knowing this first, that there shall come at [the] close of the days mockers with mocking, walking according to their own lusts,
Peter has just sent his readers back to the words of the prophets and the apostles. Now he tells them the first thing they must know about the days ahead. The danger is ridicule, and it aims at one promise in particular: that Christ will come again.
Peter uses this phrase a second time here. One writer points out what the repetition is doing.
So here the repetition of "knowing this first" marks the importance of the truth. The gospel was preached to all creation. It might have seemed that this must have disarmed the hostile spirit, even in those who never believed to the saving of their souls, because of pride, pleasure, and lusts of all kinds. But the mind of the flesh is enmity against God.
These men do not come in from outside. One commentator names when they appear, where they rise, and what feeds them:
The apostle goes on to warn us against the special evils of the last days of the Christian world. He tells us that among those who profess to be Christians a class of unbelieving scoffers will arise. As always, unbelief is joined to a low moral condition. Unbelief has its spring in lust, and these men are described as "walking after their own lusts". The man who cannot believe what God says is doing what God forbids.
The same commentator finds the same pattern earlier, in Israel's own history:
In Bethel, the place distinguished in the history of Israel as the house of God, we find a band of mockers. It is no different in this day of grace. There is still ignorance and unbelief in the religious circle, and indifference among the men of the world. But the most terrible mark of the last days will be the appearance of scoffers among those who profess to be Christians — the very circle that claims to be the house of God. For such there is nothing but judgment — a judgment that begins at the house of God.
Of all the truths they could attack, they choose the Lord's return. One writer links that choice to the way they live.
First of all he issues a warning. He warns especially about the opposition to expect in the last days from scoffers, walking after their own lusts. Wishing to give free rein to their bodily desires, they deride the very thing that would put a check upon them.
So the failure is not one of evidence. Another writer ties the way these men walk to their refusal to know:
This brings out a most important truth. Whether a man can and will receive the truth of God is very largely a moral matter. Often a man wants to go on with his sin, or the flesh has a natural dislike of God. Perhaps they resent how the light searches them, and how the Bible holds them back. It is not the head that is so much at fault as the heart. "Walking after their own lusts … willingly ignorant" describes these latter-day scoffers well.
Peter warns us in advance so that the scoffing will not shake us. The mockery itself confirms his word.
Scripture gives us knowledge beforehand of the last days, so that we may be prepared. So it is no surprise that mockers have come. They walk in the lusts of self-pleasing, and shamelessly mock the promise that Christ will come. Their character, their conduct, and their sayings are all irresponsible and blameworthy. Such characters prove to us that the last days have come; so they really prove what they strongly deny. But this is always the case with unbelief: it proves itself to be folly.
- Know it first. Peter puts this warning at the head of the list on purpose. The repeated "knowing this first" marks how much weight the truth carries. Do not expect the last days to improve.
- Know where it starts. The scoffers rise among people who profess Christ, not outside them. For such there is nothing but judgment, and it begins at the house of God.
- Know the root. Unbelief here springs from lust, not from evidence. The man who cannot believe what God says is doing what God forbids; the fault lies in the heart rather than the head.
- Know the target. They mock the Lord's coming because it is the truth that would restrain them. They want free rein for their desires, so they laugh His return away.
- Know the outcome. By scoffing they date themselves. They prove the very thing they deny, and unbelief once again shows itself to be folly.
and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for from the time the fathers fell asleep all things remain thus from [the] beginning of [the] creation.
Peter says that in the last days scoffers will mock the promise of Christ's return. Their sneer will rest on how steady and unbroken the world looks. The verse gives us their exact words, their reasoning, and a hint of why they want it to be true.
Commentators consistently trace this scoffing back to appetite rather than evidence. The order in the verses is deliberate: what these men are, then what they do, then what they say.
Peter tells us that a class of unbelieving scoffers will arise among those who profess to be Christians. As always, unbelief goes hand in hand with a low moral condition. Unbelief has its spring in lust, and these men are described as "walking after their own lusts". The man who cannot believe what God says is doing what God forbids. Then we learn what they say: "Where is the promise of His coming?" They raise questions about an event they know will get in the way of satisfying their lusts.
