How could Lot be considered righteous in light of his many failures (2 Peter 2:7)?

Circumcision known, we find in the next chapter God in communion with Abraham (now indeed Abraham) after a manner never before enjoyed. The Lord not only comes or appears to him, but openly associates Himself with him as with one of whom He is not ashamed. No one can doubt, that looks at it, the suggestive contrast with the next chapter, in which Lot for the last time comes before us, the very type of one "saved so as through the fire." This has been seen by others, but the more we look at it, the more striking and instructive will it be found. I shall dwell at more length than I have usually permitted myself upon lessons of such intense and practical interest as are those which God in His mercy has here given us. It should be evident that the foundation of all this contrast expresses itself in the different position of these two men - the one, in the door of his tent at Mamre; the other, in the gate of Sodom. In the one, we see still the persistent pilgrim; in the other, one who has been untrue to his pilgrim-ship, and is settled down amid the pollutions of a sinful world. Striking it is, and most important to remember, that he is a "righteous man," expressly declared so by the word of inspiration: "That righteous man, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their ungodly deeds." He is thus an example of how "the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." (2 Pet. 2: 7,9.) This is a complete contrast with the way in which the book of Genesis represents him. I need scarcely say, there is no contradiction; and the contrast itself is a very beautiful instance of the style of Scripture. In the actual narrative he is spoken of as one of whom God is ashamed: "And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in the midst of which Lot dwelt." Lot has been under the cover, and God must use the cover toward him. He is the God of Abraham; how could He call Himself the God of Lot? How solemn this treatment of one of His own! Reader, how is it with you this moment as before God? Is He confessing, or denying you? This is not a question which you can turn off by saying, I am a Christian. It is on that very ground that it appeals to you. In the history, then, we find God making Himself strange to Lot. This was what His governmental ways required - the discipline that the need of his soul called for at the time. The need past and gone, as He looks back upon that history now, He can pick out of it the good He had marked all through, and say how precious to Him, even in a Lot, was the trouble of soul which the iniquity of Sodom gave him. Such is our God! Such is His holiness, and such His grace! But then how clear this makes it that it was not because Lot had taken part in the wickedness of Sodom that the Lord was thus displeased! It was simply on account of his being there, even as of Abraham that tent life of his is marked out for His special approval: "By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise .... These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. .... But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city." (Heb. 11: 9, 13, 16.) Thus, then, we are right in saying that the tent at Mamre and the gate of Sodom are characteristic and contrasted things. Faith, looking for a city which hath foundations, is content to scratch the earth with a tent-pole merely. This was Abraham's place, pattern as he is, and father of all them that believe; and God comes to commune with him, in the broad open day - "in the heat of the day." The style of His coming is as noticeable as all else: there is no distance, there is intimacy: it is three men who come; in fact, two angels, and One before whom the angels vail their faces. But they come as men, and keep this place - the more strikingly, because in the next chapter we find those who had left Abraham still as two men appear in Sodom explicitly as angels. Clearly, this difference has meaning in it. How sweet a foreshadowing of what in due time was to take place - the tabernacling in flesh of Him in whom faith realizes the glory of Immanuel, now no more to faith a visitant merely. And Abraham's practiced heart knew under all disguises Him who stood there. We learn this plainly from the first words with which he welcomes One whom yet in this garb he has never seen before.

However much destructive heresies are brought in, and consequently people are deceived and the way of truth blasphemed, the Lord will know how to disentangle His people and judge the ungodly. We usually find it impossible even to discern, and much less can we disentangle. Who of us, reading only the story of Lot as unfolded in Genesis could discern with any certainty what was his true state before God? He shared Abraham's path for a while, but did he at all share in Abraham's faith? His subsequent history did not look like it, so who of us could tell? Our Scripture however sets all questions at rest. He is pronounced to have been a righteous man, though sadly enmeshed by the world and living a life of continual vexation in consequence. God knew him and delivered him by angelic hands.

