2 Peter 2:17
These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever. These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.
These are false teachers who arise inside the church and are regarded by many as genuine, who have forsaken the right way and mislead others. They are spiritually empty and unstable, and darkness is reserved for them. They are compared to waterless wells and storm-driven clouds because they offer no true spiritual help.
To be wells without water is to profess to believe the truth and to claim to be reformers with great light, knowledge and love of the truth, while being empty of truth and giving nothing to others. They appear righteous yet offer no truth that gives life. They promise light, knowledge and love of the truth but impart no life-giving truth or true spiritual help. A minister who breaks the commandments while claiming to believe the truth is in this sense empty, and his influence brings death rather than life. Their false doctrines pollute the whole person and lead people into heresy and darkness.
To be clouds carried with a tempest is to be unstable and driven by corruption rather than by truth. They cling to their own opinions and refuse to give them up even when those opinions lead to actions unacceptable to God, developing character as Lucifer did by cherishing wrong ideas and refusing to change. They think their judgment is infallible and by their plans would spoil the church, receiving pleasing sophistries from deceiving angels and seeking to immortalize theories injurious to the work.
They deny Christ by their works, practicing licentiousness, adultery, wantonness and covetousness under a cloak of godliness, with eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin, while breaking the commandments they claim to believe. They privily bring in damnable heresies that pollute the whole person, turning people from obedience and loyalty to the commandments to disobedience and ruin. Their boastful claims about their own power repeat Satan's deception. Their course is a reproach and scandal to the cause of God.
Their method is to speak great swelling words of vanity and promise liberty while themselves servants of corruption, overcome and brought into bondage. Through the lusts of the flesh and much wantonness they allure and beguile unstable souls and those who were clean escaped from error and from them who live in error. They make merchandise of them with feigned words and follow the way of Balaam in loving the wages of unrighteousness, bringing reproach so that the truth is evil spoken of.
The mist of darkness reserved forever means they are cursed children given up to strong delusion to perish in their own corruption. They receive the certain reward of unrighteousness and bring upon themselves swift destruction and damnation that does not slumber. Darkness is reserved for them forever. The warning shows that people who have escaped error through knowing Christ can become entangled in it again and be overcome, with a worse end, for salvation is not unconditional, and those who turn from the way of righteousness face that outcome.
Such men caused much trouble in the early church, and similar conditions must be met today, so all must be on their guard. Without the truth enthroned in the heart to sanctify the character and without a thorough change from darkness to light, even a professed minister is only a blind guide. Escape requires breaking with the temptations of Satan at once and rushing for the light, so that the principles of truth rule the heart.