Wherefore, beloved, as ye wait for these things, be diligent to be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless;
Peter has just described all things present dissolved, and new heavens and a new earth to come. Verse 14 makes that future personal: since you wait for it, live now like people who belong there. (The writers quoted below use older translations. Their "in peace, without spot and blameless" is the ESV's "without spot or blemish, and at peace.")
The chapter follows God's dealings with this world to their end. This verse is where the argument lands.
2 Peter 3 follows God's righteous government of the world right to the end. He dissolves the heaven and earth that now are. So He purges the world of every link with ungodliness, and brings in new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells. But the apostle does more than pull back the veil from this destruction. It falls on the corrupt, the covetous and the rebellious. It falls too on the sceptics who trust the stability of material things, which also perish. The saints believe God's promise and wait for these awe-inspiring displays of divine retribution to come. He would have them found of Him in peace, without spot and blameless.
Peter does not just order effort. He points the eye somewhere first, and the effort follows.
Peter tells us exactly the same thing. "Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be." And again: "Seeing that you look for such things, be diligent." There is no bare command to be diligent. Instead, the eye of the soul is directed to the glory, and to the dissolution of all things present. Then it says, What manner of persons ought we to be! So practical power comes from the grace of our calling.
Peace, no spot, no blame are not random virtues. They describe the world Peter has just promised, and he asks us to show them now.
We know too that we shall enter into the blessedness of the eternal state in the new heavens and the new earth. Then we shall be diligent to walk now in peace, spotless and blameless. Here Peter returns to the word he had used in 2 Peter 1:5. The eternal state will be a scene of peace because no spot nor blame shall be there. Well, we shall aim at the characteristics of the new heavens and new earth before they actually arrive.
The command to be found "at peace" is not a demand to manufacture calm. Peace grows out of a standing the work of Christ has already given.
"So, beloved, since you look for such things, be diligent that you may be found of Him in peace." Peace, as you know, is the fruit of righteousness. "The work of righteousness shall be peace." Thank God, He has established us in righteousness already. What the coming age will bring about has already been brought in with us. The work of Christ has put you and me into the standing of righteousness already. So we can be found of Him in peace, without spot and blameless.
The word "found" asks what condition He will meet us in. It also steadies a heart shaken by the state of things around us.
The knowledge of the coming blessedness of the new heavens and the new earth should keep us in peace, without spot, and blameless. The Apostle describes an appalling condition in the professing Christian world in the last days. That alone might distract and disturb the soul. The prospect of this new scene will keep us seeking to walk so that when Christ comes we shall "be found of Him". We shall be walking in calm peace, unspotted by the present world, and blameless in our lives. We shall be waiting in patience, knowing that the longsuffering of the Lord is salvation. We may well challenge our hearts with the question, How will He find us when He comes?
Peter aims this diligence at what we are, not at how much we do.
What a reason believers have to be diligent, since they look for things so sure! Here the call is not to diligence in the work of God, but to diligence in being true to proper character. In eternity we shall certainly be "in peace, without spot, and blameless." Let us show now how positively we believe in eternity!
The test is simple and daily: would I be content for Him to arrive in the middle of what I am doing?
We go about, and work, and fall under the power of the cares of this scene. We forget the wonderful prospect before us, and we become worldly. How can we, if we are expecting the coming of Christ? We go in for worldly amusements. How can we, if we are waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? No! we should say, the Lord might come in the middle of it. And what then? As Peter says, "Be diligent, that you may be found of Him in peace, without spot and blameless."
- Looking — Peter gives no bare command to try harder. He sets the coming world before the eye, and the sight produces diligence.
- Given — peace is the fruit of righteousness. The work of Christ has already placed believers in that righteousness, so the command asks for what God has already given.
- Rehearsing — peace, no spot, no blame are the marks of the new heavens and new earth. We aim at that character before the scene arrives.
- Character — this diligence is not about how much we do in service. It is about being true to type, and showing now that we really believe in eternity.
