What does it mean that a washed sow returns to wallowing in the mire (2 Peter 2:22)?

(2 Peter 2:22,) "But it is happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." Who vomited? The dog. And who went back to the vomit? The dog. It was a dog all the time, not a clean beast ever. And though the sow was washed, it was still a sow, only washed, and never made a clean beast, never anything but a sow, not a sheep. You cannot wash a sow into a sheep. Before the sow was washed, she was a dirty sow, and after she was washed she was a clean sow, so long as she was restricted by some external influence, as a rope, for instance. That rope she soon gnawed through or broke, and back she went to wallow in the mire, just because she was still a sow. Her nature was unchanged. So is it with the unconverted, but only externally affected professor of Christ.

He is not a person born of God, or renewed, but is merely externally affected by the truth of Christianity. It is man as man, and as soon as the restraint is taken off, back he goes to the thing he likes. If a Christian gets away from Christ, and gets mixed up with the pollutions of the world, he is miserable. Take a sow to the mire, what will it do? Wallow in it again; it has no shrinking from the mire. But take a sheep to the mire, does it desire to get into it? No, it is only too thankful to be taken out, if through accident it has fallen in. So is it with the real Christian. He may, and alas! often does fail and sin; but, like Peter, he is never happy till he has got back to his Lord, and been washed, and restored and forgiven.

I quite admit that there is faith on my part, and that salvation is through faith. But the point is this, it is the Saviour who sought me, and found me, and carries me. And here it is God who comes and says, I want you out of Egypt, and I mean to have you for Myself. With great difficulty Pharaoh is made to let them go, but afterwards he tries to get hold of them again. And this is where unestablished souls are so often frightened. Perhaps after all, they say, I may go back, I may fall away. What about that scripture in Peter which says, "The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire"? (2 Peter 2:22.) Well, why does the dog return to his vomit? Because he is a dog. And why does the sow return to wallowing in the mire? Because she is a sow, and nothing else. You may wash a sow as much as you like, you cannot make a sheep of her. The point of the figure is that the sow has got an unclean nature, and delights in the mire. You never saw a sheep wallowing in the mire. You may have seen a poor sheep fall into a ditch and bleat to be taken out. And that is the case of a backslider. But a child of God is never called a dog or a sow. Those of whom Peter speaks never had been born again, never had received a new life or nature; they had been merely outwardly reformed. Before the sow was washed she was a dirty sow; after she was washed she was a clean sow, but a sow still, no matter what she was washed in. The devil has got all sorts of things in which to wash people. Moral reformation and ecclesiastical observances — quite apart from new birth, and the personal knowledge of Christ — are favourite receipts for salvation. I suppose when the sow was washed they tied her up to keep her clean. But you will find that putting a restraint upon nature merely, will not do. Some day the sow will gnaw the rope and reach the mire again. Why? Simply because she is a sow, and loves the mire, just as an unconverted man loves sin.

The poor victims of these false teachers, who are thus freshly and finally entangled in the world's pollution so that their latter end is worse than their beginning, are not truly converted souls, but merely people who through a certain knowledge gained of the Lord are outwardly reformed in their ways. They are consequently likened to the dog and the sow, both unclean animals. Such is dog nature that it has the unpleasant habit of returning to its own vomit. Such is sow nature that however well washed it loves the mire and plunges into it at the first opportunity. The person who may be intellectually enlightened and consequently reformed in outward actions, yet without that fundamental change of nature produced by the new birth, falls an easy victim. The false teacher promises him liberty and by his great high-sounding words of vanity cuts the slight mental leash that held him in restraint, and there he is back again in the old ways of sin, whether vomit — uncleanness generated from within, or mire, — uncleanness from without.

They had a "knowledge of the Lord and Saviour," they knew "the way of righteousness," they "escaped from them who live in error," yet back they went to their own eternal loss. Sad, sad for them, but what pen can portray the judgment that will overtake the false teachers who have encompassed their ruin? In due season it will not slumber, as verse 3 states.

"For if, after having escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the first. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, having known it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered unto them." Does this mean that these persons were at one time really begotten again, having received life and the Holy Spirit by trusting on Christ? These false teachers certainly were never born again; the description which we have of them is the proof of it. The last verse of this chapter gives the conclusive evidence. Believers, true Christians, are never compared to dogs or swine; they are the sheep of His flock. A sheep cannot be transformed into a dog or a swine, nor will a sheep do what a dog or a swine does. They were therefore never the true children of God. They had escaped the outward pollutions of the world, which is a different thing from the escape of the corruption which is in the world by lust; the latter stands for the inward deliverance by the new birth, the former for an outward reformation which had taken place when they professed the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, when for a time forsaking their evil ways so that they escaped the pollutions. But not having a new nature they became entangled therein and overcome, so that it was worse with them than in the beginning, before they had made a profession. They had known the way of righteousness as made known in the gospel of Christ, but the life which is offered in that way of righteousness, with the fruits of righteousness which follow, they had never accepted by a living faith. And this seems to be the case with the vast majority of the false teachers of today, the destructive critics, and those who deny the deity of our Lord. They were never born again; they never had a true experience of real salvation, hence they are but natural men, not having the Spirit.

And now the effect of all this upon others is specially marked. "Speaking great swelling words of vanity, they allure with the lusts of the flesh those just escaping from those that live in error," men under a certain power of the truth, convicted in their own conscience, while, after all, the heart is not drawn to or satisfied with the things of God. Men are forced from evil by the conviction of judgment at hand, and this is the well-known character of so many apparent conversions under the chastening hand of God. They are, after all, driven, not drawn; and thus the lusts of the flesh still allure them. They would love to have the liberty which these men promise them, although, indeed, they are but themselves the mere slaves of corruption, least their own masters when they think most surely that they are that. But thus those who "have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" may be again entangled and overcome, men at heart halting between two opinions, although the truth has so far prevailed with them as to compel their separation from the very things that still invite them. We must note carefully here that those of whom the apostle has spoken in the first chapter are those who have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. This is the real Christian character. The heart is satisfied, and satisfied with Christ; and thus they have in them a principle of stability which those spoken of here have none of. They have escaped the pollutions of external things. They have never had their own inner malady healed. Thus, though it be the "knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" that has done this, they are but dogs that turn back to their forsaken vomit, and, like the washed sow, which one surely knows, spite of her washing, will go back to the mire she loves. It is plain, therefore, that the apostle is, in all this, not contemplating that which could be a possibility to any real Christian. They have reformed, as men say; they know the way of righteousness. They are convinced of that which the light has thus discovered to them; but that is all, and it is plain how in such a condition, when in spite of this they turn back to that which they have left, their last state has become worse than the first. Such, then, is the spreading character of this canker of evil, while at the same time we are made carefully to know how God, has provided for and shields His own.

Now Prov.26:ll is quoted, likening such men first to a dog returning to its own vomit. The dog being an unclean animal, this is its very nature. What has been once rejected as obnoxious and harmful, a man will again embrace, just adding a little religious spice to it, because there is no fundamental change in the man: he Has not been born again: he remains unclean. Similarly, a sow may be washed, but its very nature will lead it back to roll in the first mud-hole it finds. If as a dog he feeds on corruption, as a sow he chooses a filthy environment. This is apostasy; for though a person may still pretend to be a Christian, he has in practice really turned against Christ. None of this could be true of any who had been born again, for believers are sheep, not dogs or sows; and the of the nature of the sheep is not to return to it vomit, or to wallow in the mud.

There is all the difference in the world between a sheep and a sow. The sow that is washed is the man that has not been born again, but who is outwardly reformed. He has given up his bad habits — it may be he has become a teetotaller, and perhaps a little religious, but there has been no inward work of the grace of God in his soul. His nature is the same and we find him sooner or later back in the mire again. The pig loves the dirt. I remember reading of a certain Chinese Emperor who had an extraordinary predilection for pigs. He had one which was a special favourite. It had an attendant, and was dressed in a silken coat. One day it eluded the vigilance of its keeper, and grunted with delight in the mud, — silk coat and all. Why? It was the nature of the beast to do so. But when a man or woman comes to Christ, there is an inward work. They are born again, and receive a new nature that hates sin: they are His sheep.

But I pass on to the consideration of another example of apostasy which is given in 2 Peter 2:20, 22: For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire."

Now here again there is said to have been "the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" in those who, without doubt, "draw back unto perdition." And not only so, but this knowledge had had effect upon them, for it had drawn them out of the pollutions of the world." Yet it does not require any very close attention to the apostle's words, to discern here also how little he conceived these apostates to have ever been true Christians. Why had it passed into a proverb that the dog would return to his vomit again, and the washed sow to her wallowing in the mire? What did such a proverb mean, but that a washed sow remained all the while a sow, and that, inasmuch as the washing had not changed her nature, she would go back as a matter of course to her old habits? It was simple enough to know she would. And so one who had in the same way been merely washed from the pollutions of the world — from defilements from without — but whose nature was never changed, might be expected to fulfil that proverb.

But now mark the difference, as pointed out in this same epistle, where there was true faith. Speaking of those to whom that knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord was indeed eternal life, he describes them as "having escaped," not the pollutions merely, but "the corruption that is in the world through lust." (Chap. 1:4.) Here the need of the soul had indeed been divinely met. It is not in this case external pollution merely, but the "lust," the internal corruption of the heart, that is dealt with. Christ is known as the rest and satisfaction of the soul. The heart is changed with a new nature, new desires, new affections have come in and there is no proverb, that if a sow be turned into a sheep it will go back into the mire.

At the first Christianity made such an impact upon Judaism and the pagan world that many unbelievers attended the gatherings of the Christians, and doubtless were influenced for a time for good, but having no inward reality, no vital touch with God, such were liable to backslide, in which case it were better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than to turn away from it. Such are described as the dog returning to his vomit, and the washed sow to her wallowing in the mire.

(Vv. 20-22). In spite of the profession that they are the servants of the Lord, these false teachers with their swelling words of vanity are the servants of corruption. They had made a profession of Christianity and, through the knowledge of the Lord, had escaped for a time the pollutions of the world; but again being entangled and overcome, they prove that though they had known “the way of righteousness”, they had not followed in the way, and after all their profession and high-sounding words, they are not truly among the sheep of Christ. They can only be likened to a dog that returns to its vomit, or to a sow that, though washed, is still a sow, and when occasion arises returns to her wallowing in the mire.