2 Peter 3:1-18 (CSB)
We’ve reached chapter 3: the conclusion of Peter’s second letter. This is indeed his second letter that he has written to this group, for in verses 1-2, he says, “1 Dear friends, this is now the second letter I have written to you; in both letters, I want to stir up your sincere understanding by way of reminder, 2 so that you recall the words previously spoken by the holy prophets and the command of our Lord and Savior given through your apostles.”
Like he wrote earlier in this letter, he wants these believers to be sure to remember all that he’s written them. He wants them to hold on to their faith and add to it all those characteristics he previously mentioned, so that they confirm their calling as believers. Peter knows he doesn’t have long to live, and so he wants to leave these believers with clear instructions. He’s giving them the final teachings he doesn’t want them to forget.
He has already mentioned there will be false prophets and teachers who will spread lies and heresies, but he wants them to really remember this, so once again, he says that they need to be on the lookout for problem people, and specifically, he wants them to be aware of scoffers.
Due to the many verses throughout the Bible about scoffing, it’s clear that God does not like scoffers. As someone who is naturally inclined to be skeptical about things, I’ve given a lot of thought as to why the Bible does not like scoffers, for I don’t want to be a scoffer if the Bible tells us scoffing is bad. The conclusion I’ve reached is this: scoffing is always a negative trait in the Bible because, at its core, scoffing is the opposite of faith. Scoffers disbelieve an idea or doubt what someone says. In the context of the Bible, scoffers do not believe God and what He says. They scoff and do not have faith. Scoffing is also similar to mocking, and the Bible speaks against mocking even more than it does about scoffing. Both are rejecting or dismissing an idea or person, but mocking simply adds to the scoffing by including ridicule and taunting.
The world of social media has enabled scoffing and mocking to reach new heights, giving an endless outlet to people to cast doubt on, and ridicule, people and ideas. It’s not always a bad thing to laugh at ideas when it’s done to point out the error of people’s ways, but when it’s used to scoff and mock people or to scoff and mock the truth, then it’s terrible. And this is what the Bible is assuming when it decries mockers and scoffers. It’s assuming these people are ridiculing and disbelieving the truth.
Let’s read what he says in verses 3-4, “3 Above all, be aware of this: Scoffers will come in the last days scoffing and following their own evil desires, 4 saying, ‘Where is his “coming” that he promised? Ever since our ancestors fell asleep, all things continue as they have been since the beginning of creation.’”
These particular scoffers that Peter is warning the believers about, they are asking a specific question, which is, “Why hasn’t Jesus returned yet?” The rest of this chapter is Peter answering this question. First, though, I think it’s important to understand that these scoffers feel empowered to ask this question because they have watched as the first disciples of Jesus have passed away without Jesus’ returning. It seems like after Jesus ascended into heaven, everyone thought He was going to come back right away. They all thought that at any moment He would return. So, since He hasn’t returned yet, but some of the disciples have died already and now Peter is old, they are using this as a reason to doubt that Jesus ever will return.
I think that’s what they are referring to when they say, “Ever since our ancestors fell asleep, all things continue as they have been since the beginning of creation.” The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges supports this idea and points out that normally the mention of ancestors, or “fathers” as some translations say, “would carry our thoughts back to the great progenitors of Israel as a people. Here, however, the stress laid by the mockers on the death of the fathers as the starting-point of the frustrated expectation, seems to give the word another application, and we may see in the ‘fathers’ the first generation of the disciples of Christ, those who had ‘fallen asleep’ without seeing the Advent they had looked for.”
Peter says that these scoffers think this way because they don’t understand a key concept. He says in verses 5-7, that “5 They deliberately overlook this: By the word of God the heavens came into being long ago and the earth was brought about from water and through water. 6 Through these the world of that time perished when it was flooded. 7 By the same word, the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.”
Peter is saying that they “deliberately” overlook the truth which is that the same way that God created the heavens and the earth with His words, in the same way, He going to unleash the fire that is being held back until the day of judgment.
But those scoffers didn’t want to believe that. They remind me of a lot of people today who do not have faith in Biblical creation. They scoff and mock the idea that God created the world in 6 days. These same people also scoff and mock the idea of a global flood. Peter does not scoff at the Bible’s account of creation nor the flood. He says that scoffers do, though. You would think that would be a big enough reason for people to stop doubting Genesis’ account of creation and world history. What greater testimony do we need than Peter confirming it is true?
Then Peter gives the answer to these scoffers’ question in verses 8-9, when he says, “8 Dear friends, don’t overlook this one fact: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. 9 The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.”
Unlike Calvinists who think that God does not offer salvation to all people, this verse is crystal clear that God wants all people to come to repentance and be saved. The Lord offers salvation to all people who would have faith in Him and repent. This is why Jesus hasn’t returned yet. He is not slow; He is waiting. He wants all people to hear the Gospel so that all people can have the opportunity to repent and believe in Him. Mathew 24:14 records Jesus saying, “This good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Jesus won’t return until the Gospel has been shared in every nation. That makes me think that Jesus’ return could be any day now, for it seems very likely that the Gospel has reached all the ends of the earth.
Regardless of when this day arrives, verses 10-13 tells us what to expect it. It says, “10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; on that day the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, the elements will burn and be dissolved, and the earth and the works on it will be disclosed. 11 Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, it is clear what sort of people you should be in holy conduct and godliness 12 as you wait for the day of God and hasten its coming. Because of that day, the heavens will be dissolved with fire and the elements will melt with heat. 13 But based on his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.”
Peter is echoing the words of Jesus, which he would have heard Him speak first-hand. Matthew 24:42-44 tells us that Jesus said, “Therefore be alert, since you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. But know this: If the homeowner had known what time the thief was coming, he would have stayed alert and not let his house be broken into. This is why you are also to be ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
We don’t know when Jesus will return, only that He will, so as we wait for this to happen, verse 14 tells us what to do. It says, “14 Therefore, dear friends, while you wait for these things, make every effort to be found without spot or blemish in his sight, at peace.”
We must be ready for His return. He literally could come back at any moment. Do we want to be caught unprepared? No, we must be making every effort to be holy. That means we need to lay off sin. But if we have been converted and are striving to follow Him, then we can be at peace, knowing that when He returns, because we have been forgiven and covered with the blood of Christ, we do not have to fear the judgment.
Then Peter adds one more point. He says in verses 15-16, “15 Also, regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our dear brother Paul has written to you according to the wisdom given to him. 16 He speaks about these things in all his letters. There are some things hard to understand in them. The untaught and unstable will twist them to their own destruction, as they also do with the rest of the Scriptures.”
I don’t know about you, but I find great comfort and humor in the fact that Peter says Paul’s letters are hard to understand! However, what Peter prophesied will happen has unfortunately also come true. People have twisted Paul’s word and used it to their own destruction. So much of what Paul has written has been grossly misunderstood. And as Peter adds, the “untaught and unstable” also twist all the rest of the Scriptures as well.
That’s why he reiterates, in verse 17, “17 Therefore, dear friends, since you know this in advance, be on your guard, so that you are not led away by the error of lawless people and fall from your own stable position.”
According to Berean Strong’s Lexicon, the word “stable” is the Greek word stérigmos, and it means, “Steadfastness, firmness, stability.” Earlier in verse 16, he described the people who twist scripture as “untaught and unstable” and that Greek word is astériktos and it means, “Unstable, unsteady.” The Berean Strong’s Lexicon further explains that this word, “in a biblical context, it often refers to individuals who are spiritually or morally unsteady, easily swayed by false teachings or temptations.” In the HELP Word-studies, it says, this word is, “describing someone who (literally) does not have a staff to lean on.” In other words, in our modern English language, we would say that these people don’t have a leg to stand on; there is no support for what they think, so they are unstable because their arguments and ideas are based on nothing. Peter is basically saying, “Don’t be like those people; unlike them, you are stable now, for you are basing your faith on what you have been taught and seen to be true, so don’t let weak, baseless arguments sway you from your firm foundation of Biblical truth.”
That is a message we all desperately need to hear today, isn’t it? So many people have so many ideas and thoughts and they widely share them and present them as truth, but their ideas are not based on anything substantial, for their ideas are not grounded and rooted in Scripture. We should not let their baseless arguments sway us.
Finally, we get to Peter’s parting words, which are simple and to the point. Verse 18 ends the letter by saying, “18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.”
In Maclaren’s Exposition of Holy Scripture, he says, “This it is to ‘grow into the grace of our Lord and Saviour’; a deeper consciousness of His love creeping round the roots of my heart every day, and fuller possession of His gifts placed in my opening hand every day; and a continual approximation to the beauty of His likeness, which never halts nor ceases.”
I really love how Maclaren describes what it means to grow in grace and knowledge. We are to let God’s grace transform us into reflections of Jesus. We are to grow in grace. That means we will be filled with more and more grace. Grace is not a onetime transactional moment like some might think it means. Grace is not a passive thing that merely rests on top of us, covering us with Jesus’ righteousness. Grace is transformative. It is all the riches of righteousness offered to us by the work that Jesus accomplished on the cross, which molds us and changes us. We are supposed to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and let Him work His transforming grace into us, so we change and grow to be more like Jesus. God has given us grace because He is patient, kind, forgiving, slow to anger, faithful and loving.
God gives us grace to endure trials and to live the way He has called us to live. Just like Peter describes in his first letter, when he instructs the believers on how to submit to one another and serve one another, we need more and more of God’s grace in our lives in order to live according to His calling on our lives. God’s grace doesn’t just forgive us of our sins, He gives us grace so we can follow Him.
