In eighteen concise verses of II Peter 3 the Holy Spirit by the apostle Peter gives the believer significant motivation for godly living and insight into God’s works. The historical scope of the verses is nothing less than ‘beginning to end’.
God, based on His authority and the worthiness of His person, could simply command man what to do with no further information or motivation. But knowing our frailty and sinfulness He gives us every conceivable reason and motivation to enable us to please Him: 1) Christ died for us. 2) The Holy Spirit indwells us. 3) He has given many evidences of who He is through his teaching, miracles, and providence. 4) He has given us promises.
We are privileged and responsible for what we do with these great helps. The passage I am considering refers to each of these motivations.
v.1-3: Why is Peter going to write about the huge events of God’s workings? First of all, Peter wants to remind these hard pressed believers of the teachings of God through the prophets and apostles. They are all God’s teachings, what Peter later calls Scriptures (3:16, literally, “The Writings”). The apostles communicated that part of God’s teachings are commanded by Jesus, the One Who is Lord and Savior. Even as he does later with Paul’s writings specifically, Peter here is declaring the apostles’ teachings to be equal with the prophets and clearly God’s teachings. And is there a difference because Jesus commanded it? In time and voice (that of our Lord, Savior, Elder Brother, Friend, Gloried Son of the Father), yes, but in content, not really. When Jesus speaks you feel at once as though you have heard this somewhere before and as though He is repeating Himself. And of course He is as any frequent reader of the Old Testament will know. Peter’s letter is the second reminder he is giving, the first one fortifying them by way of attention to godly living against persecution and suffering. The second part of Peter’s purpose is the specific subject of His reminder, which is somewhat different in approach from I Peter. Chapter 2 spent much time revealing the false teachers within the Body who disturb the faith of many. The “mockers” (v.3) may be one and the same with the “false teachers” (2:1), as many commentators assume, but I rather think these represent a second threat, external scoffers rather than internal deceivers. Rather than gaining advantage by tickling ears (II Timothy 4:3) they combat sound teaching by supposed empirical evidence to the contrary. “They all are not of us.” (I John 2:19) It is as true today as it was then. The content of the mocking now, as I hope to show, is amazingly similar though increasingly sophisticated. The underlying purpose of the mockers is the same then as now. As Alduous Huxley so honestly confided, “The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do,… For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” He agrees with Peter that his purpose was to follow his own lusts.
v.4-7: The mockers’ question concerning unfulfilled promise is not very intimidating by itself, but couched in the plausibility of empirical data’s absence, supposed historical evidence, and the implied principle of unchanging progress of phenomena with time, what answer might the beleaguered believers broach? And now we have a name for this ‘unalterable’ principle that reveals why history records no empirical data on promises fulfilled- uniformitarianism. We are told that Nature is the “whole show” (“Miracles” by C. S. Lewis) and within that show the pace of processes (chemical and physical weathering for example) observed now is the pace at which they have always proceeded. That is, “all continues as it was” (v.4). In reality, if this is true, then God is not active in His creation and therefore didn’t create this “show” anyway. Therefore, the mockers today as well as then mean something else by “beginning of creation” than we do, for we are not Deists. Evidence that they believe something else about what creation means follows immediately in their willful ignorance of God’s creative process.
Peter confronts the fallacy of the mockers’ argument not on the basis of unsound logic but on the basis of a willfully incorrect starting point. Wrong conclusions are inevitable from wrong presuppositions regardless of how sound the logic. In fact the more sure the logic the more sure the wrong conclusions from the wrong beginning. So Peter sets the record straight by way of four unmistakable works of God, singularities if you will. A singularity is defined in various ways depending on the discipline of study. In math it means a point at which a function is not defined. In physics a gravitational singularity is a point in space where density is infinite and volume is zero (commonly called a black hole). In mechanics (physics again) and technology it is an event, position, or configuration after which subsequent behavior cannot be predicted. The event or place changes what would have happened in a way that cannot be immediately predicted. Peter is talking about four such events that have and will change the consequences for nature and its creatures in ways only God knows.
The first of these is the Creation (v. 4-5) whereby God made the rules of the game. Next was the Flood (v. 6) which destroyed the equilibrium by overturning all the pieces on the game board. In the future comes the Day of the Lord (v. 7,10-12) with the return of the Game Designer and meting out of judgment, game over. Lastly arrives the New Heaven and New Earth (v. 13) which awards those selected as the winners- a new game with new rules. The game metaphor focuses on the reason why these singularities changed what happened afterwards.
God has and will intervene in His Creation to fulfill His purposes. The mockers may deny it or ignore it or explain it away but their blindness is willful and their deceit is shallow in light of the evidence.
