and saved righteous Lot, distressed with the abandoned conversation of the godless,
Peter lists past judgments — fallen angels, the flood, the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot's rescue is the one bright thread running through them. Peter also settles a question Genesis leaves open. He calls Lot righteous, and says the world Lot chose wore him down every day.
This verse does not stand alone. It is one clause in a single argument that starts in verse 4 and only lands in verses 9 and 10.
God, however, is more than able to deal with the situation this has created. He can untangle all the confusion, as verses 4 to 10 tell us. Read those seven verses, and notice that not one full stop comes until the last word of verse 10. They are one huge sentence… This is a most comforting fact for the believer, however frightening it may be for the ungodly.
Read only Genesis, and Lot's standing before God stays unclear. Peter's word "righteous" does not come from the Old Testament record. It is new information.
Which of us, reading only the story of Lot as Genesis tells it, could say for certain what his true state before God was? He shared Abraham's path for a while, but did he share Abraham's faith at all? His later history did not look like it, so who of us could tell? Our passage here, though, settles the question. It declares him a righteous man, though sadly tangled up with the world and living a life of constant distress as a result. God knew him and rescued him by the hands of angels.
In Genesis, God keeps His distance from Lot. Looking back on the same life, He singles out the one thing in it that pleased Him.
In the story itself, we find God keeping Himself a stranger to Lot. That is what His way of governing required — the discipline Lot's soul needed at the time. That need is now past and gone. As He looks back on that history, He can pick out the good He had noticed all through. He can say how precious to Him, even in a Lot, was the distress of soul that the sin of Sodom caused him. Such is our God! Such is His holiness, and such His grace!
The older wording "filthy conversation of the wicked" is not about bad language alone. The word covers everything those around him were and did.
Who would have imagined, from the record in the Old Testament, that we would read in the New Testament that Lot was "vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked" — their whole manner of life, including their talk — and that he "vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds"?
Peter is writing against teachers who make light of coming judgment. Lot, whatever his failures, never belonged to that company.
Lot was not like Abraham, who was in the secret of the Lord, away from the scene. But he was no mocker, and no sceptic either. This righteous man lived among them, and what he saw and heard tormented his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds. Lot did not have the more blessed place that Abraham had, yet he was truly grieved for the Lord's sake.
Lot's pain came from where he chose to live. He had no need to be there, and his presence did the city no good.
He had no business in such company. If he had walked in separation to God, as Abraham did, he could have enjoyed fellowship with God, and the ruin that fell on his own family would never have happened. Genesis 19 records that sad story as a warning to everyone in every age who claims to fear God. Believers who mix themselves with the world will be no help to it at all, even though that may be their hope. The world will only defile them and lead them away from God.
The evil reached Lot through what he saw and heard. The cure is a heart already full of something better.
There is no need for a believer today to be in Lot's position. He was in Sodom willingly and on purpose. We have to pass through the world, but there is such a thing as being taken up with something else. I will tell you a cure that keeps the ways of the wicked from getting into your soul and distressing it. Get taken up with Christ. If you are taken up with Christ, there will be no room for this to get in. There is a huge amount of moral filth all around. Be occupied with Christ… Your soul will never be really distressed by the filthy ways of the wicked unless you are on friendly, familiar terms with them.
- Rescued — verses 4 to 10 are one sentence. Its point is that God can lift His own out before judgment falls.
- Righteous — Genesis leaves Lot's standing an open question. Peter closes it, and the verdict is God's, not a guess of ours.
- Remembered — God picks out the one good thing in a wasted life — Lot's distress at Sodom's sin — and keeps it in Scripture.
- Wretched — the "filthy conversation" was the whole way of life around him. Seeing and hearing it tormented him day after day.
- Remedy — Lot chose to live there. A heart already taken up with Christ leaves no room for that filth to get in.
(for the righteous man through seeing and hearing, dwelling among them, tormented [his] righteous soul day after day with [their] lawless works,)
Peter reaches back to Sodom for an example, and the man he singles out is not one of the guilty but one of the rescued. It shows what living in that city cost a believer. It also raises a question Genesis never settles: how did Lot come to be called righteous?
Read the record of Lot's life on its own and you would not guess this description of him. One writer starts from that difficulty and finds the answer in God's own knowledge of the man:
However much destructive heresies come in, and people are deceived, the Lord knows how to disentangle His people and judge the ungodly. We usually find it impossible even to tell them apart. Who of us, reading only the story of Lot in Genesis, could tell his true state before God? He shared Abraham's path for a while, but did he share Abraham's faith at all? His later history did not look like it, so who of us could tell? Our Scripture, however, settles every question. It declares him a righteous man, though the world had sadly entangled him, and his life was one of continual distress as a result. God knew him and delivered him by angelic hands.
Nothing in Lot's story earned that verdict:
We cannot see a single redeeming point in the sad history. Yet the Holy Spirit is quick to notice anything of Christ in any one of us. He says that God delivered Lot as a righteous man, distressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked. Lot was "tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard." How refreshing that verse is! It is like an oasis in the desert, a silver lining on a dark cloud.
The word for their deeds reaches further than breaking laws:
The word is ἄνομος (anomos), translated "without law" in 1 Corinthians 9:21. It applies to those who, regardless of all law, do their own will... 1 John 3:4 should read, "Sin is lawlessness," and this term applies equally to those who never had the law.
Lot did not meet this evil now and then. His public position put him in its path:
As they came near, Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. That means, of course, that he had accepted the office of magistrate in that very wicked city. This helps us understand how he "was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds," as recorded in 2 Peter 2:7-8. He not only saw and heard terrible evils as a private person, but came into contact with all of it as a magistrate.
Lot's torment tells us something about him. A man who plays with truth does not feel evil like that:
Lot was not like Abraham, in the secret of the Lord apart from the scene. But he was no scoffer, and no sceptic either. He "was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard." Who ever heard of such seriousness in a casual critic? Lot's was not the more blessed portion of Abraham, yet he was truly grieved for the Lord's sake.
Distress over sin is not the same as fellowship with God about it. The difference showed when judgment came:
Lot meanwhile is tormenting his righteous soul — does he know anything about the purposes of God? Not a word. He is saved, yet only as through fire. He has a "righteous soul," but it is a tormented soul, not a soul in communion with God. It is tormented "day after day." There is at least this much right-mindedness in him: his soul is tormented. He is there before the judgment comes, his soul tormented, while happy Abraham is on the mountain talking with God. And when judgment does come, how does it find him? With his soul tormented and totally unprepared, instead of in communion with God about it.
Being upset by evil while settled inside it left him with nothing to say that anyone would hear:
While he torments his righteous soul over their unlawful deeds, the men of the city have a right to say to him: "What business have you here? You are quarrelling with sin in the place of sin." In Genesis 19:9 they sneer that he came to live there as a foreigner and now wants to be a judge. They have a perfect right to judge that way. Association with the world costs him all power of testimony, when he ought to be witnessing to his complete separation from it. There is distress of spirit, but no power.
- Righteous. Genesis leaves Lot's standing an open question; this verse settles it — God knew him, and said so.
- Righteous, yet misplaced. He sat as a magistrate in the gate of Sodom, so its lawless deeds met him every day.
- Righteous and tormented. His grief was real and for the Lord's sake. Yet his was a tormented soul, not a soul in communion with God.
- Righteous and powerless. Quarrelling with sin from inside it cost him his testimony. The city just asked what he was doing there.
- Righteous and rescued. God knew him and sent angels to bring him out before the judgment fell. He knows how to deliver His own, however entangled.