SO I WILL always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. 13I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body, 14because I know that I will soon put it aside, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. 15And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.
Original Meaning
THIS PARAGRAPH IS transitional. Peter has introduced the letter (1:1–2) and its central purpose (vv. 3–11). In verses 16–21, he will begin to explore the specific issues that have led him to write this letter—the erroneous ideas and practices of certain so-called Christians. But before Peter launches into these specifics, he does two things: (1) He commends his readers for their spiritual maturity (v. 12), and (2) he lets them know that he writes to them as one who is himself near death (vv. 13–15). Both points reinforce the strength of his appeal. The first removes the possibility that his readers might be offended by his warnings, while the second gives to his words a “death-bed” earnestness that reinforces the seriousness of what he is saying.
The “so” at the beginning of verse 12 creates a connection between verses 3–11 and verses 12–15. Peter seems to suggest that it is because the believers’ ultimate reward (v. 11) depends on earnestly striving for godliness (vv. 5–9) that he will continue to “remind” them of “these things.”1 The theme of reminding frames this passage, being found again at its conclusion: “… you will always be able to remember these things” (v. 15b). Peter realizes that what he is saying to these Christians is not new. The missionaries who first brought the gospel to them would have insisted that they live out the implications of Christ’s Lordship in their lives. And Peter himself, whether he was one of those first missionaries or not, has also made the same point to them—perhaps in person and perhaps also in a previous letter he wrote to them (see 3:1). It is somewhat surprising that he speaks of this reminding as taking place in the future (“will … remind”).2 However, as he does again at the end of the paragraph, Peter probably refers to the permanent effect he hopes his words in this letter will have.
Not only have his readers heard already about the importance of pursuing godliness; they have also been obedient to the exhortation. As Peter puts it, they “are firmly established in the truth.” Yet Peter knows well how prone believers are to lose the fine edge of their zeal for godliness, for the world keeps trying to “squeeze us into its mold” (cf. Rom. 12:2 LBP), and false Christians arise to propagate their own brand of faith without fervor. So, Peter says (v. 13), he will continue to exhort his readers “as long as I live in the tent of this body.” This last phrase—“tent of this body”—is the NIV’s paraphrase of what in Greek is a single word: skenoma, “tent.” The NIV undoubtedly intends that the word “body” defines “tent”: this tent, that is, this body of mine. The Greek word has this metaphorical significance, particularly when an author wants to distinguish the (physical) body from the soul, or spirit, of a person.3 Paul, for instance, uses a related term in a similar context: “Now we know that if the earthly tent [skenos] we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands…. For while we are in this tent, we groan …” (2 Cor. 5:1, 4a). Thus, it is an appropriate word for Peter to use in this context (he also uses it in v. 14, although NIV simply translates “it”), since he is thinking of his death, when he will “put aside” his (earthly) body.
But what Peter wants especially to stress in this paragraph is that the time available for him to continue his ministry of exhortation is limited. He knows he will soon be putting aside his earthly body.4 How does he know this? Because “our Lord Jesus Christ has made it clear to me.” Commentators speculate about when and how Christ mentioned this to Peter. Some think he must have communicated it to Peter in a prophecy or vision that is no longer available to us. A few have thought that Peter may be referring to so-called “Quo Vadis” legend found in the apocryphal book, The Acts of Peter. According to this story, Peter, leaving Rome to escape arrest, is confronted by Jesus. Peter asks the Lord, “Where are you going?” (Latin quo vadis), to which the Lord replies that he is going to Rome to be crucified. Peter therefore turns back to Rome to be crucified. But the story is first attested about A.D. 180; and seeing this account as the backdrop for 2 Peter 1:14 virtually requires that Peter not be the author of this letter.
It is therefore simplest to think that Peter refers to the prophecy about his death that we find at the end of John’s Gospel. Jesus, after forcing Peter three times to assert his love for him, says to him: “ ‘I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.’ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God” (John 21:18–19a). Jesus’ words refer to Peter’s death by crucifixion as a martyr.5 Some commentators do not think Peter can have this prophecy in mind, since it refers only vaguely to Peter’s death as an old man. And how could he know from this statement that death was imminent now?6 But we can surmise that Peter found himself in a situation where persecution had arisen and that he had drawn the conclusion that the Lord’s prophecy about his death was shortly to be realized. Moreover, the Greek word that connects Peter’s assertion about his imminent death and the reference to Christ (kathos) is one that normally indicates a correspondence (“just as”) rather than a cause (“because”).7 So Peter may simply be noting that his expectation of death is in keeping with Jesus’ prediction about his end.
