2 Peter 3 Devotional
by Pastor Lawrence

In the previous chapter the apostle Peter warned the Church against the false teachers; now, he warns her against the scoffers.  These men do not merely pervert the Scriptures but utterly deny them acting as open adversaries of Christ and His gospel.  Desiring to walk in freedom without any constraint from God’s law they say, “Where is the promise of his coming?  Things are continuing just as they were from the beginning of creation.”  But Peter reminds them and us that the Lord had reserved His judgment on the ancient world for quite some time before finally covering the earth with the Flood.  In the same manner, He has reserved his judgment upon this world, until the day that it will be brought under the fire of condemnation.  But the Lord is not slow to keep this promise, for a thousand years are like only one day to Him.  With that mindset, we must understand that to the Lord it may feel as if Christ died two days ago rather than two thousand years ago.

But why is this important for us to understand.  Although lawless people continually deny the truth of God’s Word in order to suggest that it doesn’t matter how we live, Peter reminds us that although the world will be purged by fire, our works will be brought before the Lord on the Day of Judgement and that they will count for eternity.  In other words, what we do today really does matter.  But not only do our works matter, so too does our character.  In v.11 Peter says, “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness.”  How we thinks matters to God.  What we love matters to God.  What motivates us each day matters to God.  And how we evaluate the stuff of life matters to God.  God desires for to be holy in all these ways and is working in us by His Spirit to instill godly desires and abilities that we might walk in a manner pleasing to the Lord.  Nevertheless, we ourselves are called to diligently pursue these things, to cleanse ourselves from all sorts of impurity and to wait, even hasten or quicken the day of God through our prayers and our testimony to the world.

There is a reason that the Lord is patient in judgment.  Today is the day of salvation.  Today is the day of grace.  And He has called us to be his ambassadors for the gospel and his workmanship to show forth his grace to a fallen world.  But we must be careful “not to get carried away with the error of lawless people and lose our own stability” in the gospel.  Every day all around us there is another narrative that is being taught that seeks to undermine the true narrative of the gospel.  We must continue to have our minds transformed by the Word of God and grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ if we are to stay true to the gospel and to our calling.  Only then can we shine our light in the darkness.