The craving behind it need not be a scandalous one. It can be the plain wish to be left alone.
It is always when people want to follow their own desires that they begin to scoff. It may not be open and gross desires. But man wants to be independent and to please himself. So he thinks he must get rid of God and of His authority. He would be glad to get rid of God out of the scene altogether if he could.
The word Peter uses here is the ordinary word for someone's arrival and presence, used of people as well as of Christ.
The first is parousia, which simply means "coming". So it applies to the personal coming of anyone, as well as to Christ's coming… It appears some sixteen times in relation to the coming of Christ.
So the promise is of a Person arriving, not an idea or an influence.
They build their case on what they see. Nothing has ever broken in on the world's steady run, so nothing ever will.
There have always been scoffers of this sort. But verse 4 predicts that in the last days they will base their scoffing on the steady, unbroken run of all things from the earliest times. That, they will claim, makes any sudden catastrophe in days to come — such as the coming of the Lord — unthinkable.
Commentators give this reasoning a name, and point out what it must leave out.
It is the argument of "uniformity", only carried through to the end. Men ignore God's judgment by the flood, as they have been seeking to ignore it in our own day. Science has lately spoken in agreement with Scripture, but that is not welcome to those who want no supernatural interference of God with the machinery of this world.
Peter answers the claim in the next verses by pointing to a catastrophe already on record. The flood cuts the ground from under the whole premise.
Meanwhile the fact of the flood remains a testimony: (1) That the world has not continued from its creation as it now is. (2) That God has already visited the human race with appalling judgment for wickedness. (3) That man left to himself does not develop towards goodness and happiness. He sinks lower and lower into filthy corruption and frightful violence.
They appeal to creation to prove God will not act.
But if they scoff at the Lord's coming, they must let creation in; and if creation comes in, there must be a Creator — and who is the Creator? There they are silenced.
The long stretch of time since the promise was given is the mockers' strongest card, and it rests on measuring God by human clocks.
But the scoffers do not know two things. (1) God did once take public account of the ways of the world, when it was filled with violence… (2) A thousand years are as one day in God's reckoning. The first shows that God is not indifferent to the state of the world. The second shows that we must not judge His ways by the ways of men.
Commentators point out that the taunt is aimed at the wrong event.
So if you say with a sneer, "Where is the promise of His coming?" I answer you, not that He is coming for you, but that the day of the Lord is coming on the world… We can answer with assurance that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night — sudden, unexpected and unwelcome… The result will be the new heavens and new earth, "in which righteousness dwells", without one scoffer more.
- Lust — the scoffing starts in the will, not the mind. Men who want no return of Christ ask the question.
- Logic — the will then hires an argument: everything has always run on, so nothing will ever break in.
- Flood — one fact on the record kills that argument. The world has not run on unchanged, and God has judged it once already.
- Clock — what looks like delay is God's own reckoning, where a thousand years are as one day.
- Day — the coming they deny arrives as a thief. It ends in new heavens and a new earth, with no scoffer left.
For this is hidden from them through their own wilfulness, that heavens were of old, and an earth, having its subsistence out of water and in water, by the word of God,
Peter answers the mockers of the last days who deny both the flood behind us and Christ's return ahead of us. His reply is not a new argument but an old record: God spoke the world into being, and later He drowned it.
The word behind "deliberately overlook" points to the will, not to the mind. Older versions read "willingly ignorant." Peter is not describing people who were never told.
2 Peter 3:5 shows the force of the Greek word thelō: "this they are willingly ignorant of," or "this is hidden from them through their own wilfulness."
God can forgive ignorance. This ignorance is different: the scoffer has chosen his own blindness.
A person might be ignorant and be forgiven, but the grave sin of the present moment is this, that the scoffer is "willingly ignorant."
Why do people want the flood never to have happened? One writer names the motive.
Peter says: you like to believe that there was no flood, and I will tell you why. If you admit the flood, you admit the judgment of God upon wickedness. And if you admit that God judged wickedness once, then it is more than probable He will judge a second time. So men will not have it: their will is in question again.
The same will shows itself in how these mockers handle the Bible.
