2 Peter 2:13Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

They consider pleasure to consist in daily luxury. That is, in the daily gratification of the throat they place the true aim, the true and beloved good sense, and pleasure.

Yet it should be known that when Holy Scripture censures what is in men by nature, that is, what belongs to animals, it likens them to the irrational.

For example, it says: “Man who is in honor and does not understand is like the animals that perish” (Ps 48:13). Also: “Do not be like the horse and the mule” (Ps 31:9). Again: “These are well-fed horses” (Jer 5:8).

And again: “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Mt 10:16). Scripture says this not by changing nature, but only by persuading us to restrain natural inclinations.

Peter says: they feast with you not for the sake of love or participation in the brotherly meal, but to find the time needed to deceive women.

Shameful men and defilers. He means that there is nothing pure in them. Like shameful men in clean garments, they insinuate themselves into the pious city and defile everything. If they seduce anyone, or can draw into debauchery the men and women staying with them, they count this as pleasure, for by it they satisfy their desire. They also feast with you, as he says, but not because they love you and value your hospitality.

For punishment is the recompense for lawlessness, says the Apostle. The lawless deeds of those who, though themselves enslaved to corrupt flesh, nevertheless blaspheme the way of life of people who live chastely, are condemned all the more. Bound by their own mad errors, they do not cease to blacken and seduce those who know what is sound.

"Feeding on their own deceits," ε̉ν ταις α̉πά̉ταις, according to another reading, ε̉ν ταις α̉γάπαις; compare Jude 1:12. The Apostle Paul reproved the Corinthians for the disorders they committed at the love feasts (1 Cor 11:17). In later times, under the influence of false teachers, these suppers, or agape meals, in some places became gatherings of shamelessness and debauchery. The Council of Laodicea, around 364, in canon 28, and the Council in Trullo, in 691, in canon 74, forbade them wherever they were still retained, even in a proper form.

They will receive recompense, the punishment they deserve, for lawlessness, for their vile manner of action and whole way of life. They will undergo God’s wrath, calamities, sorrows, and misfortunes in this life (cf. Rom 2:8-9), and eternal destruction in the age to come (2 Cor 5:10; 2 Thess 1:9; Col 3:25; Rom 6:23).

“Pleasure in daily luxury”: they place the highest good and delight in sinking daily, that is, constantly, into luxury, all kinds of sinful pleasures, in food, clothing, the arrangement of daily life, and every kind of sinful action.

“Shameful and defiling men”: people who defile themselves outwardly and inwardly. By them the holy and pure name of Christ is defiled, and the holy body of Christ, the Church of Christ, which is His body, is stained.

Presenting the particular features of heretics, the Apostle shows how their inward sinfulness is expressed outwardly. It appears in their physical nature, which draws them toward sin, in their irrationality, in their lustful looks, and in the corruption of a heart that constantly seeks fleeting pleasures and every kind of seizure. According to the multitude of their sins, so will be their lot, toward which they are drawn by their sinful nature. Divine condemnation has long weighed upon that nature.