Verses 1-18
Chapter 3
3:1-2 Beloved, this is
now the second letter that I have written to you, and my object in both
of them is to rouse by reminder your pure mind to remember the words
spoken by the prophets in former times, and the commandment of the Lord
and Saviour which was brought to you by your apostles.
In this passage we see clearly displayed the principles of preaching which Peter observed.
(i) He believed in the value of repetition. He knows that it is
necessary for a thing to be said over and over again if it is to
penetrate the mind. When Paul was writing to the Philippians, he said
that to repeat the same thing over and over again was not a weariness to
him, and for them it was the only safe way (Philippians 3:1).
It is by continued repetition that the rudiments of knowledge are
settled in the mind of the child. There is something of significance
here. It may well be that often we are too desirous of novelty, too
eager to say new things, when what is needed is a repetition of the
eternal truths which men so quickly forget and whose significance they
so often refuse to see. There are certain foods of which a man does not
get tired, necessary for his daily sustenance they are set before him
every day. We speak about a man's daily bread And there are certain
great Christian truths which have to be repeated again and again and
which must never be pushed into the background in the desire for
novelty.
(ii) He believed in the need for reminder. Again and again the
New Testament makes it clear that preaching and teaching are so often
not the introducing of new truth but the reminding of a man of what he
already knows. Moffatt quotes a saying of Dr. Johnson: "It is not
sufficiently considered that men more frequently require to be reminded
than informed." The Greeks spoke of "time which wipes all things out,"
as if the human mind were a slate and time a sponge which passes across
it with a certain erasing quality. We are so often in the position of
men whose need is not so much to be taught as to be reminded of what we
already know.
(iii) He believed in the value of a compliment. It is his
intention to rouse their pure mind. The word he uses for pure is
eilikrines (Greek #1506),
which may have either of two meanings. It may mean that which is sifted
until there is no admixture of chaff left; or it may mean that which is
so flawless that it may be held up to the light of the sun. Plato uses
this same phrase--eilikrines (Greek #1506) dianoia (Greek #1271)--in
the sense of pure reason, reason which is unaffected by the seductive
influence of the senses. By using this phrase Peter appeals to his
people as having minds uncontaminated by heresy. It is as if he said to
them: "You really are fine people--if you would only remember it." The
approach of the preacher should so often be that his hearers are not
wretched creatures who deserve to be damned but splendid creatures who
must be saved. They are not so much like rubbish fit to be burned as
like jewels to be rescued from the mud into which they have fallen.
Donald Hankey tells of "the beloved captain" whose men would follow him
anywhere. He looked at them and they looked at him, and they were filled
with the determination to be what he believed them to be. We always get
further with people when we believe in them than when we despise them.
(iv) He believed in the unity of Scripture. As he saw it there
was a pattern in Scripture; and the Bible was a book centred in Christ.
The Old Testament foretells Christ; the gospels tell of Jesus the
Christ; and the apostles bring the message of that Christ to men.
3:3-4 To begin with,
you are well aware that in the last days there will come mockers with
their mocking, guiding their steps by the law of their own lusts and
saying, "What has happened to the promise of his Coming? For, since the
day when our fathers fell asleep, everything remains the same as it was
from the foundation of the world."
The characteristic of the heretics which worried Peter most of
all was their denial of the Second Coming of Jesus. Literally, their
question was: "Where is the promise of his Coming?" That was a form of
Hebrew expression which implied that the thing asked about did not exist
at all. "Where is the God of justice?" asked the evil men of Malachi's
day (Malachi 2:17). "Where is your God?" the heathen demanded of the Psalmist (Psalms 42:3; Psalms 79:10). "Where is the word of the Lord?" his enemies asked Jeremiah (Jeremiah 17:15).
In every case the implication of the question is that the thing or the
person asked about does not exist. The heretics of Peter's day were
denying that Jesus Christ would ever come again. It will be best here at
the beginning to summarize their argument and Peter's answer to it.
The argument of Peter's opponents was twofold (2 Peter 3:4).
"What has happened," they demanded, "to the promise of the Second
Coming?" Their first argument was that the promise had been so long
delayed that it was safe to take it that it would never be fulfilled.