- Found — the word turns everything into one searching question, How will He find me when He comes? — a question that cuts straight through worldly cares and amusements.
and account the longsuffering of our Lord [to be] salvation; according as our beloved brother Paul also has written to you according to the wisdom given to him,
The verse asks for a calculation: when the Lord seems slow, put His patience down as salvation, not neglect. Peter then names Paul as a witness to the same truth, and shows how one apostle valued another's writing.
The delay is not neglect. It is rescue in progress, because God is using the time.
We should count that the apparent delay is only the Lord's grace, working for the salvation of souls. We may well wait, if God uses this time to rescue souls from judgment, bringing them to know Himself, and saving them with an everlasting salvation.
So what is God slow at?
We understand God's gracious slowness. There is only one thing God is always slow about, and that is judgment. He never judges until He has warned and given space for repentance. How swift He is to save! How quick to bring peace to the troubled conscience! He is only slow to judge. He has not come because He wants souls to be saved! His long-suffering is salvation.
Peter asks for more than a private opinion. This reckoning changes how we spend the waiting years.
Further, we shall account that the present longsuffering of our Lord is salvation. So we shall not chafe under the waiting time it imposes on us. We shall know that every day of waiting, and perhaps of suffering, laid on us means the salvation of multitudes. And not only this. The "accounting" will not stop at a mere mental recognition of the fact; it will express itself in action. We shall bend our energies to setting before people what is ordained for their salvation, until the Lord comes.
Longing for Christ's return and being glad He waits are not rivals. One writer holds them together with a picture from ordinary married life.
The proper cry of an affectionate heart is, "Come, Lord Jesus." But it is our privilege to have fellowship with Him in His longsuffering toward this poor world… A loving wife may mourn her husband's absence and long for his return. But he is away preaching the gospel. She may have such full fellowship with him in his work that she is quite willing for him to stay away longer, if it brings even one soul to Jesus.
Someone could twist this verse into an excuse for going easy on sin. One writer rules that out. He also makes it personal: we are the fruit of this patience.
The longsuffering of the Lord is salvation. That is His meaning in it. It is not tolerance of evil in any way, and we must not use it as an argument for any tolerance on our part of what is contrary to Him. The fruit of this longsuffering we are, every one of us; therefore we may well rejoice in it.
The two men had clashed once. Peter's words here, near the end of both their lives, shows what became of that.
Notice how Peter writes of Paul — the man who once had to stand up to him and rebuke him at Antioch (Galatians 2:11). There is not a trace of bitterness, nor a trace of that Judaizing spirit which Paul had to resist. Martyrdom was drawing near for both of them, and it is "our beloved brother Paul." Delightful, is it not? The freest flow of Christian affection, and the fullest acknowledgement of the grace and gift given to someone other than himself.
Another writer notes how rare this moment is.
This is perhaps the only passage in the New Testament where one inspired apostle commends another. There had been, for a moment, an apparent breach between them, and men have worked it into a strife between two contradictory systems, both of them Christian. Peter's words here are surely intended in divine wisdom to meet any such thought.
Peter says Paul "wrote to you" — to Jewish believers. Commentators identify that letter as Hebrews, and note how Peter ranks Paul's writings.
How interesting, in more ways than one, is the reference to "our beloved brother Paul." He explained the prophets with power, but he went far beyond them as to God's counsels. Those counsels were hard for Jews especially, and the ignorant and unstable distorted them to their ruin. It is clear that the inspired Peter calls Paul's epistles "scriptures." People misused them all in this way. And more than that: he speaks of Paul having written to the Christian Jews, as Peter also did in both his Epistles. What can this be but the Epistle to the Hebrews?
- Delay — the pause before judgment is not slackness; God is slow at one thing only, and that is judging.
- Grace — the delay is rescue: God brings souls to know Him and saves them with an everlasting salvation.
- Account — this is a reckoning, not a mood; it stops us chafing and sends us out with the gospel while time lasts.
- Fellowship — we may long for Christ's return and still share His patience. Let Him wait, if one more soul comes in.