Hating the truth of the promise, and not being able to deny its existence, they are driven to give up the word to get rid of the promise. They acknowledge it is there, but refuse to believe what God says.
Peter meets a claim about nature with a fact from Scripture.
Here we have inspired Scripture to set every doubt at rest for those that fear God. Scripture states the tremendous fact in a few words: the flood destroyed all guilty humanity. The account is free of local legend and human embellishment. The moral fact stands in all its solemnity.
That leaves two ways to explain where the world came from.
They speak of "the beginning of the creation", so they admit there was a beginning. But their wills are set against God, and they try to explain creation by natural causes. The believer knows that the heavens "existed long ago" by the word of God, and that the earth emerged from the waters to become the home of man.
What does it mean that the earth was formed "out of water and through water"? Kelly holds that both the earth's first shaping and the flood are in view.
Some apply this passage only to the earth's first make-up, others to the flood. Plainly the apostle looks at each in turn. The All-wise God had built the earth that way in case of need. When the human race turned away from Him, that drastic remedy was called for, and He used it to destroy the old world. Could unbelief be more suicidal than to assume such a thing is impossible?
Another writer goes back to the waters that were there before dry land.
When God began to form the world, what already existed was one vast mass of waters, called "the deep": "darkness was over the face of the deep," and "the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." The earth did stand by God's power out of the water. Whatever store of waters lay below broke out over the earth, and more came down on it from above.
Verses 5 to 7 form a single chain, and the connecting link is the same word of God each time.
First, by His word God created the heavens and the earth. Second, by His word God stepped in with a judgment that brought the flood on the world of the ungodly, so that the world of that time perished. Third, by His word God keeps the present heavens and earth for fire, against the day when the ungodly men of this present generation are judged.
One writer takes the scoffing itself as proof that Peter's prediction has come true.
To a mind obsessed with evolution the flood of the past, as recorded in Genesis, and the personal coming of Christ in the future are equally unbelievable. They stay wilfully ignorant of the one, and they mock and deny the other. For over nineteen centuries scoffers have scoffed. Only during the last half century have they scoffed on these grounds. But the scoffers are to scoff on these grounds in the last days.
- Word — creating. God spoke, and the heavens and earth came into being. The earth rose out of water and stood through water at His command.
- Word — recorded. Peter answers a claim about nature with Scripture, not with theories. The flood is a fact on record, and it stands in all its solemnity.
- Word — refused. The mockers are not short of information. Their ignorance is chosen: to admit one judgment is to admit another may follow.
- Word — reserving. The same word made the world and later flooded it. That word now keeps the present heavens and earth for fire and the day of judgment.
- Word — vindicated. Peter foretold scoffing on exactly these grounds in the last days. Hearing it should steady faith, not shake it.
through which [waters] the then world, deluged with water, perished.
The verse points back to a single event in history: the flood that swept away the world of Noah's day. Peter uses it against people who say nature never changes, and the writers ask what perished, how far the water reached, and why the flood is denied.
Peter draws a line between two worlds, and the wording marks the earlier one as finished. One writer traces where the present order began:
The Apostle Peter, speaking of the world before the flood, calls it "the world that then existed" (2 Peter 3:6). That world has passed away forever. But he goes straight on to speak of "the heavens and earth that now exist." Here he means the world that started after the flood.
"Perished" is a strong word, but it does not mean the planet stopped existing. Scripture uses the same word elsewhere for things ruined rather than erased, translated "perish" in older versions:
"The skins will be destroyed" (Luke 5:37), that is, the new wine bursts the old skins, and they are made useless for the purpose they were made for. Again, "the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished" (2 Peter 3:6). The world was certainly not wiped out of existence.
The flood water was water God Himself had stored above and below:
Here we see that God destroyed the early population of the earth by the vast store of water He provided above and below. It overwhelmed man and beast, apart from those He preserved in the ark with Noah at His command. Genesis 7:11 points to this huge overflow: "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows (or floodgates) of the heavens were opened."
How far did those waters reach? Peter's phrase itself settles the question for some writers:
The flood was universal — absolutely universal. That seems to me to be clearly meant and intended, because it destroyed the world that then existed. God puts an end to the whole system of the world. His judgment of the earth and everything on it was as complete as His coming judgment by fire will be. Everything in the whole order and system of the world that had life perished.