Their second assertion was that their fathers had died and the world was
going on precisely as it always did. Their argument was that this was
characteristically a stable universe and convulsive upheavals like the
Second Coming did not happen in such a universe.
Peter's response is also twofold. He deals with the second argument first (2 Peter 3:5-7).
His argument is that, in fact, this is not a stable universe, that once
it was destroyed by water in the time of the Flood and that a second
destruction, this time by fire, is on the way.
The second part of his reply is in 2 Peter 3:8-9.
His opponents speak of a delay so long that they can safely assume that
the Second Coming is not going to happen at all. Peter's is a double
answer. (a) We must see time as God sees it. With him a day is as a
thousand years and a thousand years as a day. "God does not pay every
Friday night." (b) In any event God's apparent slowness to act is not
dilatoriness. It is, in fact, mercy. He holds his hand in order to give
sinning men another chance to repent and find salvation.
Peter goes on to his conclusion (2 Peter 3:10).
The Second Coming is on the way and it will come with a sudden terror
and destruction which will dissolve the universe in melting heat.
Finally comes his practical demand in face of all this. If we
are living in a universe on which Jesus Christ is going to descend and
which is hastening towards the destruction of the wicked, surely it
behaves us to live in holiness so that we may be spared when the
terrible day does come. The Second Coming is used as a tremendous motive
for moral amendment so that a man may prepare himself to meet his God.
Such, then, is the general scheme of this chapter and now we look at it section by section.
3:5-6 What they
wilfully fail to see is that long ago the heavens were created and the
earth was composed out of water and through water; and through these
waters the ancient world perished, when it was overwhelmed in a deluge
of water.
Peter's first argument is that the world is not eternally
stable. The point he is making is that the ancient world was destroyed
by water, just as the present world is going to be destroyed by fire.
The detail of this passage is, however, difficult.
He says that the earth was composed out of water and through
water. According to the Genesis story in the beginning there was a kind
of watery chaos. "The Spirit of God moved over the face of the
waters.... God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters" (Genesis 1:2; Genesis 1:6).
Out of this watery chaos the world was formed. Further, it is through
water that the world is sustained, because life is sustained by the rain
which comes down from the skies. What Peter means is that the world was
created out of water and is sustained by water; and it was through this
same element that the ancient world was destroyed.
Further to clarify this passage we have to note that the flood
legend developed. As so often in Second Peter and Jude the picture
behind this comes not directly from the Old Testament but from the Book
of Enoch. In Enoch 83: 3-5 Enoch has a vision: "I saw in a vision how
the heaven collapsed and fell to the earth, and, where it fell to the
earth, I saw how the earth was swallowed up in a great abyss." In the
later stories the flood involved not only the obliteration of sinners
but the total destruction of heaven and earth. So the warning which
Peter is giving may be put like this: "You say that as things are, so
they have ever been and so they ever will be. You build your hopes on
the idea that this is an unchanging universe. You are wrong, for the
ancient world was formed out of water and was sustained by water, and it
perished in the flood."
We may say that this is only an old legend more than half-buried
in the antiquities of the past. But we cannot say that a passage like
this has no significance for us. When we strip away the old Jewish
legend and its later development, we are still left with this permanent
truth that the man who will read history with open eyes can see within
it the moral law at work and God's dealings with men. Froude, the great
historian, said that history is a voice sounding across the centuries
that in the end it is always ill with the wicked and well with the good.
When Oliver Cromwell was arranging his son Richard's education, he
said, "I would have him know a little history." In fact, the lesson of
history is that there is a moral order in the universe and that he who
defies it does so at his peril.
3:7 But by the same
word the present heavens and earth are treasured up for fire, reserved
for the day of judgment and the destruction of impious men.
