Q. In his second epistle, Peter refers to Lot as a righteous man, and he ranks him alongside Noah. But it is recorded in Genesis that Lot offered his daughters to the wicked men of Sodom (though fortunately they were spared that fate). What has Peter overlooked, or what was his insight, that inspired him to credit Lot with righteousness at par with Noah?
The similarity that Peter sees between Noah and Lot is that God rescued each of them when he sent general punishment on the places where they were living. Peter writes that God “brought the flood on the ancient world” and “condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes,” but he “protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness,” and he “rescued Lot, a righteous man.” Peter’s overall conclusion from this is that “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment.” The implication for his readers is that they should stay faithful during the trials they’re experiencing at the hands of the unrighteous, who will receive God’s justice in the end.
But for Peter to make this argument, Lot has to have been “righteous” at least by comparison with those around him—though not necessarily to the same standard as Noah, who was “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, who walked faithfully with God.” Peter observes that Lot was “tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard.” So he didn’t approve of the wrong things that the others around him were doing, and he didn’t join in with them. On that basis Peter considers him to have been righteous.
However, when we put Peter’s observations into conversation with other parts of Scripture that talk about Lot, especially the account in Genesis, we get a further lesson, beyond the one about God preserving faithful people through trials. We see what a perilous position it puts us in if we continue to live right in the midst of people who are doing things that are so bad that they torment our souls. Like Lot, we may end up absorbing some of the beliefs and practices of those people without realizing it. I think this is the explanation for why Lot offered his daughters to the mob: Everything he saw and heard around him had “normalized” exposing people to abuse in that way. One take-home is that we need to be very careful about the various media—songs, Internet programming, movies, television shows, etc.—that we let into our lives. They can normalize things that are contrary to God’s ways and destructive to ourselves and those around us.
So to complement what Peter says here, we should also stress the warning that Paul gives in his second epistle to the Corinthians: “What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? … Therefore, ‘Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.'”
We need to be in the world to have an influence on the world. But if we start to become of the world, then we need to think more carefully about boundaries and safeguards for our hearts and minds. How close is too close? One good question to ask is, “In what direction is the influence flowing?” While Lot seems to have been trying to safeguard his mind (he reflected on what he saw around him, and he was horrified), he also seems to have been influenced by his surroundings to such an extent that he no longer even protected his family from the worst kinds of abuse.
Good Question 