- Guardrail — His patience is never tolerance of evil. Its proof is us: every believer is fruit of that patience.
as also in all [his] epistles, speaking in them of these things; among which some things are hard to be understood, which the untaught and ill-established wrest, as also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.
Peter ends his letter by pointing to the writings of another apostle. In the same breath he warns that people twist them. He puts Paul's letters alongside the rest of Scripture, and says the damage falls on the reader who mishandles them.
The phrase "the other Scriptures" settles what Paul's letters are. One writer notes that it settles something about Peter too:
It is striking that Peter, whom Paul had once rebuked in front of everyone, speaks of him here with complete affection. He notes that Paul's letters contained a lofty teaching, which those who were unstable, and not taught by God, twisted. Peter himself does not go into the field Paul had entered. Even so, that does not stop him from speaking of Paul's writings as part of the Scriptures. He says, "as they do the other Scriptures." This is an important testimony. It also gives the same standing to the writings of the man who is able to give that title to the writings of another.
Peter and Paul had once clashed publicly. That history makes this endorsement remarkable:
This may be the only passage in the New Testament where we find one inspired apostle commending another. How fitting it is here. For a moment there had been an apparent breach between them, as we know. Men have worked that up, in their usual way, into a clash between two contradictory systems — both of them Christian. On that theory, some compromise finally had to bring the two together and weld them into one. Peter's words here are meant, in divine wisdom, to answer any such idea.
Peter admits the difficulty rather than hiding it. One writer traces it to what Paul's message cost a Jewish reader:
All the truth about the church — its place in God's purposes, its privileges, its makeup as a people chosen out of Gentiles as well as Jews, everything Paul sums up as "the mystery of Christ" (Eph. 3:4) — was bound to be "hard" for a Jew. It cut across every fibre of the national feeling they had nursed for centuries. Intellectually the truth was simple enough. But the eyes of their hearts needed opening to see it.
Difficulty in itself is not the fault Peter names. He assigns the blame elsewhere:
Difficulties there will be, and "things hard to be understood;" but it is only the unlearned and unstable who wrest them to their own destruction.
Where the ESV says "the ignorant and unstable," older translations read "unlearned" or "untaught." Either way the words describe a spiritual condition, not an educational one:
People twist or distort Scripture too, and so bring destruction on themselves. Those who do it are "unlearned and unstable." "Unlearned," or "untaught," means untaught not in the wisdom of the world, but in the things of God… Still, even if Peter especially had a Gentile danger in mind here, his words apply much more widely. Let us all beware of twisting the Word of God!
The second word points the same way. Another writer shows what a person must do before Scripture destroys him:
There are those who twist the Scriptures to their own destruction. But they have to twist them first in order to reach it. The ones who do so are the untaught and ill established — people who have not really bent their hearts to the truth that establishes them, and have not submitted their souls to its discipline.
"To their own destruction" is the sting. The wrecking is self-inflicted:
Here then we have a God-given description of those who think themselves learned enough to criticize and twist the Scriptures. Whether they attack the writings of Paul or anyone else, they are "unlearned and unstable," and blind and foolish too. They do no harm to the Scriptures they try to destroy. Instead they destroy themselves, for salvation is found only in God and in the word of His grace, which they refuse.
If instability is the danger, the reader's own state decides how much of Scripture reaches him:
If we are not spiritual, we will not gain much from the guidance the Scriptures give. Unless we are humble and broken in spirit, we will go badly wrong in our interpretations. We understand Scripture only as far as we are spiritual, and only by the Holy Spirit's teaching… We may be learned and stable in the things of this world, but that will not help us unless God teaches us and establishes us. Our present spiritual state is the measure of how much we understand the mind of God.
Twisting Scripture has a method, and you can name it and avoid it:
All Scripture is the word of truth. Yet think what disaster we can cause by giving Scripture a private interpretation, or by using texts out of their context, and so, as Peter says, twisting Scripture to our own destruction.