Faced with imminent death, then, Peter makes a last appeal to his readers. But he trusts that the force of this appeal will go on “after [his] departure” (v. 15).8 How does he expect this to happen? He may be referring to the Gospel of Mark, since reliable tradition has it that Mark wrote down Peter’s preaching. Or Peter may be thinking of additional teaching he is hoping to give them, either through his personal presence or through another letter. But it is best to think that he has in view the letter of 2 Peter itself. By recording his exhortations and warnings in written form, Peter hopes that what he has said will have an enduring ministry in the lives of these Christians.
Bridging Contexts
THIS PASSAGE AGAIN raises the issue of the literary form of 2 Peter. As we mentioned in the Introduction, many scholars classify it as a “testament” or at least think that it has many of the characteristics of a testament. This word takes its literary sense from the legal sphere: A “testament” (from Latin testamentum) refers to the arrangement one makes for the disposition of one’s property at death. The word has then been applied by modern scholars to a book, or part of a book, in which a person makes a final speech from his or her deathbed. The most famous biblical example is the speech in which Jacob confers blessings on and makes predictions about each of his sons in Genesis 48:8–49:27. But it was particularly during the intertestamental period that Jews began using this form extensively. We therefore find in the collection of Jewish books called the Pseudepigrapha a “Testament of Job,” a “Testament of Moses,” a “Testament of Solomon,” a “Testament of Adam,” and, best-known and most influential, a “Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.” Typical features of these testaments are:
(1) The speaker knows (sometimes by prophecy) that he is about to die.
(2) The speaker gathers around him his children or a similar audience.
(3) The speaker often impresses on his audience the need for his hearers to remember his teaching and example.
(4) The speaker makes predictions of the future.
(5) The speaker gives moral exhortations.
Each of these features is present in 2 Peter. Peter announces that he is near death (1:12–15); he addresses an audience that is close to him; he asks his hearers to remember his example and teaching (1:12–15; cf. 3:1–2); he predicts the future (cf. 2:1–4; 3:3); he issues moral exhortations (throughout the letter). We should not, therefore, be surprised that scholars identify 2 Peter as a testament.
There is, however, one important difference between 2 Peter and these Jewish testaments. As the titles of these books indicate, they claim to be the farewell discourses of well-known figures in Israel’s history. Yet, as all recognize, they were written from 200 B.C. to about A.D. 300. In other words, the testaments are decidedly pseudonymous, written by an unknown author in the name of a spiritual hero from Israel’s past. It is precisely because 2 Peter resembles these testaments that many scholars have concluded it, too, must be pseudonymous. But unlike these Jewish testaments, there can only be a very short period of time between Peter’s lifetime and any reasonable date for the letter. Moreover, 2 Peter, as its introduction and conclusion make clear, is, in its basic literary form, a letter, written to a specific audience facing a specific set of circumstances. These factors, along with others we enumerated in the introduction, make it unlikely that 2 Peter is pseudonymous.
But the fact that this letter does not share the particular feature of the Jewish testaments does not diminish the number of parallels that do exist. We can surmise that Peter deliberately chose to write in this literary style as one that was most appropriate for his circumstances (facing imminent death) and purposes (to warn and exhort his readers). What we have, in fact, is a biblical author adapting a form popular in his own culture and “baptizing” it in the service of the gospel.
Contemporary Significance
A PARAGRAPH LIKE this one that focuses almost exclusively on Peter’s own circumstances and his purposes in writing is difficult to apply directly. But two points that Peter touches on carry indirect significance for the church of our day.
(1) The first is Peter’s emphasis on “memory.” In a recent wide-ranging book entitled Landscape and Memory, historian Simon Schama argues that our appreciation of landscape and nature is the product as much of the memory that we bring to the scene as it is of the scene itself. He quotes Henry David Thoreau:
It is in vain to dream of wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e., than I import into it.9
All of us have had such experiences of the power of memory. For example, on the flight home after our honeymoon, my wife, Jenny, and I listened to Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto. After twenty-two years, I can still not listen to that piece of music without seeing, in my mind’s eye, the Rocky Mountains beneath me and sensing my wife in the seat beside me, our life together before us.