Some people say everything has carried on unchanged since the world began. The flood answers them:
They reason from what they see, and draw conclusions about what will be. Faith turns away from what is seen and stands on the word of God. It knows such arguments are completely false. Things have not continued as they were from the beginning of creation. God has stepped in with striking judgments. The flood is the outstanding witness that God has broken into the ordinary course of nature.
The memory of the flood is not kept in the Bible alone:
There is hardly a country on earth without traditions, more or less true, of that solemn dealing with the whole inhabited earth. God kept Noah and his family safe in an ark, along with the animals that would otherwise have died in the waters. So people are without excuse. What else but the fact itself could produce a tradition found among all the races of mankind, north, south, east and west?
Peter says the ignorance is deliberate. One writer explains what makes the flood so unwelcome:
Ah! says Peter, you like to believe there was no flood, and I will tell you why. If you admit the flood, you admit the judgment of God on wickedness. And if you admit the judgment of God on wickedness once, then He will most likely judge a second time. So men will not have it. Their will is in question again. They are deliberately ignorant of the solemn fact that the world has once been judged. The world came up out of the waters by the word of God, and at His bidding those same waters swallowed it up, and everything on it, apart from those in the ark He provided.
Verse 6 is one step in a three-part argument, and the same word runs through all of it:
First, by His word God created the heavens and the earth. Second, by His word God stepped in with a judgment that brought the flood on the world of the ungodly, so that the world that then existed perished. Third, by His word He keeps the present heavens and earth for fire, until the day He judges the ungodly men of this generation.
- Word made it. God spoke the heavens and the earth into being. That same word rules everything that has happened to them since.
- Word ended it. At His command the water He had stored above and below broke loose, and it ended the whole order of life before the flood.
- Ruined, not erased. "Perished" means that world stopped serving the purpose God made it for. The planet itself did not stop existing.
- Word answers the scoffer. The claim that nothing ever changes falls to one fact of history. Nations everywhere remember the flood, and so does Scripture.
- Word warns us still. Men reject the flood because one judgment means another can follow. That is Peter's point: the same word keeps the present heavens and earth for fire.
But the present heavens and the earth by his word are laid up in store, kept for fire unto a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
Peter answers mockers who say the world has always run on unchanged, so Christ cannot be coming back. His reply rests on one thing: the word of God. That word made the heavens and earth, flooded them once, and now keeps them for fire.
Two facts about God carry the point.
(V. 7). If God brought the world into being by His word, He can surely end it by His word. If God has intervened in judgment, He can do so again.
The same writer sets out three acts of God, all carried by the same word:
First, that by His word God created the heavens and the earth. Second, by His word God stepped in to judge. He brought the flood on the ungodly world, and that world perished. Third, by His word God keeps the present heavens and earth for fire, until the day when He judges the ungodly men of this present generation.
To claim that nothing has ever interrupted nature, you must push one fact out of sight — the flood. Commentators say this blindness is real, and self-made.
They ask, "Where is the promise of His coming?" They claim that all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. It is the argument of "uniformity," pushed all the way. They ignore God's judgment by the flood... This is hidden from them, says the apostle. It is truly hidden, so they can be sincere in holding it. Yet it is the cunning of their own wills that hides it — and those wills so often deceive the sharpest minds.
The verse says this world is "stored up" and "kept" for fire. One writer applies that to everything men build.
God has but one way of purifying this sin-stained earth, and it is by fire... So that, on the mightiest monuments of man's skill and ingenuity, faith sees the words "Reserved to fire" written in letters that cannot be erased.
The reason is not that the world is old but that it is stained. One writer ties the fate of the creation to the fate of the man who ruined it.
This world is already under judgment, and it will soon vanish, for the present heavens and earth are "stored up for fire"... Why? The answer is this: the first creation will share the doom of the first man.
Another writer looks at the world as it stands today.
The world, as we look at it, in spite of all reforms and all outward improvements, is not such that anyone can easily believe a holy God will go on with it forever.
Peter calls it "the day of judgment"; three verses later he calls the same event "the day of the Lord." Commentators read these as one period.