- Ranked — Peter files Paul's letters with "the other Scriptures." By giving that authority to another writer, he claims it for his own.
- Reconciled — Paul had once rebuked Peter in front of everyone. Peter is the one who now speaks of him with complete affection. That closes the door on any theory of two rival Christianities.
- Hard — the difficulty is real. Paul's truth about the church cut across everything a Jewish reader had inherited. The heart, not the intellect, needs opening.
- Wrested — "untaught" means untaught in the things of God. People twist Scripture by giving it a private interpretation and by pulling texts out of context.
- Ruined — the Scriptures survive every attack. The man who bends them is the one who breaks. So read with a humble heart, taught and established by God.
*Ye* therefore, beloved, knowing [these] things before, take care lest, being led away along with the error of the wicked, ye should fall from your own stedfastness
The last chapter of 2 Peter describes false teachers, mockers who laugh off the Lord's return, and a world already sentenced to judgment. Peter now turns to his readers with a warning: other people's error can pull a believer along and cost him his own stability, which older translations — and the writers quoted here — call "steadfastness."
Peter builds the warning on something his readers already have: they know this in advance. One writer treats that advance knowledge as the only thing that keeps a believer from being swept along.
Suppose all this is true. Suppose the present age ends in a falling away from God, and in the cutting off that follows. Then we may well expect Satan to use every scheme he has to turn believers' minds away from thinking about these things. And that is exactly what happens. We can see his power at work in two ways. He leads some people into unholy guesses that Scripture does not support. Then he uses those same guesses to discredit the study of the simple truth in the eyes of others. Either way he gets what he wants. For if we do not know these things beforehand, there is no security against "being led away by the error of the wicked."
So what exactly is this error? One writer finds the answer in the two chapters just before this verse.
What is the special snare and hindrance to this "steadfastness" today? It is "the error of the wicked." And what is this special error? It is found in our present chapter and in the one before it. There we read of "false teachers" inside the Christian world. They deny the Lord who bought them — the text does not say "redeemed them" — and their one business was to contaminate the flock of Christ. Their practice and their doctrine matched each other. Denying the Lord in what you teach was, and always must be, the complete overthrow of true moral conduct. Their influence spreads like disease.
Peter calls this steadfastness your own. Most Christians, looking back, would say they have very little of it.
"Your own steadfastness" is a remarkable expression. Look back over your own life as a Christian, and you are bound to admit a thousand times you turned aside from your aim. The person who knows himself best, and who knows the sharp edge of real discipleship, is the first to admit it. And yet, thank God, there is such a fact as "your own steadfastness." You can see it in many a bright and faithful witness who passes through all the traps of this world's sorry fairground. It was seen in full perfection in Him who was in every sense "the faithful witness," and is now the "firstborn from the dead." Yet, miracle as it surely is, "your own steadfastness" is as real a fact as any other part of God's work.
The verse warns about a fall, but not a fall out of salvation. One writer gathers up the whole letter to say what is really lost.
The Apostle has reminded us of these things. He has warned us against false teachers, against the mockers of the last days, and against those who twist the Scriptures to their own destruction. Last of all he warns us against being led away by the error of the wicked, and so losing our assurance by falling from the steadfastness that properly belongs to the believer.
One writer points to where such a fall starts: confidence in yourself.
For the fifth time in this chapter Peter calls believers "beloved." We know these things, so we carry responsibility, and he kindly encourages us to be on our guard, in case subtle error or wickedness affects us and leads us astray. The pride of thinking we are able to stand makes us all the more open to a fall from the steadfastness of consistent devotion to the Lord.
So what actually keeps a believer standing? One writer rules out the answer many people would give first.
There is really no security against error except in a growing, deepening knowledge of the Lord Himself. Let us set our hearts on this most precious knowledge. No religious institution, however strong its walls, can give this security. We must grow in grace and in personal knowledge of the Lord, so that we keep up true steadfastness in testimony to Him.
- Know — God tells His people the end of the story in advance. Without that knowledge, nothing protects you from being pulled along.
