What’s going on when we respond to the gospel and are forgiven of our sins? Peter, in the second chapter of his second letter, uses several phrases to help us understand and appreciate the gravity of the situation. In Christ, we are freed from the slavery of “corruption” (2:19). We have “escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus” (2:20). We have turned to “the holy commandment” delivered to us (2:21). We have come to know and walk “the way of righteousness” (2:21).
But the same section of the same letter also vividly describes how serious and sad it is when a forgiven child of God willfully returns to the slavery of sin.
For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” (2:20-22)
God doesn’t sugarcoat how repulsive it is when his redeemed sons and daughters go back to what separated them from him in the first place. Mire and vomit are stomach-turning metaphors, unpleasant to meditate on for long, but every once in a while, it’s good for us to reflect on the unfiltered ugliness of sin.
If I’m wallowing in unrighteousness today, it’s time to be honest about how disgusting my choice is in the eyes of my Creator. If I’m knowingly, willingly offering myself as a returning slave to sin and corruption, I need to think about how that must make my Savior feel after he was willing to reach so far down into the mud and the muck for me. If temptation is knocking on the door of my heart, passages like 2 Peter 2:22 have the power to remind me just how deceitful the lies on the other side of that door really are. If I’m walking in the light as my ransoming King is in the light, hopefully today’s unpleasant passage will call to mind the cost of my freedom, just how lost and hopeless I was, and how grateful I ought to be each and every day for the transforming power and gracious cleansing of God.
Sin isn’t pretty. Sin isn’t funny. Sin entangles. Sin overcomes. Sin enslaves. Sin is a cruel, filthy master and it’s impossible for me to wallow in it without becoming filthy as well.
Thanks be to God that escape, washing, regeneration, and hope are available to all through the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.