But the day of [the] Lord will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a rushing noise, and [the] elements, burning with heat, shall be dissolved, and [the] earth and the works in it shall be burnt up.
Mockers say the world never changes and that Christ's promise to return has failed. Peter's answer does not defend that hope — he names a day when fire will undo the very world they trust.
Notice what Peter does not say. They mock the Lord's coming, and the answer of faith points somewhere else:
Unbelief is as sure of a stable unchanged world as of man's progress. What is the answer of faith? Not the presence of the Lord but His day will come as a thief in the night. They taunt about the Lord's coming with its bright hope. The Holy Spirit answers them with a solemn threat: His day will come with a power that will dissolve not just the works of busy man, but the heavens and earth, before that day closes.
Peter picks the image for its silence — nothing announces it. (These writers quote an older wording: "as a thief in the night.")
The Lord is not willing that you should perish. But remember this: "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night." I never heard of a thief blowing a trumpet before breaking into your house.
A thief only surprises those asleep in the dark. Commentators are careful about who that includes:
The event that overtakes the world as a thief in the night is not the coming of the Lord for His saints. It is the coming of "the day of the Lord." Scripture never calls that day a "blessed hope." It speaks of it as a time of fearful retribution and judgment. Believers of this present age will not be in the night that then covers the world. As "the children of the day," they will be with Christ.
The day of the Lord is not a single moment. Writers place its start at Christ's return and this burning at its far end:
The Lord will come when men do not expect Him, as a thief in the night, and so bring in His day. That "day" will include a thousand years, as other Scriptures show. It will begin with His coming and not close until the earth and its surrounding heavens pass away, dissolved by fire… That same destruction of the heavens and the earth will bring in the "day of God" — the eternal state. The "day of the Lord" and the "day of God" are like two circles that touch and just overlap. They overlap at the point where the heavens and earth are destroyed, so their destruction may be said to belong to both.
One writer ties this burning to the scene of final judgment:
It seems plain to me that this is what takes place at the time of the great white throne. The moment the Lord is on that throne, the earth and heaven flee from before His face, and no place is found for them.
The word points to physical matter, and the flood is the pattern for reading it:
By "elements" the Apostle means, I think, the material that makes up the crust of the globe. Water once flooded the world; fire will melt it down to form a new earth, a new atmospheric heaven, and so on.
Commentators differ on how total this is. Some read it as the end of the present creation outright; others argue melting is not erasing:
Fire is the instrument of a deeper judgment, yet it does not annihilate the material it fastens on. The melting of elements even suggests the opposite, and dissolving is not, in this sense, destroying.
The verse does not stop at rock and sky. It reaches everything built on the earth. (The older wording says the works on the earth "shall be burned up"; the ESV says they "will be exposed".)
God has but one way of purifying this sin-stained earth, and it is by fire. So on the mightiest monuments of man's skill and ingenuity, faith sees written in unmistakable letters the words, "Reserved to fire."
The chapter turns at once from prediction to behaviour:
You may feel, and you ought to feel, what man is in his scoffings against the truth of God. But the best answer to it all is a godly life. Such a life is what knowing that hope works in your soul and in your walk, along with your sense of the dreadful doom awaiting those who despise not only the righteous will of God, but His mercy.
- Scoff — Mockers trust a world they think never changes. Peter does not defend the hope they ridicule. He names the day that will dissolve the stability they trust.
- Thief — No warning, no trumpet. The figure describes a world asleep in the dark, not those who belong to the light and will be with Christ.
- Fire — Water once flooded the world; fire will melt its materials. Writers differ on whether this ends the creation or purges it. Neither view softens the day.
- Timing — The burning closes the day of the Lord; it does not start it. Here that day overlaps the day of God, and earth and heaven flee from the throne.
- Walk — Faith reads "reserved to fire" on everything man builds. The fitting reply to scoffers is not argument but a godly life.
All these things then being to be dissolved, what ought ye to be in holy conversation and godliness,
Peter has just said that God keeps the present heavens and earth for fire. The day of the Lord will come like a thief. Verse 11 turns that certainty into a question: if everything you can see is under sentence, how should you live among it?
The verse argues from the fate of the world to the character of the believer. One writer reads that fate as a label stamped on everything we handle:
"The heavens and the earth which are now" are by the same word kept in store, reserved to fire. I wonder how much we really do write those three words in our own minds on all the things we see and deal with every day. If a Christian is living in the light of eternity, he looks at the great works of man and sees written across them, "Reserved to fire." He looks at all man's great schemes, their great organisations, their great trusts, their great unions. They are all covered by those three words.
Peter has already described people who mock the promise of Christ's coming. The verse does not hand the believer an argument against them. It hands him a way of living.
You may feel, and you ought to feel, what man is in his scoffing against the truth of God. But the best answer to it all is a godly life. Such a life is what knowing that hope works in your soul and in your walk. It also comes from your sense of the dreadful doom awaiting those who despise not only the righteous will of God but His mercy.
"Holiness" here means a manner of life. Older translations render it "holy conversation," meaning conduct. Such a life refuses to sink roots into ground God has already condemned.
Then we shall be marked by "holy conversation" — that is, a separate manner of life — and godliness. The Christian who spends all his energy making the best of this world may claim he knows these things. But he hardly believes them in any real sense. Lot drove his roots deep into the soil of Sodom, and he did it because he did not know its doom was decreed. What would he have done had he known? In fact, the light of true prophecy has a separating and sanctifying effect.