These two expressions must clearly mean the same thing — they both refer to the same period... "The day of judgment," then, is the period when God destroys the heavens and the earth by fire.
How long is that day? One writer says Peter takes it in its widest sense.
Peter, and he alone, takes the day of the Lord to cover the whole of the thousand-year reign, and even what comes just before it and just after it... All these vast events fall within the day of the Lord — not within the thousand years, but within that day.
Why is the coming judgment heavier than the flood? One writer points to all that has happened since Noah's day.
The law, Christ's coming, and the gospel preached to every creature have made man's responsibility far greater. So his sin in rejecting the truth is far greater too... Such measureless guilt — rejecting the only, perfectly righteous One and His propitiation — will have to face God's extreme punishment by fire.
Smaller judgments already stand as previews. Of the fire that fell on Sodom, one writer observes:
This judgment was a sample of what is yet to come on a much greater scale in "the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly."
- Word that made — the heavens and earth exist because God spoke; the whole verse rests on that single fact.
- Word that flooded — the same word once broke nature's routine. Scoffers must hide that fact to claim the world runs on unchanged.
- Word that keeps — the present world is not drifting. God stores it, holds it, and labels it "reserved to fire." Every human achievement carries that label.
- Word that names a day — Peter's "day of judgment" is his "day of the Lord." It is not an hour but a long period, reaching across the thousand-year reign and beyond.
- Word that raises the stakes — water answered an age of ignorance. Fire answers a world that has heard the gospel and refused the Righteous One.
But let not this one thing be hidden from you, beloved, that one day with [the] Lord [is] as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
The mockers of the last days say the world keeps running as it always has, so the promised return will never come. Peter's reply asks his readers not to overlook one thing: God does not measure time the way we do.
The mockers' taunt rests on two blind spots. This verse removes the second one.
The scoffers are ignorant of two things. First, God did once take public account of the ways of the world. It was filled with violence, and a flood of waters destroyed it all, apart from one family. Second, a thousand years are as one day in the reckoning of God. The first shows that God is not indifferent to the state of the world. The second shows that we must not judge His ways by the ways of men. Men live in hours, days and years. They must work in a rush in case they are too late to do what they want. He is the eternal God, whose being is outside the bounds of time. So He can patiently wait for everything to develop until the moment is ripe for the display of His glory.
The answer runs on into verse 9. Each part meets the charge of delay from a different side.
First, let the believer remember this. In our eyes the delay may seem long. With the Lord it is only a brief moment, for "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day". Secondly, let us never forget that the promise of His coming is "His promise", and that His word cannot fail. Thirdly, there is a reason for the delay. The Lord is not slack in fulfilling His promise. He is longsuffering, "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance". In His grace God gives space for repentance before the judgment falls. In his unbelief man uses the delay to deny that judgment will ever come.
Some have used these words to turn the days of creation into thousand-year ages. But the sentence runs in both directions.
But as to the principle, the passage in Peter is no proof at all. It is not a statement of time but the opposite — the simple assurance of how little God counts time as man counts it. You could argue from it, just as fairly, that the millennial "thousand years" was only a day, as that the creation "days" each stood for a thousand years. For it is not only "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years," but also "a thousand years as one day."
This verse prepares the reader for the day of the Lord, announced two verses later. That day does its work at once and yet stretches out.
He shows what is no small help for understanding the coming day of the Lord: with Him one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. Though that day brings immense change at once, it also extends through a long period. And it is His grace in saving now, not slackness, that defers it. But it will come unexpectedly, like a thief. In that day the heavens will pass away with a rushing noise. The elements will dissolve with fierce heat, and the earth and the works in it will be burned up (8-10). It is still the day, but its evening as it were, when this catastrophe comes.
The verse invites us to swap our arithmetic for His.
If days and years are taken out of their ordinary reckoning by time, and put in connection with the Lord and His coming, faith's reckonings become like His. We then readily believe that "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." This new way of counting lets us say, about this seemingly long interval that measures His absence, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you." The difference between these standards — either divine or human — makes the difference we are considering.
Counted that way, the cross is not ancient history, and this is still the world that crucified Him.
