False Teachers" in my Bible. I didn't duck so I just took Peter's left hook right across the jaw. This has some really serious repercussions though for a lot of how I live and operate. Is it saying the same thing to you or is it just me?