It is Peter's conviction that, as the ancient world was
destroyed by water, the present world will be destroyed by fire. He says
that that is stated "by the same word." What he means is that the Old
Testament tells of the flood in the past and warns of the destruction by
fire in the future. There are many passages in the prophets which he
would take quite literally and which must have been in his mind. Joel
foresaw a time when God would show blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke
(Joel 2:30). The Psalmist has a picture in which, when God comes, a devouring fire shall precede him (Psalms 50:3). Isaiah speaks of a flame of devouring fire (Isaiah 29:6; Isaiah 30:30). The Lord will come with fire; by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh (Isaiah 66:15-16). Nahum has it that the hills melt and the earth is burned at his presence; his fury is poured out like fire (Nahum 1:5-6). In the picture of Malachi the day of the Lord shall burn as an oven (Malachi 4:1). If the old pictures are taken literally, Peter has plenty of material for his prophecy.
The Stoics also had a doctrine of the destruction of the world
by fire; but it was a grim thing. They held that the universe completed a
cycle; that it was consumed in flames; and that everything then started
all over again, exactly as it was. They had the strange idea that at
the end of the cycle the planets were in exactly the same position as
when the world began. "This produces the conflagration and destruction
of everything which exists," says Chrysippus. He goes on: "Then again
the universe is restored anew in a precisely similar arrangement as
before...Socrates and Plato and each individual man will live again,
with the same friends and fellow-citizens. They will go through the same
experiences and the same activities. Every city and village and field
will be restored, just as it was. And this restoration of the universe
takes place, not once, but over and over again--indeed to all eternity
without end.... For there will never be any new thing other than that
which has been before, but everything is repeated down to the minutest
detail." History as an eternal tread-mill, the unceasing recurrence of
the sins, the sorrows and the mistakes of men--that is one of the
grimmest views of history that the mind of man has ever conceived.
It must always be remembered that, as the Jewish prophets saw
it, and as Peter saw it, this world will be destroyed with the
conflagration of God but the result will not be obliteration and the
grim repetition of what has been before; the result will be a new heaven
and a new earth. For the biblical view of the world there is something
beyond destruction; there is the new creation of God. The worst that the
prophet can conceive is not the death agony of the old world so much as
the birth pangs of the new.
3:8-9 Beloved, you
must not shut your eyes to this one fact that with the Lord one day is
as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. It is not that God
is dilatory in fulfilling his promise, as some people reckon
dilatoriness; but it is that for your sakes he patiently withholds his
hand, because he does not wish any to perish, but wishes all to take the
way to repentance.
There are in this passage three great truths on which to nourish the mind and rest the heart.
(i) Time is not the same to God as it is to man. As the Psalmist
had it: "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is
past, or as a watch in the night" (Psalms 90:4).
When we think of the world's hundreds of thousands of years of
existence, it is easy to feel dwarfed into insignificance; when we think
of the slowness of human progress, it is easy to become discouraged
into pessimism. There is comfort in the thought of a God who has all
eternity to work in. It is only against the background of eternity that
things appear in their true proportions and assume their real value.
(ii) We can also see from this passage that time is always to be
regarded as an opportunity. As Peter saw it, the years God gave the
world were a further opportunity for men to repent and turn to him.
Every day which comes to us is a gift of mercy. It is an opportunity to
develop ourselves; to render some service to our fellow-men; to take one
step nearer to God.
(iii) Finally, there is another echo of a truth which so often
lies in the background of New Testament thought. God, says Peter, does
not wish any to perish. God, says Paul, has shut them all up together in
unbelief, that he might have mercy on all (Romans 11:32). Timothy in a tremendous phrase speaks of God who will have all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4).
Ezekiel hears God ask: "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked,
and not rather that he should return from his way and live?" (Ezekiel 18:23).
Ever and again there shines in Scripture the glint of the larger
hope. We are not forbidden to believe that somehow and some time the
God who loves the world will bring the whole world to himself.
3:10 But when it does
come, the Day of the Lord will come as a thief and in it the heavens
will pass away with a crackling roar; the stars will blaze and melt; and
the earth and all its works will disappear.
It inevitably happens that a man has to speak and think in the
terms which he knows. That is what Peter is doing here. He is speaking
of the New Testament doctrine of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but
he is describing it in terms of the Old Testament doctrine of the Day of
the Lord.
