The Certainty of Judgment: 2 Peter 2:4-10

Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of this world is that it seems wicked people often get away with their wickedness and those they sinned against suffer unjustly and are not vindicated. Why doesn’t God judge all sin immediately? The prophet Habakkuk had this concern and got an answer from God about it, but he didn’t like the answer.

Peter sort of addresses this question, at least reminding us that not all judgment occurs in this life, but in the life to come. Perhaps there is no ultimate answer to the question that we can understand. God knows what He is doing. And when it comes to false teachers Peter sees evidence of their coming judgment in Old Testament scriptures.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. (2 Peter 2:4-10, ESV)

What is the hope and even the guarantee that God will punish these false teachers but yet rescue the godly from their trials? Peter finds several examples from Scripture that give us assurance of these very things. First, the angels who sinned were cast into a place of gloomy darkness (the Greek word here used is Tartarus, not the normal word for hell) awaiting final judgment, that is, eternity in the Lake of Fire. Peter places this event prior to the flood that destroyed the inhabited world. So it could either refer to the original fall of angels with Satan their leader as they rebelled against God or to some subsequent “sin” fallen angels committed. There is no direct reference to their original fall in Scripture (unless you grant that Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 refer to this, which I do not believe), however. Others, thus, have identified this sinning as what is described in Genesis 6, the “sons of God” (they say) referring to fallen angels who cohabitated with human women in violation of God’s command. It is hard to see how such a thing could happen since angels do not have bodies but perhaps there is something going on that we are not aware of that enables them to take some solid form. In either case God judged these angels and He will so judge false teachers.

The second example is the flood in Noah’s days. If God was willing to judge all and yet rescue Noah and his family, surely he will judge the false teachers and preserve the believers. Third, Sodom and Gomorrah were judged by Him but Lot was rescued with his family.  This third example also shows how God is able to rescue the godly from trials.  His rescue for Lot was unexpected and dramatic, and probably received with a bit of reluctance on Lot’s part (and certainly on his wife’s part).

Not all judgment takes place immediately. Peter says that God knows how to “keep the unrighteous under judgment until the day of judgment,” implying that this final judgment in the future will be the decisive one. God will especially keep those under judgment who indulge in “defiling passion” and “despise authority” like the false teachers do.

All this suggests that we are remiss if we don’t identify and separate ourselves from those who teach false doctrine. Again, the false teaching always relates to falsehood about who Jesus is and about compromising purity, and, as we will see, denying the coming judgment and the arrival of God’s kingdom.