Archive for January 8th, 2009
Baxter:
The fifth text which I shall insist on is 2 Pet. 2.1,
“But there were false Prophets also among the People, even as there shall be false Teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.”
And verse 20, &c:
“For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the World through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning: for it had been better for them not to have known the way of Righteousness, then after they have known it, ti turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them: But it happened to them according to the true Proverb, ‘The Dog is turned to his own Vomit again, and the Sow is turned to her own wallowing in the mire.’”
Whereunto for fuller explication add but Jude’s words of the same men, ver. 4. “Ungodly men, turning the Grace of our God into Lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ,” put all these together because they all speak of the same men.
Now 1. The Text expressly says, they denied the Lord that bought them.
2. That is it is the Lord Jesus that is the Lord appears.
1. In that it is expressly said in the 20. ver. that it was by the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that they escaped the pollutions of the World.
2. Jude expressly says, “They denied the Lord Jesus Christ.”
3. There have been few that have denied God among all the Apostates in comparison of those that have denied Christ: Nay, it is a great doubt whether it can be proved of any, directly that were in those times.
4. Their Apostasy is described by “turning from the holy Commandment delivered to them,” which is called “the way of Righteousness,” and to their former Vomit (which must needs be the state they were in before they turned Christians) and to the mire, after they were washed; And this state of Apostasy is opposed to “escaping the pollutions of the World, by the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” so that it is left past doubt that it is the Lord Jesus Christ that bought them whom they are said to deny. And Jude says of them, that “they are twice dead, plucked up by the roots,” by which it appears that after their first death, they had received some kind of new Life by Christ.
Lastly, Note, that here are many benefits which they received, which could not have befallen them, but through the Death of Christ; They could no other way have been washed and have escaped the world’s pollutions, and have known the way of Righteousness, &c., yea Jude says,”They turn the Grace of God into Lasciviousness,” therefore it was a sin against Grace: and all Grace is by the blood of Christ: yea it iseems they had themselves some Grace, that is, (Mercy contrary to merit and tending to a recovery), which they so turned into Lasciviousness. And Peter in the next chapter shows that their Apostasy lay in a not-believing Christ’s second coming, because of his seeming delay, and therefore they gave themselves up to their Lusts, and said mockingly, “Where is the promise of his coming?” so that it is both evident that they were purchased by Christ, and that it is Christ that bought them whom they are said to deny.