Peter reviews details of the 4 events some of which teach us brand new facts. The Creation comes about, as do the rest, by God speaking them into existence (Psalm 33:6). In the case of heaven He spoke it out of nothing (“ex nihilo” as the creationists like to say). The earth at this point it seems was a part of the heavens in the form of water. As it says, “the earth was formless and void” (Genesis 1:2), as fluids are apt to be, taking the shape of a container, if they have one. The solid earth or land was formed by bringing it up out of the water (Psalm 136:6) in which it now sits and is fully saturated, and it was also shaped by the water through erosion and deposition no doubt as the dry land was appearing (Genesis 1:6-10). The heavens, that is the atmosphere, were formed between two layers of water, and the Psalmist declares “Praise Him…waters that are above the heavens” (148:4). Evidently God formed the heavens, including all that came from nothing and subsequently the earth from water. God is the “Maker of all” who “stretched out the heavens” and “made the earth by His power” (Jeremiah 10:12,16).
Peter rushes right on through the next big event, the Flood of Noah’s day. He is doing considerable clumping by saying “at that time” for an event that was 1600+ years later. But it was all ancient history and the point seems to be that the agent God used for creating, water, could just as well be used for destruction, flooding. We know of course based on God’s promise and the symbol of the rainbow that God is not going to repeat this type of destruction, but that does not prevent or slow Him down from His purpose. His Word is just as powerful to destroy by fire as by flood, and He is not slack (II Peter 2:5). “Present” denotes that this heavens and earth are neither in its origin pristine form nor the “new” form to be later created. God has not forgotten nor has He been rendered unable. Rather it is reserved and kept for fire. The appointed destruction and judgment are determined for the ungodly, so mockers beware.
v. 8-10: Verse 8 is frequently misused by the skeptic to mean that since God overlooks lengths of time then the days of Genesis 1 could just as well be ages of time in which great geologic and biologic changes took place by slow naturalistic processes. But the context of Psalm 90:4 from which this thought comes indicates the timelessness of God as compared to the short life span of man, not His inability to tell time. For God clearly gave Moses the record of numbered days in the Creation Week and evening and morning delineating literal 24 hour days. And because God is timeless, He can be patient and exact about the timing of fulfilling His purposes, which is not slowness. He gives a legitimate invitation to all “for whoever will call on the name of the LORD will be saved” (Romans 10:13), and yet only those He calls will be saved (Acts 13:48).
He is patient now and many are being called to Him (3:15) but things will change suddenly and unexpectedly like a thief breaking and entering while you are asleep. The day of the Lord is usually referred to as a period of time in which judgment falls as in verse seven, but the suddenness and finality of this event speaks of one actual day or moment in time. The references to fire (v.7), pass away with a roar and intense heat and burned up (v.10), and burning and elements melting with intense heat (v.12) seem to the modern mind to so obviously refer to thermonuclear annihilation of all matter. But how could Peter, who at best would have an Aristotelian view (earth, air, fire, water) of matter and more likely had none (untrained, Acts 4:13), give such an accurate description of matter’s demise? The prophet need not fully understand what God is giving him to describe. The Psalmist could not have understood the type of crucifixion Christ would undergo when he described it in such clear detail in Psalm 22. Ideas about God’s nature like the Trinity that we read in Scripture are still not understood. But there it is. In Christ “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17), but when He withdraws His hand it will cease to hold together and every fundamental force will cease its function as the physical world comes unglued and is no more. In the case of believers “this perishable must put on imperishable” (I Corinthians 15:53).
Verses 11-18: God will then create a new heaven and new earth that are not perishable where believers in their new imperishable state of righteousness will see God and dwell with Him forever. All that the first heaven and earth failed to be because of Adam’s sin the new ones will be without the threat of being tarnished by sin. Peter has said that the Creation will be destroyed three different times, making clear his point that the mockers are totally wrong. This leads to the point of application for the believers. Peter is so intent on presenting the solution that he gives most of the answer in the question, “What sort of people ought you to be?” I see 4 applications in the final verses:
1) True awe brings about holy conduct, anticipation of glory, and working with His plan (v.11-12)
2) The conduct will be characterized by a diligence for holiness permeated with peace (v.14)
3) This awareness will produce a guard against error (v.17)
4) and a life characterized by growing in grace and knowledge of Christ (v.18)
Verse 16 seems to be included by Peter as a last shot at those who disbelieve what God has said. And in so doing he excludes modern positions about Paul’s epistles not being equal with the rest of Scripture. Mockers, false teachers, whoever else is untaught and unstable distort what the “Writings” of the Prophets and Paul have to say. And since Scripture is spiritually discerned who would expect them to do otherwise, but Peter has pre-warned you, so that you may be on guard and grow.
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