more Turretin;
When heretical, apostate teachers are said "to deny the Lord that bought them," 2Pet 2:1, we are not to understand the "buying" to mean a literal atonement redeeming the sinner from the wrath and curse of God, and from eternal death. No one is so redeemed, but those who were given by the Father to Christ to be redeemed, and who consequently will be kept by Christ and saved with an everlasting salvation, as the members of his body and his special treasure. It is deliverance from error and idolatry which Peter speaks of here: a deliverance effected by an outward exhibition of the Gospel, and setting apart to the ministry, for which these false teachers were in a certain respect bought by Christ as Lord of the Church. Christ had acquired a particular title to them as his own by calling them into his Church, the house which he owns, as masters formerly bought servants for the discharge of domestic duties. That this is the intention of Peter, is gathered from the following considerations: — 1. He uses the word despoten (G1203 Lord), which signifies a master or an owner rather than a Saviour, to whom redemption properly so called belongs. 2. The word agorasanta (G59 buy) which the apostle employs here, is generally used to express that kind of buying which is practised in markets, and often denotes simple deliverance. 3. The kind of buying contemplated here, is that through which those bought are said "to have escaped the corruptions that are in the world, through the knowledge of God our Saviour," by which "they have known the way of righteousness," 2Pet 2:20-21. All these belong to deliverance from pagan errors and idolatries, and a calling to the knowledge of the truth from which, through apostasy and the introduction of most pernicious heresies, they make defection. Hence they are said to deny their Master who bought them and called them to the work of the ministry. [4. The denying of the Lord mentioned here, is a sin which is spoken of as particularly aggravated: and what constitutes the particular aggravation is that they deny their Master who bought them. But if Peter intends by the purchase mentioned here, that atonement which Christ in his death made for sin, then there was nothing in the conduct of these teachers that was particularly wicked. For the same thing might be affirmed of every man on the hypothesis of our opponents — for they maintain that he bought every man. On the supposition, however, that the buying intended here is the calling of these false teachers out of the darkness of heathen superstitions, to a knowledge of the glorious Gospel of God, and making them teachers of that Gospel — then their denial of a Master who had done such great things for them, was a crime aggravated by the foulest ingratitude. — Translator]