Peter returns to this word again and again. Each use shows what it replaces:
In his first letter he tells us we have been redeemed from "vain conversation" (1 Peter 1:18) — religiousness that springs from the flesh and tries to satisfy itself with forms… In his second letter he holds up Lot as a warning not to mix with the world. Its "filthy conversation" (2 Peter 2:7) distressed him, and it is certain to affect us the same way. In contrast, he urges here what is to mark the child of God: "holy conversation."
The second word adds the positive side. Faith at work always shows in how we live:
As always, faith in action must have an effect on our lives. It will lead to a life of holy separation from the world around us, which is going to be dissolved. It also leads to separation to the life of godliness, which the Apostle has so richly unfolded at the start of his letter.
Godliness is not hidden. People around the believer feel it:
The saint is born of God and filled with the Holy Spirit. He walks in an atmosphere of love — holy love — and goes through this scene with holy conversation. He lives in a holy atmosphere and carries it with him. He is separated to God. He walks with Him and spreads all around him the impressions that come from God's company.
Peter does not issue a rule. He asks a question and lets the answer form in the reader.
There is no command to be diligent. Instead the eye of the soul is directed to the glory and to the dissolution of everything present. It then says, What manner of persons ought we to be! So practical power derives from the grace of our calling.
The believer is not only braced for loss. He is leaning forward:
That is the negative side. The very fact that you know God's judgment rests on things will make you a separate person. But we are also filled with positive expectation. We hasten to the coming of the day of God. We are like people reaching out our hands to the dawn of a new day.
- Dissolved. Everything visible carries an invisible label: reserved for fire. Believing that is what makes the difference between knowing the verse and living it.
- Distinct. Lot settled in Sodom because he did not know its doom. Knowing the world's end keeps you from sinking roots into it.
- Holy. Peter's word means conduct, not talk. Empty religion and the filth of Sodom give way to a life set apart.
- Godly. Turning from the doomed world is only half. The other half is turning to God. It shows in the atmosphere you carry into every room.
- Hastening. The appeal is a question, not a rule. Show the soul the glory and the dissolution, and the answer rises on its own — with hands stretched out to the dawn.
waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, by reason of which [the] heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and [the] elements, burning with heat, shall melt?
Peter looks ahead to a universe on fire, and tells believers not only to wait for that day but to hurry towards it. Two questions follow: what is "the day of God," and how can anyone hasten a day God has fixed?
Scripture speaks of the day of the Lord, and here Peter names a different day. Commentators treat the two as separate periods, one after the other.
The day of the Lord is the period marked above all by the exaltation of Christ, as Lord and Administrator of the will of God, when righteousness will reign. It lasts for 1000 years. The day of God is the eternal state that follows it, in which God will dwell with men in a new heaven and a new earth, and there righteousness will dwell without a single enemy to challenge its peace.
That later day is not simply longer or brighter than what precedes it. It answers something in God Himself.
Glorious as this day of Christ will certainly be, a day of even greater charm and beauty is still to be revealed, and its glory is beyond anything words can express. The world to come will be a full testimony to the righteousness of God's character and ways, but the eternal state — the "day of God" — is needed to satisfy His heart. A heart of eternal love could not find its complete rest in anything but eternal conditions.
The ESV says the "heavenly bodies" will melt; older translations read "elements." One writer takes that word in a very physical sense — the raw stuff the planet is made of.
By "elements" the Apostle means, I think, the materials that make up the crust of the globe. As the world was once flooded with water, it will be melted down by fire, to form a new earth, a new atmospheric heaven, and so on.
So what survives the fire? Another writer answers that melting down is not wiping out.
Fire brings this dissolution; it is not annihilation. Scripture says nothing about any future act of literally creating matter, and it says nothing to support what some foolishly argue for: annihilation, the total wiping out of being. Scripture knows nothing of such a baseless theory. Not an atom of matter, not a blade of grass, and certainly no living creature in the wide universe is doomed to extinction. Our planet will go into the crucible, altered, changed, and made new, to last for ever. Since there is no sin, there can be no corruption.
Here the writers disagree. One rejects the idea that human activity can move God's timetable.
People often take the words "hastening the coming of the day of God" to mean that we might act and serve, sending the gospel to the nations and doing other things, and so hurry the coming of the Lord. The text does not warrant that thought, and it is not true. No creature can hurry God, and none can delay Him in carrying out His eternal purposes.
Another writer holds both sides together, with an image of people reaching out to a sunrise.
We are like people holding out our hands to the dawn of a new day. Nothing we can do will make the clock go faster, but we hurry towards it in our hearts and affections. People are eagerly reaching forward to the new day that is coming. Men talk about a new day that new schemes will bring in, but we Christians hurry to the coming of the day of God.
Yet the longing carries a restraint, because God's delay is His patience with people:
We do not want this day delayed for our own sakes, but we love God's patience towards men, and that reconciles our hearts to the delay, though we ourselves long for the Lord to come.
The test of whether someone truly believes this verse is not what he says but where he sinks his roots.
The Christian who spends all his energy making the best of this world may say he knows these things, but he does not truly believe them. Lot sank his roots deep into the soil of Sodom, but that was because he did not know its doom was already decided. What would he have done if he had known? The light of true prophecy really does have a separating and sanctifying effect.
- Two days. The day of the Lord is Christ's thousand-year reign. The day of God is the eternal state that follows, where God dwells with men.
- Fire. One writer takes the elements as the material of the planet itself. Water once flooded the world; fire will melt it down.
- Not extinction. The burning dissolves; it does not annihilate. The planet goes into the crucible and comes out new and lasting.
- Hastening. Commentators differ. One denies that any creature can speed God's purpose. Another says we hurry towards it in heart and affection, while loving God's patience with people.
- Result. Knowing this world's doom loosens your grip on it. Lot's roots in Sodom show what happens when that knowledge is missing.