The way we will know if we are growing in this grace of God, is if we are extending to others the same grace God has given to us. Showing grace to others means that we are kind and forgiving. When we are gracious, we are virtuous. Meaning, we exhibit all those qualities that Peter listed in chapter one: goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. If we are growing in grace, then these qualities will be cultivated in us.
Not only are we to grow in grace, but we are to grow in our knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are to increase our knowledge of Jesus. This is the Greek word gnosis, which simply means knowledge or knowing. In addition to our experiential firsthand epignosis knowledge of God, we are to increase our knowledge about Jesus. The only way to do this is to study God’s word and apply it so we grow.
Look at what Maclaren writes about this concept of growing in grace and knowledge. He says, “You cannot bury your Christian grace in indolence without diminishing it. It will be like a bit of ice wrapped in a cloth and left in the sun, it will all have gone into water when you come to take it out. And the truth that you do not live by, whose relations and large harmonies and controlling power are not being increasingly realized in your lives; that truth is becoming less and less real, more and more shadowy, and ghostlike to you. Truth which is not growing is becoming fossilized. ‘The things most surely believed’ are often the things which have least power. Unquestioned truth too often lies ‘bedridden in the dormitory of the soul side by side with exploded error.’ The sure way to reduce your knowledge of Jesus Christ to that inert condition is to neglect increasing it and applying it to your daily life. There are men, in all churches, and there are some whole communions whose creeds are the most orthodox, and also utterly useless, and as near as possible nonentities, simply because the creed is accepted and shelved. If your belief is to be of any use to you, or to be held by you in the face of temptations to abandon it, you must keep it fresh, and oxygenated, so to say, by continual fresh apprehension of it and closer application of it to conduct. As soon as the stream stands, it stagnates; and the very manna from God will breed worms and stink. And Christian truth unpracticed by those who hold it, corrupts itself and corrupts them. So Peter tells us that the alternative is growth or apostasy.”
What Maclaren is saying so eloquently is that after our conversion, we have to be growing in grace and knowledge of God. If we don’t grow, we will become stagnant and our faith with die. But the only way to grow in grace is if we apply this knowledge we have learned to our lives. We can’t just keep grace and knowledge in the realm of personal values. It must be applied to our everyday lives. It must move out of that private sphere of thought and be incorporated into all areas of our lives. In homeschool, we are reading a book about the importance of our worldview called Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. The official description of this book is: “In today’s cultural etiquette, it is not considered polite to mix public and private, or sacred and secular. This division is the single most potent force keeping Christianity contained in the private sphere-stripping it of its power to challenge and redeem the whole of culture.”
In this book, Pearcey details the reasons why and the problems that have resulted when Christians do not have a cohesive, all-encompassing Christian worldview. She explains that, for the most part, Christians have accepted this idea that there are two different ways of thinking: there is a sacred part of life and a secular part of life. Church, prayer, personal beliefs and convictions reside in the sacred, private realm of life. Business, science, politics and facts reside in the secular public realm of life. This division has produced a weak witness and an incomplete faith.
I think this sacred/secular mindset is a pattern that this world has established. Whereas, if our minds are renewed, we will not have a split mindset, but instead we will see all of life through the prism of a cohesive, singular Christian worldview. Peter is saying the same thing: we must be on guard against these false ideas and false ways of thinking. He said in verse 17, “be on your guard, so that you are not led away by the error of lawless people and fall from your own stable position.” If we are not on guard and are not growing in grace and knowledge, then we will stray from the truth. For whatever grace and knowledge we have will be eroded and corrupted by all the many false ideas and theologies that bump up against us all day long.
Let us take heed and pay attention to what Peter warns us of: if we aren’t growing in grace and knowledge, adding to our faith, then we are in danger of losing our faith. Like Peter has said, we would do well to remember this.
Peter and all the other people used by God to write the Scriptures have all passed away. They are asleep in Christ, waiting for the remaking of heaven and earth. Jesus has not yet returned, even though over 2,000 years have passed. We are just like these recipients of Peter’s letters: we are on this side of heaven, holding on to our faith in Jesus and what He said. While we wait, we are confronted by false prophets and teachers. Let us not lose our standing. Let us hold firm to what we have been taught. Let us keep our faith and grow in grace and knowledge, applying what we have learned.
Pray: Heavenly Father, thank You for Your great grace and mercy that You have given to us through the sacrificial death of Jesus. Please help us hold on to the truth. Help by Your Holy Spirit to discern the lies of the enemy so we do not stumble from the truth. Help us hold on to our faith and put Your Words into practice in every area of our lives, extending grace to all people we meet. Please grow us in grace and knowledge of You. To Jesus Christ be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
Comments