Thus, then, those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart are clearly marked out. We can only discern the heart in the practical life; and here are those who, naming the name of the Lord, withdraw from iniquity. We have here, therefore, the company of those who can walk with one another, necessarily a company more and more separate from the great mass of profession round about them, and it may be comparatively a smaller and smaller company as the days darken and evil increases, the love of many waxing cold. But there is need of further guiding as to things which may have often a special reference to those who have learned that they have to prove all things if they would "hold fast that which is good." This, too, might degenerate into needless and idle questions, things debated about, which gender unnecessary strife; and in this sense "the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle towards all, apt to teach, forbearing, in meekness setting right those that oppose themselves." It is very plain that there may be the advocacy of that which is in itself right and true, nay, most important, and yet in a far different spirit from this. The testing of things must be really in order to "take forth the precious from the vile," and therefore the occupation must be with that which is precious, and the owning of that which is so, even when it is found in connection with what is far otherwise. How blessed to know that as this is the Lord's rule for His people, we may be perfectly sure it is that of His own action towards all. In fact, it is as taking forth the precious from the vile that we shall "be as His mouth." We shall be able to speak for Him, in His name, who could speak of a Lot in Sodom as a "righteous man," who, "seeing and hearing, vexed. his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;" and yet Lot certainly was not one who separated himself, according to the divine thought, from the iniquity that he judged. Why was he there, to vex his soul with it? How many there are who vex themselves with things, (and congratulate themselves upon this,) — things that they should simply turn their back upon and leave, but which they will not! Yet God owns all that He can own. If He did not, how sad a thing it would be for any of us, when we realize the apostle's own words, that even one's unconsciousness of anything wrong is not that which justifies us, "but He that judgeth is the Lord." With hearts so capable of deception as our own hearts are, how well to realize that there is One who is "greater than our heart, and knoweth all things," but One who will, therefore, not confound even the least bit of good that He can find with the evil which may seem almost to envelop it. The mere chafing of the soul by evil does not give power over it. The one who is really with God will always, as the apostle shows us here, be looking for the work of God amongst those from whom he may have to be entirely separate. Yet God may some time give them repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth, and we must be careful that by our own conduct we put no hindrance in the way of their recovery. Be it that they are in the snare of the devil, yet they may awake up out of it, even those at present taken captive by him for his will.

But the apostle here as before attests divine mercy as well as judgment. For as before He preserved Noah preacher of righteousness with seven others who shared the ark with him, so now He saved "righteous Lot, distressed by the behaviour of those abandoned in licentiousness." Peter's appointed view is righteousness and unrighteousness; as Jude's was apostasy from a place given by divine will. Both were true of old, and shall be true again in those who hate and deny prophecy, yet will prove its truth in the ruin of those they mislead. And shall they escape, who served Satan's aim and despised God's word, because they die before that day to which all the prophets point, though they had "settled" it to have been a mistake? Lot was not like Abraham in the secret of the Lord apart from the scene. But he was no scoffer, any more than a sceptic; "for the righteous man, dwelling among them in seeing and hearing was tormenting a righteous soul day after day with lawless works." Whoever heard of such seriousness in a dilettante higher critic? Lot's was not the more blessed part of Abraham, yet was he truly grieved for the Lord's sake. And so it will be with a righteous remnant, when the Jews are in their last trial and the mass accept idols once more, and the antichrist too, as the Psalms and the Prophets amply prove.

There was, however, one man there who must needs be delivered. Lot, however inconsistent in his ways, was at heart a true believer. Ages later, he was divinely described as "just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked" (2 Peter 2:7). He had no business in such company. Had he walked in separation to God, as Abraham, he might have enjoyed fellowship with God, and the ruin which fell upon his own family had never happened. The miserable story contained in Gen. 19 has been written for the warning of all who in every age profess to fear God. Believers who mix themselves with the world will in no wise be a help to it (even though this may be their hope); the world will but defile them, and lead them astray from God.