The Day of the Lord is a conception which runs all through the
prophetic books of the Old Testament. The Jews saw time in terms of two
ages--this present age, which is wholly bad and past remedy; and the age
to come, which is the golden age of God. How was the one to turn into
the other? The change could not come about by human effort or by a
process of development, for the world was on the way to destruction. As
the Jews saw it, there was only one way in which the change could
happen; it must be by the direct intervention of God. The time of that
intervention they called the Day of the Lord. It was to come without
warning. It was to be a time when the universe was shaken to its
foundations. It was to be a time when the judgment and obliteration of
sinners would come to pass and, therefore, it would be a time of terror.
"Behold the Day of the Lord comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger,
to make the earth a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it" (Isaiah 13:9). "The Day of the Lord is coming, it is near, a day of darkness and of gloom, a day of clouds and of thick darkness" (Joel 2:1-2).
"A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of
ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and
thick darkness" (Zephaniah 1:14-18). "The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes" (Joel 2:30-31).
"The stars of the heaven and their constellations shall not give their
light; the sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its
light.... Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will
be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the
day of his fierce anger" (Isaiah 13:10-13).
What Peter and many of the New Testament writers did was to
identify the Old Testament pictures of the Day of the Lord with the New
Testament conception of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Peter's
picture here of the Second Coming of Jesus is drawn in terms of the Old
Testament picture of the Day of the Lord.
He uses one very vivid phrase. He says that the heavens will pass away with a crackling roar (roizedon, Greek #4500).
That word is used for the whirring of a bird's wings in the air, for
the sound a spear makes as it hurtles through the air, for the crackling
of the flames of a forest fire.
We need not take these pictures with crude literalism. It is
enough to note that Peter sees the Second Coming as a time of terror for
those who are the enemies of Christ.
One thing has to be held in the memory. The whole conception of
the Second Coming is full of difficulty. But this is sure--there comes a
day when God breaks into every life, for there comes a day when we must
die; and for that day we must be prepared. We may say what we will
about the Coming of Christ as a future event; we may feel it is a
doctrine we have to lay on one side; but we cannot escape from the
certainty of the entry of God into our own experience.
3:11-14 Since these
things are going to be dissolved like that, what kind of people ought
you to be, living a life of constant holiness and true piety, you who
are eagerly awaiting and doing your best to hasten on the Day of the
Lord, by whose action the heavens will burn and be dissolved and the
stars blaze and melt! For it is new heavens and a new earth, as he
promised, for which we wait, in which righteousness has its home. So,
then, beloved, since these are the things for which you eagerly wait, be
eager to be found by him at peace, without spot and blemish.
The one thing in which Peter is supremely interested is the
moral dynamic of the Second Coming. If these things are going to happen
and the world is hastening to judgment, obviously a man must live a life
of piety and of holiness. If there are to be a new heaven and a new
earth and if that heaven and earth are to be the home of righteousness,
obviously a man must seek with all his mind and heart and soul and
strength to be fit to be a dweller in that new world. To Peter, as
Moffatt puts it, "it was impossible to give up the hope of the advent
without ethical deterioration." Peter was right. If there is nothing in
the nature of a Second Coming, nothing in the nature of a goal to which
the whole creation moves, then life is going nowhere. That, in fact, was
the heathen position. If there is no goal, either for the world or for
the individual life, other than extinction, certain attitudes to life
become well-nigh inevitable. These attitudes emerge in heathen epitaphs.
(i) If there is nothing to come, a man may well decide to make
what he can of the pleasures of this world. So we come on an epitaph
like this: "I was nothing: I am nothing. So thou who art still alive,
eat, drink, and be merry."
(ii) If there is nothing to live for, a man may well be utterly
indifferent. Nothing matters much if the end of everything is
extinction, in which a man will not even be aware that he is
extinguished. So we come on such an epitaph as this: "Once I had no
existence; now I have none. I am not aware of it. It does not Concern
me."
(iii) If there is nothing to live for but extinction and the
world is going nowhere, there can enter into life a kind of lostness.
