2 Peter - Verse-by-Verse Biblical Exegesis

The false teachers are supposed to be living a pure and holy life, but they are practically
and experientially rejecting His authority over them. They continue to repudiate Him by
their rejection of His authority over their life (Iterative Present tense). It is their ungodly
and licentious life that contradicts Christ's rulership over them. To live like antinomians,
as if Christ will never return, is to denounce and deny the Lord Who bought you. This
contradiction of Christ by living in sin is a warning from God to prevent us from ruining
our spiritual life. The key to understanding that this denying is not related to justification
is in 2 Peter 3:17: "As for you, therefore, divinely loved ones (restricted to believers
only), knowing these things beforehand, be constantly on your guard, lest having been
carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness."
And this steadfastness is your temporal, spiritual life - not your justification. It is to be
understood in the context of revelation 3:11: "Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man
take thy crown;" the issue is rewards from experiential sanctification, not justification.
It is also worth noting, that Peter himself "denied" the Lord three times when he was a
believer and follower of Christ (Matthew 10:3, 26:70). "Absolute sovereign Lord"
emphasizes the sovereignty of God in the act of "buying out of the marketplace of sin;"
the use of kurios would have been insufficient to show the one-sided sovereign issue at
hand. Despotes is always attended by dominion and sovereignty. It is generally used of
the Father, but there are cases of it referring to Christ. Despotes implies an element of
submission not found in kurios - which is exactly what the false teachers were not doing;
they denied or refused to submit to the Lord in their daily lives, even though He bought
them. (Trench) The Christian use of despotes expresses a sense of God's absolute
disposal of His creatures, of His autocratic power more strongly than kurios. Philo
elaborates that "despotes is not only kurios, but a frightful despotes that implies a more
complete prostration of self before the might and majesty of God than does kurios.“
Again, the false teachers contradicted their Sovereign Lord by refusing to prostrate their
sinful lives and activities before Him. If ever there was a word chosen to present the
sovereign buying, purchasing, redeeming and ransoming of believers by God without the
Arminian intrusion of "man's will cooperating with God," despotes is the word, and it is
precisely the term used here. Along with despotes, the word agorazo is pregnant with the
theological nuances of redemption, particularly those centered around a ransom, a
purchase price and a substitutionary atonement. This purchase is never portrayed in a
"hypothetical" vein, but is used to denote absolutely the vicarious satisfaction of Christ.
Even the Arminian Lenski agrees that the phrase "Who bought them conserves the fullest
soteriological sense." It comes so close to the meaning of "ransom," that Moffatt even
translates this phrase as "the Lord Who ransomed them." Redemption in this verse
involves the act of purchasing or buying - the payment of a ransom price. Ransom is a
key concept to the understanding of definite atonement or particular redemption.
The nature of a ransom is such that when the price is paid and accepted, it automatically
frees the persons for whom it was intended (Dramatic Aorist tense). Anything short of
this freedom is not a ransom. Christ actively purchased these false teachers at the same
time He purchased us. "He bought (agorazo) to God through His blood (men) out of
every tribe and language and people and nation" (Rev. 5:9). He didn't look into the