It should be evident that the foundation of all this contrast expresses itself in the different position of these two men — the one, in the door of his tent at Mamre; the other, in the gate of Sodom. In the one, we see still the persistent pilgrim; in the other, one who has been untrue to his pilgrimship, and is settled down amid the pollutions of a sinful world. Striking it is, and most important to remember, that he is a "righteous man," expressly declared so by the word of inspiration: "That righteous man, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their ungodly deeds." He is thus an example of how "the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." (2 Peter 2:7, 9.) This is a complete contrast with the way in which the book of Genesis represents him. I need scarcely say, there is no contradiction; and the contrast itself is a very beautiful instance of the style of Scripture. In the actual narrative he is spoken of as one of whom God is ashamed: "And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in the midst of which Lot dwelt." Lot has been under the cover, and God must use the cover toward him. He is the God of Abraham; how could He call Himself the God of Lot? How solemn this treatment of one of His own! Reader, how is it with you this moment as before God? Is He confessing, or denying you? This is not a question which you can turn off by saying, I am a Christian. It is on that very ground that it appeals to you.

In the history, then, we find God making Himself strange to Lot. This was what His governmental ways required — the discipline that the need of his soul called for at the time. The need past and gone, as He looks back upon that history now, He can pick out of it the good He had marked all through, and say how precious to Him, even in a Lot, was the trouble of soul which the iniquity of Sodom gave him. Such is our God! such is His holiness, and such His grace!

From his history in the O.T. it could not have been discovered that he was a righteous man; but this testimony is given of him in 2 Peter 2:7-8, where he is called 'just Lot,' who, as a righteous man, was daily vexed in his soul by the unlawful deeds of those among whom he dwelt. Though God delivered him, he is a solemn instance of a righteous man dwelling needlessly amid gross wickedness; his course being the strongest contrast to that of Abraham. Gen. 11 — Gen. 14, Gen. 19; Ps. 83:8; Luke 17:28-29.

We may be able to return to our normal relations with God after some lapse into worldly ways or associations, but there might remain permanent damage to those who have been associated with us, who have been carried forward hitherto on our faith, as Lot seems to have been carried on the faith of Abraham. It is not that there was the complete absence of faith in Lot, for the Apostle Peter tells us that he was “just,” a righteous man in the sight of God, but he had not the energy of faith that was found in Abraham.

Sodom and Gomorrah did not involve the whole world, but its local and confined sphere does not escape God's notice: awful in-deed was the overthrowing of those cities, a standing warning to all who choose to live ungodly. Here too God was able to single out one man for preservation, a believer, called here "just Lot," though, being in no proper associations for a believer, he was distressed by the filthy manner of life adopted by the wicked residents there.

For he was a righteous man, but in circumstances far from righteous and continually, every day, by seeing and hearing the lawless conduct of the Sodomites, he was tormented in his soul. He evidently tried, ineffectively, to stem the tide of evil, but he did not separate himself from it, as he ought to have. Therefore God Himself intervened, and delivered Lot out of the city be-fore its dreadful destruction He knows how to do this In the case of every true child of God, while at the same time reserving the unjust for judgment.

How then does Abraham make use of his favoured position? Does he use it to strengthen more fully, and place on a firmer basis, the future interests of his house? Surely the natural heart would at once have prompted him to make such a use of his present advantage in the matter of nearness to Jehovah. Does he use it thus? Nay. Abraham had learnt too much of the ways of God to act in a way savouring so much of the selfishness of a heartless world. But, even had he thought of such a thing, he had no need to utter a syllable on the subject, for "the Almighty God" had most amply satisfied his heart with regard to the everlasting interests of his house — He had fixed it upon such a foundation that an anxious thought would have evidenced a complete want of moral order in Abraham's soul. He therefore entertained not a thought about himself or his house, but like a genuine man of faith, he takes advantage of his place in the presence of God to intercede for a brother, whose worldliness had plunged him into the very midst of that place which was about to be given over to everlasting destruction. "And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" (ver. 23) "The righteous!" to whom can he allude? Can it be to the man who had so deliberately turned aside out of the path of faith to take up his abode at Sodom? Yes; he speaks of Lot — he calls him "righteous" — he speaks of him in the very same terms as the Spirit in the apostle afterward speaks of him when he calls him a "righteous soul." Abraham, therefore, was taught of God when he could recognise in the man surrounded by all the pollution of Sodom "a righteous soul."