In God's sight it is less than two days since the world crucified your beloved Saviour. Do you want to find all your ambition, all your hopes, all your pleasures in such a world?
- Reckoning — The verse hands us God's scale of time. Faith adopts it and stops judging His ways by human clocks.
- Not slack — The delay is longsuffering. It gives space for repentance before judgment falls.
- His promise — The promise is the Lord's own, so its timing is His business and its fulfilment is certain.
- Not a formula — The sentence runs both ways, so it fixes no calendar. It measures how God views time, not the length of an age.
- Two days — On this reckoning the cross is less than two days behind us, and the day of the Lord is close ahead. That is near enough to reshape what you live for.
[The] Lord does not delay his promise, as some account of delay, but is longsuffering towards you, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Peter is answering mockers who look at an unchanged world and ask where the promised coming has gone. His answer is that the delay is not a broken schedule but patience — God counts time His own way, and He wants people saved, not destroyed.
The waiting has an explanation. One writer ties three parts of Peter's answer together: God's timescale, the certainty of His word, and the reason for the pause:
First, remember that what looks like a long delay to us is only a brief moment with the Lord: "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." Second, never forget that the promise of His coming is "His promise", and that His word cannot fail. Third, there is a reason for the delay. It is not that the Lord is slow to fulfill His promise, but that He is patient... In His grace God gives room to repent before judgment falls. In his unbelief man uses the delay to say judgment will never come.
The phrase "as some count slackness" points to a human measuring stick. Faith learns to use another one:
If days and years are taken out of their ordinary reckoning by time, and put in connection with the Lord and His coming, or with the day of God and the final dissolution of the heavens and the earth, faith's reckonings become like His, and we readily believe that "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." It is this new method of calculation which lets us say, about this apparently long interval that measures His absence, "the Lord is not slack concerning His promise as men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us."
The delay has a purpose. One writer describes what God is busy doing instead:
His purposes of grace alone hold things back for the moment. He is bent on saving souls. He holds back from trading the present work of salvation for the strange work of judgment. He wants to fill heaven with guests that grace has made fit for it. But He is not slow to fulfill His promise.
It also answers a question believers ask: why does God let such a world go on?
If God stepped in to change it, He would have to come in judgment and end the time of mercy. He does not do that while anyone still has ears to hear... We may have to suffer in the world for a while. Even so, we can be glad the world goes on, because it is still a time of mercy for others.
Writers link this to what God swore in the Old Testament about the wicked:
First, it is not because judgment is His delight... "Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?"... No, God takes no pleasure in destroying anyone. The sad truth is that men despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance and patience.
Commentators are careful to call this God's desire, not a promise about how men will answer. It is "what is in His heart, His desire for men, however little they may respond to it" (F. W. Grant).
Misread, the pause becomes an argument that nothing will ever happen. The verse itself blocks that:
The Lord is not slow, and not careless or undependable, whatever some men accuse Him of. His patience is astonishing. It is folly to mistake His patience for indifference.
Peter's own words leave two roads open: "The alternative is clearly stated. It is repent or perish" (F. B. Hole).
Since the waiting is mercy, it shapes how believers pray and how hearers should act. One writer draws the conclusion for prayer:
Men are the work of His hand, and He looks on them with pity. He "is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." This is the day of grace, not of judgment. So it is the day for intercession.
That same patience takes away every excuse. Those who hear the message and still refuse "shall perish without a shadow of an excuse" (C. H. Mackintosh).
- Not broken — the delay never touches the reliability of the promise. It is His promise, and His word cannot fail.
- Not slow — a thousand years are like a day to Him. Faith learns to read God's clock instead of man's.
- But patient — the pause is grace. He is saving souls, and He will not close the time of mercy while anyone still has ears to hear.
- Not wishing any perish — this is God's heart, the same heart that swore He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
- So: repent — patience is not indifference. Peter's choice is plain: repent or perish. Meanwhile it is the day for intercession, not judgment.
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.
But, according to his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness.
Peter has just described the present heavens and earth passing away in fire. He now turns from what burns to what God has promised: a new creation, unlike the coming reign of Christ on earth, where righteousness is finally at home.
