2 Peter 3
3:1-2. Peter gives his reason for writing, i.e., to remind them to remember the truth God has spoken through the prophets of old (the OT) and the commandment of Christ spoken to them by the apostles (the NT). The commandment (2; cf. 2:21) is the gospel. The good news comes as a command to be believed and obeyed (Acts 2:38-39; 15:7, 11; 16:31). It is a divine command bringing a new creation, given by grace alone. Peter’s reminder of its content is here briefly given in 1:1-11. (Cf. 1 Tim. 1:5, “But the goal of our instruction [Lit., commandment, margin] is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” See also 2 John 5-6.) Like Jesus’ sermon on the mount, one of Peter’s main purposes is to remind his hearers that the moral requirements of the gospel, the law of love, are not less than the commandments of legalism, but far greater (cf. Mt. 5:17-20, 48; 7:12, 23). This cuts the ground out from under the superior knowledge of both the Pharisees’ self-righteousness and the Gnostics’ antinomianism.
3:3-7. God is holy, and the unwitting heralds of his coming judgment are the mockers of the very idea that their sins will be judged. When they become loudest (as when Jesus was crucified), know that judgment has drawn near. Such mockery preceded the waters of the flood (cf. 2:5), and it characterizes these last days preceding the fire of the Day of Judgment.
3:8-13. But do not confuse God’s patience with slowness. The eternal God has time to accomplish his everlasting purposes (8-9). He has fixed a day to judge the world in righteousness, and the world hastens toward the day (cf. Hab. 2:3; Luke 18:7-8; Acts 17:31; Jas. 5:7-8).
But God is patient toward you; i.e., toward the beloved (8-9, 14, 17). It is important at v.9 to see that beloved is the antecedent of you. The all does not imply a universal indiscriminate patience. The Lord is patient toward the beloved, not wishing for any to perish but for all [the beloved] to come to repentance (cf. 2:6, 9; 3:7). Nevertheless, the Lord takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and constantly calls them to repentance (Ezk. 18:23, 32; Mt. 23:37). But the Lord knows those who are his (2 Tim. 2:19), and his seeming slowness to judge is for their salvation (15). He is longsuffering and patient, waiting perhaps for some poor lost sinner yet unborn to come to repentance. In the meantime, the tares are allowed to grow with the wheat, but not for the sake of the tares (Mt. 13:24 ff.; cf. Ro. 9:18-23; 1 Pet. 2:8; Jude 4). Terrible as the day of the Lord shall be (10), the godly long for it and hasten its coming (11-13). We pray for it (“Thy kingdom come”).
3:14-18. Note that Peter sees God given wisdom in Paul’s letters (15), and therefore regards them as Scripture to be rightly understood, honored as God’s word, and heeded (16). What Paul speaks of in all his letters is the need to be diligent to be found by the Lord in peace, spotless and blameless when he comes (14). Watch and be ready, for you know not the day nor the hour. There are things about the Lord’s second coming and the final judgment that are hard to understand (16; cf. Ro. 11:33; 1 Cor. 2:6). Peter, of course, does not mean that it is Paul’s inaccessible writing that is difficult to understand, but that the end times and the second coming serve as a playground for those who would distort God’s word, as such people do to all of God’s word, to their own destruction (cf. John 8:43, 47).
Though the elect are eternally secure in the Lord, our own diligent efforts and desire to be obedient and pleasing to the Lord are some of the means God uses to assure us we are his. Without the fruits of the Spirit in evidence, there can be no security. We must be on guard lest we fall. Forewarned is forearmed (14, 17). We must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, and to him be all the glory now and forever. Amen.