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.