Man ceases to be in any sense a pilgrim for there is nowhere to which he
can make pilgrimage. He must simply drift in a kind of lostness, coming
from nowhere and on the way to nowhere. So we come on an epigram like
that of Callimachus. "Charidas, what is below?" "Deep darkness." "But
what of the paths upward?" "All a lie." "And Pluto?" (The God of the
underworld). "Mere talk." "Then we're lost." Even the heathen found a
certain almost intolerable quality in a life without a goal.
When we have stripped the doctrine of the Second Coming of all
its temporary and local imagery, the tremendous truth it conserves is
that life is going somewhere--and without that conviction there is
nothing to live for.
There is in this passage still another great conception. Peter speaks
of the Christian as not only eagerly awaiting the Coming of Christ but
as actually hastening it on. The New Testament tells us certain ways in
which this may be done.
(i) It may be done by prayer. Jesus taught us to pray: "Thy Kingdom come" (Matthew 6:10).
The earnest prayer of the Christian heart hastens the coming of the
King. If in no other way, it does so in this--that he who prays opens
his own heart for the entry of the King.
(ii) It may be done by preaching. Matthew tells us that Jesus
said, "And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the
whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14).
All men must be given the chance to know and to love Jesus Christ
before the end of creation is reached. The missionary activity of the
Church is the hastening of the coming of the King.
(iii) It may be done by penitence and obedience. Of all things
this would be nearest to Peter's mind and heart. The Rabbis had two
sayings: "It is the sins of the people which prevent the coming of the
Messiah. If the Jews would genuinely repent for one day, the Messiah
would come." The other form of the saying means the same: "If Israel
would perfectly keep the law for one day, the Messiah would come." In
true penitence and in real obedience a man opens his own heart to the
coming of the King and brings nearer that coming throughout the world.
We do well to remember that our coldness of heart and our disobedience
delay the coming of the King.
3:15-16 Regard the
Lord's willingness to wait as an opportunity of salvation, as indeed our
beloved brother Paul has written to us, in the wisdom which has been
given to him, and as he says in all his letters, when he touches on
these subjects, letters which contain some things which are difficult to
understand, things which those who lack knowledge and a firm foundation
in the faith twist, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own
destruction.
Peter here cites Paul as teaching the same things as he himself
teaches. It may be that he is citing Paul as agreeing that a pious and a
holy life is necessary in view of the approaching Second Coming of the
Lord. More likely, he is citing Paul as agreeing that the fact that God
withholds his hand is to be regarded not as indifference on God's part
but as an opportunity to repent and to accept Jesus Christ. Paul speaks
of those who despise the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and
patience, forgetting that his kindness is designed to lead a man to
repentance (Romans 2:4). More than once Paul stresses the forbearance and the patience of God (Romans 3:25; Romans 9:22).
Both Peter and Paul were agreed that the fact that God withholds his
hand is never to be used as an excuse for sinning but always as a means
of repentance and an opportunity of amendment.
With its reference to Paul and its tinge of criticism of him,
this is one of the most intriguing passages in the New Testament. It was
this passage which made John Calvin certain that Peter did not himself
write Second Peter because, he says, Peter would never have spoken about
Paul like this. What do we learn from it?
(i) We learn that Paul's letters by this time were known and
used throughout the Church. They are spoken of in such a way as to make
it clear that they have been collected and published, and that they are
generally available and widely read. We are fairly certain that it was
about the year A.D. 90 that Paul's letters were collected and published
in Ephesus. This means that Second Peter cannot have been written before
that and, therefore, cannot be the work of Peter, who was martyred in
the middle sixties of the century.
(ii) It tells us that Paul's letters have come to be regarded as
Scripture. The misguided men twist them as they do the other
Scriptures. This again goes to prove that Second Peter must come from a
time well on in the history of the early Church, for it would take many
generations for the letters of Paul to rank alongside the Scriptures of
the Old Testament.
(iii) It is a little difficult to determine just what the
attitude to Paul is in this passage. He is writing "in the wisdom which
has been given to him." Bigg says neatly that this phrase can be equally
a commendation or a caution! The truth is that Paul suffered the fate
of all outstanding men. He had his critics. He suffered the fate of all
who fearlessly face and fearlessly state the truth. Some regarded him as
great but dangerous.