Twice in this chapter Peter points back to what God has promised. One writer asks where that leaves our confidence:
Faith does more. It has a long outlook, and it carries us beyond judgment into "new heavens and a new earth." … We do not look for this because of our imaginations or our feelings. We look for it because of His unfailing word — "His promise." For the second time the Apostle reminds us that it is "His promise." Because it is His, it will certainly be fulfilled (verses 9 and 13).
That promise was not new with Peter. One writer traces it back to the prophet Isaiah, and notes how little the earlier prophets said about it:
Beyond it, according to His promise, there remains for us the cheer of new heavens and the new earth, in which righteousness dwells. This clearly points back to Isaiah's word: "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind." It is only a glance. Apart from this, the prophets of the Old Testament never seem to go beyond the kingdom we have learned to call "millennial."
So is this a different world, or this same one made new? One writer answers with a picture taken from the believer's own life:
The new earth, let us remember, is new in the same sense that the man in Christ is a new man — not a new individual. It is the same person who was the sinner and is now the saint, but there is a new condition altogether.
Another writer applies the same thought to the fire, and says which heavens are meant:
The great burning up did not mean that the earth and the heavens are wiped out of existence. God wipes nothing out of existence. … The burning of the earth and the heaven means their complete cleansing. The heaven spoken of cannot be the whole of the heavens, because there is a heaven that these cleansing fires cannot touch. It is the heaven that surrounds the earth, the sphere that once belonged to the great usurper, the prince of the power of the air.
The verse does not say righteousness rules there. It says righteousness dwells there. One writer shows how that one word marks this scene off from Christ's coming reign:
It will be a scene "in which righteousness dwells." Every kind of corruption and violence, lust and lawlessness marks the present world. Lasting righteousness will mark the new creation. It will not be the reign of righteousness as in millennial days, which implies that evil is present and has to be held down. In the new scene, evil has been dealt with, and righteousness will dwell.
The picture is of righteousness stepping down from the bench because there are no more cases to try:
Righteousness is going to have its lasting home, with nothing to disturb it. It will not have to sit on a throne, watching like a judge in case something rises up that it must condemn. That is its position in the millennial age. When you reach the new heavens and the new earth, righteousness will be able to come down from the throne, its work done, and live among men. Nothing will ever rise again to challenge it.
One writer sets this scene beside the earlier stages of God's dealings with the world:
We have four worlds, so to speak, in this respect. First, the garden of Eden. Then a world no longer innocent, a world that has left God and been driven out, where sin and Satan reign. Then a world in which Christ reigns, and reigns in righteousness. Last, the new heavens and the new earth, in which righteousness dwells. The innocent world is now gone. It was tested by simple obedience, with no evil in it. The final world is based on righteousness, and righteousness in its nature never changes, so that world can never change in its moral stability.
Only at that point is sin fully cleared out of the world — though the work that clears it was finished long before:
As believers, your sins are undoubtedly forgiven, but this is another thing. … He has shed His blood for the purpose, and that blood is beyond doubt a perfectly efficacious sacrifice, by which all things are surely to be reconciled to God; but they are not reconciled till He comes again. … When the Lord takes the world-kingdom, it will be richly applied and for a long while, but not in absolute and everlasting fulness, till "the new heavens, and the new earth, in which righteousness dwells."
God's promise also changes how a believer faces the end:
All true believers have eternal life in Christ. So they are already free from judgment, and they have a living hope: they are expecting their Lord to return and receive them to Himself. The breaking up of heaven and earth fills us with no dread. We who have believed can say with assurance, "But according to His promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells."
- Promised — the hope rests on God's word through Isaiah, not on our feelings or our imagination. Peter calls it "His promise" twice in one chapter.
- Purified — the fire cleanses the world; it does not wipe it out. The earth is new the way a believer is a new man: the same one, in a wholly new condition.
- Peopled by righteousness — in the coming kingdom righteousness reigns and holds evil down. Here it comes down from the throne and lives at home, with nothing left to challenge it.
- Permanent — Eden was lost and the kingdom is a reign. This last world rests on righteousness, and righteousness never changes, so this world never changes either.
- Practical — others dread the coming fire. Those who trust the promise look past it, and wait for the home of righteousness on the far side.