A Dog and Its Vomit

2 Peter 2:19-22 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity--for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.  (20)  If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.  (21)  It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.  (22)  Of them the proverbs are true: "A dog returns to its vomit," and, "A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud."

Peter now expresses his concern about the danger of following these false teachers. He says that those who follow them are actually "worse off at the end than they were at the beginning". In other words, it is better for a person to have never known a thing in the world about Jesus than to hear some truth, hold to it, and later reject it. Greater revelation has a greater accountability. The more one knows the more God holds them accountable for.

Peter goes on to say that "it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them". Some see this passage as describing a man who has lost his salvation and there is no doubt that we all know plenty of people who appear to have done just that. However, I'm not convinced that they were ever saved to begin with.

Peter then describes them as a dogs who have returned to its own vomit and pigs who returned to the mire. So is the man who hears, tastes and sees the good things of God and turns right back into his sin.