(iv) There are things in Paul's letters which are hard to
understand and which ignorant people twist to their own ruin. The word
used for hard to understand is dusnoetos (Greek #1425),
which is used of the utterance of an oracle. The utterances of Greek
oracles were always ambiguous. There is the classic example of the king
about to go to war who consulted the oracle at Delphi and was given the
answer: "If you go to war, you will destroy a great nation." He took
this as a prophecy that he would destroy his enemies; but it happened
that he was so utterly defeated that by going to war he destroyed his
own country. This was typical of the dangerous ambiguity of the ancient
oracles. It is that very word which Peter uses of the writings of Paul.
They have things in them which are as difficult to interpret as the
ambiguous utterance of an oracle.
Not only, Peter says, are there things in Paul's writings that
are hard to understand; there are things which a man may twist to his
own destruction. Three things come immediately to mind. Paul's doctrine
of grate was twisted into an excuse and even a reason for sin (Romans 6:1-23 ). Paul's doctrine of Christian freedom was twisted into an excuse for unchristian licence (Galatians 5:13). Paul's doctrine of faith was twisted into an argument that Christian action was unimportant, as we see in James (James 2:14-26).
G. K. Chesterton once said that orthodoxy was like walking along
a narrow ridge; one step to either side was a step to disaster. Jesus
is God and man; God is love and holiness; Christianity is grace and
morality; the Christian lives in this world and lives in the world of
eternity. Overstress either side of these great two-sided truths, and at
once destructive heresy emerges. One of the most tragic things in life
is when a man twists Christian truth and Holy Scripture into an excuse
and even a reason for doing what he wants to do instead of taking them
as guides for doing what God wants him to do.
3:17-18 As far as you
are concerned. beloved, you have been forewarned. You must, therefore,
be on your guard not to be carried away by the error of lawless men and
so to fall from your own foundation; rather, you must see to it that you
grow in grace and in understanding of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ.
To him be glory both now and to the day of eternity.
In conclusion Peter tells us certain things about the Christian life.
(i) The Christian is a man who is forewarned. That is to say, he
cannot plead ignorance. He knows the right way and its rewards; he
knows the wrong way and its disasters. He has no right to expect an easy
way, for he has been told that Christianity means a cross, and he has
been warned that there will always be those who are ready to attack and
to pervert the faith. To be forewarned is to be forearmed; but to be
forewarned is also a grave responsibility, for he who knows the right
and does the wrong is under a double condemnation.
(ii) The Christian is a man with a basis for life. He ought to
be rooted and founded in the faith. There are certain things of which he
is absolutely certain. James Agate once declared that his mind was not a
bed to be made and remade but that on certain things it was finally
made up. There is a certain inflexibility in the Christian life; there
is a certain basis of belief which never changes. The Christian will
never cease to believe that, "Jesus Christ is Lord" (Philippians 2:11); and he will never cease to be aware that there is laid on him the duty of making his life fit his belief.
(iii) The Christian is a man with a developing life. The
inflexibility of the Christian life is not the rigidity of death. The
Christian must daily experience the wonder of grace, and daily grow in
the gifts which grace can bring; and he must daily enter more and more
deeply into the wonder which is in Jesus Christ. It is only on a firm
foundation that a great building can tower into the air; and it is only
because it has a deep root that a great tree can reach out to the sky
with its branches. The Christian life is at once a life with a firm
foundation and with an ever outward and upward growth.
And so the letter finishes by giving glory to Christ, both now and to the end of time.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)
FURTHER READING
2 Peter
C. Bigg, St. Peter and St. Jude (ICC G)
C. E. B. Cranfield, 1 and 2 Peter and Jude (Tch; E)
J. B. Mayor, The Second Epistle of St. Peter and the Epistle of St. Jude (MmC G)
J. Moffatt, The General Epistles: James, Peter and Jude (MC E)
Abbreviations
ICC: International Critical Commentary
MC : Moffatt Commentary
MmC: Macmillan Commentary
NCB: New Century Bible
Tch: Torch Commentary
E: English Text
G: Greek Text
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)