APOSTASY

Apostasy is both a departure and a reverting to a previous condition. [2 Peter 2:20-22]

We learn much from this passage. Notice, these phrases:

a. “after they have escaped...defilements of the world”;

b. “Through the knowledge” – knowledge (spiritual learning/discernment)

c. “entangled/overcome”

d. “Last state is become worse...than the first.”

e. “Better...not to have known...than to turn back”

This is speaking of a return to a defiled condition; one in which was escaped through knowledge of ‘the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’, ‘the way of righteousness’, & the ‘holy commandment’. (all of these are one and the same)

Other passages: 2 Thess 2:3, 10-12. It is called a ‘falling away’.

Here, we are told the causes of this ‘falling away’; namely:

a. “they received not a love of the truth”;

b. They ‘believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness’.

*Apostasy implies the existence of truth. Truth is what was ‘fallen from’; something that ‘existed’; something that was made known because of knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

Jesus declared, “I am the way the truth & the life...” (John 14:6). It is ‘‘the holy commandment’; ‘the way of righteousness’.

Truth implies the existence of a standard or a pattern (Gal. 1:6-9) “another gospel as opposed to the one true gospel”.

Something “true” must exist before anything false can be identified'