- Beware — the danger has a name: teachers who deny the Lord who bought them. Their corrupt teaching and their corrupt living go together.
- Own — steadfastness is still called yours, even when you can count a thousand times you turned aside. It is as real as any other work of God, and you can see it in faithful lives.
- Fall — what you lose is assurance and steady devotion. Pride, the thought that you can stand, is what makes the fall likely.
- Grow — no institution, however strong its walls, keeps anyone safe. Only a deepening personal knowledge of the Lord holds you steady.
but grow in grace, and in [the] knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him [be] glory both now and to [the] day of eternity. Amen.
Peter closes his letter in the middle of a warning about false teachers, scoffers, and the danger of losing your footing. His last word is not a wall to hide behind but a command to move — grow — followed by praise.
Peter's last command answers the danger he has just named:
The believer, faced with this, is urged to holy conduct and godliness… There is a danger that the Christian will be contaminated by the spirit of the world. What then is the preservative? "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
A warning is only half the answer:
It is not enough to be warned against evil; we must be in the positive enjoyment of truth. The way not to go back is to go on. Like a man on a bicycle, the Christian must go on if he would avoid falling off.
Years since conversion do not measure growth:
Growth has no direct connection with age. A man may be old and grey. He may have passed many a milestone since his conversion, and yet still be a stunted child spiritually.
It shows in what a person is becoming:
Growth, then, is a question of character. As we grow we are moulded more and more into conformity to Christ.
The word "grace" rules out a growth measured by rules kept:
Growing in grace stands in contrast to a legal attitude. It means deeply learning and valuing the grace of God in Christ Jesus. That grace lifts one above the level of all the surrounding evil.
Grace received shows in how a believer treats others, and there is no ceiling on it:
All true growth is in grace, the grace of God. Then as we expand in grace we grow in graciousness of spirit… Who can set a limit to our growth in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord? Both are without limit.
The second half of the command is not new to the letter. Peter has tied blessing to knowing Christ again and again:
For the fifth time in this short letter our blessing is connected with the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:2-3, 8; 2 Peter 2:20). The Apostle has pressed on us the value of the prophetic Scriptures, the commandments of the apostles, and the deep importance of resting on the Word of God. But he realises that merely knowing the letter will not keep us. Scripture is only rightly used as we gain through the word a deeper knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
No other defence can take its place:
Nothing keeps you safe from error except a growing, deepening knowledge of the Lord Himself. Let us set our hearts on this most precious knowledge. The walls of no church structure, however strong, can give this security.
Growth needs feeding, and God feeds each believer Himself:
If we are really dependent on God, He will give us the right thing. He will put the right book into our hands. He will feed us with food suitable for us. So we receive it from Himself and hold it in communion with Himself. It is fresh, living, powerful, formative. It tells on the heart and shines in the life. So we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
The letter ends by handing all the glory to Christ. The closing phrase reaches past this world's history:
Someone may have seen much of the grace of God when first coming to the knowledge of Christ. Even so, this should not, and does not, satisfy our soul, still less the Master… It is of the greatest importance to be also going forward in the ways of God… "To Him be the glory both now and [not simply for ever, but] to the day of eternity. Amen." Peter puts in view the day of eternity, with the new heavens and new earth, where everything that can be broken is gone.
The little word "now" carries a question with it:
We all admit that glory will come to Him for ever, but we may well challenge our hearts by asking, Is He getting glory from our lives even now?
- Danger — the verse before warns of losing your footing through the error of others. Growth is the answer.
- Direction — the way not to go back is to go on. A warning about evil is not enough without the positive enjoyment of truth.
- Grace — growth in grace is the opposite of a legal spirit, and it shows itself in a gracious spirit toward others.
- Knowledge — knowing the letter of Scripture will not keep anyone. Scripture does its work when it deepens your knowledge of Christ Himself, and no church structure can replace that safety.
- Glory — the growth ends in praise that runs from now to the day of eternity. Is He getting glory from our lives today?