The Vexation of the Righteous

2 Peter 2: 7-8

...and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed (vexed) by the filthy conduct of the wicked ⁸ (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented (vexed)his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds...

The Background

The story of Lot takes us back to Sodom. Genesis 13:13 tells us that the citizens of Sodom were wicked sinners before the Lord. Genesis 18 and 19 give the account of Sodom's destruction by fire from heaven. Abraham had interceded for its preservation and attained God's oath that if there were 10 righteous men in the city God would spare it from destruction. There weren't. God sends two angels in the appearance of men to investigate the city. They are received by Lot, who seeks to protect them under his roof. The men of Sodom come upon Lot's house and demand that the two men be released to them so that they may rape them. Lot goes out of his home in an attempt to avert this action. Upon which the men of Sodom fall upon Lot in order to abuse him. The angels pull Lot back into the house and close the door upon the intruders. They then strike the men of Sodom with blindness so that the Bible says, "They worn themselves out attempting to find their way through the door." These angels will afterwards take Lot out of the city and then the city and its inhabitants are exterminated by fire.

Now the core sin of Sodom was that behavior we know as homosexuality. Jude 1:7 pin points the reason for its judgment. "...Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Some have argued that it was Sodom's violence or its lack of hospitality which brought upon it God's wrath. There are accounts of violence and inhospitality throughout Scripture but Sodom and Gomorrah provide the low standard of evil because that evil flowed out of this sexual perversion.

The Bible teaches us that the behavior that is called homosexuality is not a phenomenon expressing the laws of nature but one expressing the law of sin. The behavior called homosexuality is not governed by the principles that constitute the natural development and dispositions of human beings but the principles of sin that corrupt those human beings. (Romans 1:26-27)

The Bible presents us with the image of a world that is under the assault of defiling sin. God in response sends restrains and barriers against this assault in the form of circumstances, rulers, governments, prophets, the conscience, God's law and His Own Holy Spirit. All these are given by God to us in order to block and restrain the outbreak of evil on mankind/ in mankind. God by these means, while leaving man with a free will, creates barriers to keep people from hurtling deeper and deeper into the defilement and destruction of sin. (2 Chronicles 36:15-16; Romans 13:1-5)

One manner of God's judgment is when He releases his restraint on evil and gives people over to their determined path of rebellion against His will. When this form of judgment is complete the sin that breaks in upon the world of people to lead them into ruin is that sin we have come to call homosexuality. "God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error." (Romans 1:26-27 -RSV)