2 Peter

What 2 Peter is about

Second Peter is a short, urgent letter written by a man who says he knows his own death is near and wants to leave his readers with something they can hold on to afterwards.

It has three movements. The first is positive: God has granted everything needed for life and godliness, and the response is to add to faith virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. Peter anchors this in what he saw — he was on the mountain when the voice came from heaven, and he insists the message did not come from cleverly devised myths.

The second movement is a sustained denunciation of false teachers, and the language is unsparing. They are described as greedy, exploitative, contemptuous of authority, promising freedom while being enslaved themselves, and drawing people back into what they had escaped. The chapter overlaps substantially with Jude, and the two are usually read together.

The third takes up a specific mockery: Where is the promise of his coming? Everything is continuing as it always has. Peter’s answer is one of the most pastorally significant statements in the New Testament about time. With the Lord a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day; the Lord is not slow as some count slowness, but patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. What looks like delay is mercy.

He ends with a warm aside about Paul’s letters — which contain, he says, some things hard to understand — and a final instruction to grow in grace.

Where it sits in the story

Second Peter is one of the General Epistles. Its authorship was discussed in the early church more than that of most New Testament books before it was received into the canon, and scholars still debate it; the site follows traditional attribution.

Why it is worth reading

Because it addresses two problems the church never stops having: leaders who use people, and the quiet erosion that comes from waiting a long time for something promised. Its answer to the second — that patience is not indifference — has carried a great many Christians through.