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Since the Day of the Lord is coming, how should we, God’s people, then live?
One natural inclination would be to take fleshly joy in our deliverance: well, I’m OK, so why should I care?
The Christian life is not like that. We don’t live for ourselves, and most certainly not for the lusts of the flesh, one of which is comfort and ease. Our perspective, our sense of responsibility, is outward: Jesus said we love God, and we love others.
How do we manifest those two loves (which, of course, are in perfect harmony) with the certainty of coming judgment and an end to the cosmos as we know it?
Peter begins with a summary: “holy conversation [lifestyle] and godliness” (2P 3.11). That, of course, is always called for, in any era or circumstance.
What does that look like in the Last Days, with cosmic judgment possible at any time?
Well, anticipation, even eagerness, makes sense (2P 3.12).
Why?
Because the destruction of the current world—broken by sin, and groaning for deliverance (Ro 8.21-22)—prepares the way for a new cosmos, unbroken, perfectly fruitful, and ready to serve as a home for glorified servants of a great and good God (2P 3.13).
Peter does not emphasize this point here, but of course he has in mind our need to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. He received that Commission directly from the mouth of the Lord himself (Mt 28.16-20), and he has now devoted his life to carrying out that Commission faithfully, even knowing that at the end he would be bound and carried where he does not want to go (Jn 21.18). Our faithfulness in telling this story is of course part of what Peter urges us toward.
But he devotes his words here to a slightly different track.
Live right, he says. Live so as to finish “in peace, without spot, and blameless” (2P 3.14). Don’t get sloppy or inattentive just because the judgment hasn’t happened yet; use the time to advance, to grow, to mature in your salvation, specifically your sanctification (2P 3.15).
Here Peter calls on the agreement of another apostle, Paul, with these urgings. As we’ve noted, Peter is familiar with Paul’s writings—Paul may already have been martyred by this time—and perhaps collections of his epistles may already be showing up in the churches. They have their dense parts—and as I’ve noted in the series on 1 Peter, so do Peter’s—but they are well worth the effort necessary in reading, understanding, and applying them.
And so Peter closes with the two principles most heavily emphasized by both himself and Paul:
- Pay attention (2P 3.17). Don’t be deceived by false teachers (cf. Co 2). Compare their teachings with the truth (again, both the words of the apostles [cf. 2Th 2.15; 3.4] and the Scripture itself) and cling to the truth.
- Pursue sanctification: “grow in grace” (2P 3.18). Live a life of constant growth, empowered by the means of grace and aiming for the character of Jesus Christ (1J 3.2), insofar as is possible for someone who is only human and not also God.
Peter closes with a benediction. We should not read this, or any benediction, as a mindless formula, like the “Sincerely,” at the end of our letters. (Does anybody write letters anymore?)
This is a statement of the reason for which we live, for which we were designed to live. Our lives, and indeed all the universe, exist for the explicit purpose of bringing “to him … glory both now and for ever” (2P 3.18).
There’s no greater joy than finding your designed purpose and fulfilling it. And in the light of coming judgment and new creation, there’s nothing that makes more sense.
Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash