Please explain how it is a person can escape the pollutions of this world, and to know the way of righteousness, unless they are born again?
JPT,
That is a good question.
First, concerning the sons of the Kingdom being cast out, you must understand this as meaning those Jews who thought the Kingdom to be theirs, whether by lineage to Abraham, or, by their alleged keeping of the Law. Jesus is then making a point, they will be cast out, in other words they will not enter the Kingdom, but will be on the outside. It is not a proof text of losing salvation, you're misusing the text there brother. "Sons of the kingdom" does not mean saved, it is referring to what they thought was their rightful position. Jesus words to them were shocking and solemn.
As to the above, great question no doubt:
Any lost person can turn from the pollutions of the world, and can also know the way of righteousness, but remain lost.
Your bolding of the word
know is to press upon it a meaning (possibly) that they had an intimate knowledge of this, used to force upon the text as if meaning and proving
salvation so as to assume them lost from such a state. I don't believe that to be the case or sense of the text and will explain as to why.
Peter here is speaking, contextually, of false teachers. They had known the truth, yet they had not been converted. Nothing in the text states they were converted.
Note, he addresses the converted in the passage intimately, (
2 Peter 1:1 as
"those" and throughout as
"us" or
"ours") then points to the false teachers and others in a different sense, showing they are not among the saved and as distinct from the elect. He doesn't refer to them with the same intimacy at all, instead he makes a distinction.
Evidence of them being in such a state of being false teachers and having a false profession is witnessed in their latter demise. Paul as well alludes to this in
2 Timothy 3:13, calling these deceivers
"evil people" and
"impostors" who were also surely among the redeemed as was the case of those to whom Peter writes. But that they may be found out, Paul describes them as well in this sense; they go from
worse to worse, deceiving and being deceived, showing themselves also to be false teachers,
2 Timothy 3:13 and so are impostors, not sheep. It is the same scenario in
2 Peter 2 brother. Scripture interprets Scripture.