For the Lord indeed knows how to deliver a man of reverence from out of his trials, even as He has reserved a day to deliver judgement upon the unjust. But very, very much [is this reserved] for those whose walk is driven along [in search of] a defiling lust, going along with those who despise the prevailing, given order in headstrong and audacious ways that are not at all afraid of showering obscenities upon those with (God-given) standing.
And meanwhile {God's special] messengers, with greater strength and power to call upon, do not retaliate with insults and refrain from launching forth into any accusations against them before the Lord. But these [people] live as if they] are [merely] non-thinking animals, having naturally come about for capture [at one moment] and slaughter [the next]. They speak contemptuously of matters about which they are ignorant, and in their destructive work [nothing is more certain than] they will [eventually] destroy themselves. They will be fully paid in evil for all their evil ways. They consider it gratifying to whoop it up in riotous luxury which they presume all should see.
Stains and disfigurements! That's what they are and all the time feasting at your table on their own deceptions. They are ever on the lookout for further adulterous liaisons, and cannot hold themselves back from transgression in their destabilized and destabilizing lives, with hearts bent on fully meeting their greed for more recognition, these are children of a curse, having forsaken the straight ahead way they have wandered crookedly, following in the way of Balaam of Beor, whose heart, set on the wages of error, was rebuked for his transgression by an ass speaking with a human voice. That was what restrained the prophet's madness.
Peter's letter speaks with the inspired imagination of a man who has been confronted at the deepest point of his own life with the wonder-filled message of mercy and long-suffering forgiveness, of the friendship of the One to whom it all relates, from whom it all makes sense.
And lest we are tempted to read this as a vengeance-filled denunciation designed to establish his own righteousness - putting himself up, as it were, by putting others down - we are reminded of the authority with which this former fisherman is writing. He is writing with great passion about the deliverance of the Lord, the about the work of the Messiah who allowed Himself to be announced by riding into Jerusalem on an ass.
The Lord doesn't rescue a people for Himself without that people being nurtured in reverence for their Lord and Saviour. The Lord didn't create image-bearers for them to fall into destruction.
Those who resist His mercy and love, will find His word to be an insufferable discipline, a constraint that has to be thrown off, but in so doing they don't realise they are plunging head-long to disaster. They might put a brave face upon it; but these false teachers are just as treacherous as the false prophets which Jeremiah had exposed (Jeremiah 6:13-21). These were the false shepherds who were content to advocate the disgusting apostasies of Baal worship (Jeremiah 23:1-22). Under the cover of presumed piety all kinds of deceit are wrought by such false teachers.
Here, Peter the restored disciple of the Lord, actively feeds and tends Jesus' flock in response to His Master's command. The letter is his response to the authority of the One who had obscenities hurled at Him by those who quite openly called down a curse upon their heads (Matthew 27:25).
That wilful "in yer face" insubordination might have called for the death of the belovéd Son, Israel's Messiah, the Hope of All Ages, but that was not the end.
After Jesus' resurrection, Peter would boldly announce the overwhelming mercy and long-suffering of the Lord - the victory of the Lord's mercy. This Holy-Spirited message even had the power (upon repentance) to cancel the self-imposed curse.
But
the confrontation with evil is still to be expected; evil must be resisted lest
those who believe in Christ and follow Him, allow themselves to be led astray
into paths of madness that might need an ass's word, to pull them up short and
restrain such instinctive waywardness.