As this passage suggests, and the Scriptures elsewhere confirm, memory plays an important role in the spiritual realm as well. God called on the people of Israel to “remember” his acts of redemption on their behalf and instituted the Passover as a vivid annual reminder of those saving events (see Ex. 13:3, 9; Deut. 7:18). What the Israelites were to do was not just, in an intellectual sense, recall what had happened in the past. They were to “bring it to mind” in a way that informed their entire being: intellect, will, emotions, and behavior. Remembering God’s work on their behalf would make it present for them; and so the Jewish family, celebrating Passover, was to identify with that desert generation, sharing in their salvation and making the Exodus events and their corollaries part of themselves.
In a similar way, that is what Jesus calls on his disciples to do in the Supper he instituted, doing it “in remembrance” of him (Luke 22:19). Paul frequently calls on his readers to “remember” his example or the teaching they had received (e.g., 1 Cor. 4:17; 15:1; 2 Cor. 10:7; 2 Tim. 2:14). Perhaps the Pauline text closest to ours comes in the apostle’s conclusion to his letter to the Romans (Rom. 15:14–15a):
I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another. I have written you quite boldly on some points, as if to remind you of them again ….
And in one of those many texts that reveals the close relationship between this letter and Jude, Jude 5 expresses a purpose much the same as 2 Peter 1:12–15: “Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that….”
What we find in many of these texts, then, is an acknowledgment that the readers already know the truth being communicated and a repetition of that truth as a “reminder.” The biblical authors are clearly concerned that Christians might “forget” even the most basic truths of the gospel—not in a mental sense, but in a volitive and practical sense. I may mentally remember that Christ died for my sins; but I may not make that truth a vital part of my person and behavior and instead become consumed with guilt and dread. I may mentally remember that God calls me to lead a holy life and warns me of the consequences if I do not, but I may still fail to be concerned about leading a holy life.
Ultimately, as Jesus recognized, it takes the ministry of the Holy Spirit to “bring to mind” the truths of the gospel (John 14:26). But God’s word, written and proclaimed, is the source of that reminder. And what Peter is indirectly suggesting here is that the repetition of the truths of the gospel, in both word and in acted “memorials” like the Lord’s Supper, is a necessary component of a vital Christian experience. We all know of preachers who tend to repeat, Sunday after Sunday, the same basic points—and this is certainly stultifying (and probably indicative of a lack of growth in the preacher). But we also find preachers who are constantly seeking for the new, the novel, the different, and who tend to abandon basic gospel truth in their quest to impress their listeners with how “up-to-date” they are. Such a preaching ministry may be intellectually stimulating; but without constant reiteration of basic biblical truth about God’s redemptive acts for us, it will produce Christians with no foundation and no hope for the future.
(2) Another point of contemporary relevance that emerges, indirectly, from this paragraph is the biblical perspective on the fate of the believer at death. First, a little background. In the Greek world of Peter’s day, there was a variety of beliefs about the afterlife. Devotees of the Orphic religions viewed death as the time when the divine soul of the person would be released from the prison of the body to enjoy immortal existence. Both Plato and Aristotle also held that some part of the human being (whether the “soul” or “reason”) was immortal and would live on after death without the body. But perhaps the view that was most popular among the “Greek-on-the-street” was that found in Homer—that most people (apart from notorious sinners or great heroes) would survive death only as bodiless shades in Hades, without any consciousness or real personal existence.10
Almost all Jews asserted, against this typical Greek view, some sort of conscious immortality. Some held a view similar to Plato’s, teaching the immortality of the soul (e.g., see The Wisdom of Solomon). But most Jews maintained a view, clearly presaged in the Old Testament, that the bodies of pious persons would be raised after death to enjoy an “embodied” state of bliss with the Lord. Jesus and the New Testament writers adopted and expanded this view. The resurrection of the bodies of believers who had died was basic to the gospel, an implication, Paul points out, of the resurrection of Christ himself (1 Cor. 15). When this resurrection will take place is not so clear. Some texts may suggest that the body is raised immediately at death, the believer “exchanging” his or her earthly body for a heavenly one.11 But 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 seems, rather, to teach that believers’ bodies will be raised at the time of Christ’s return in glory.
What then will be the state of the believer’s soul between death and Christ’s return? It may simply be “unconscious,” held in a kind of suspended animation (i.e., “soul sleep”). But, again, Paul seems to think that his death will result immediately in his “being with the Lord” (Phil. 1:21–23). Most Christian theologians, therefore, conclude that the believer’s soul will go immediately into the presence of the Lord at death, with the body being rejoined with the soul at the time of Christ’s return in glory.
What Peter says in this passage about his own death may seem, at first sight, to conform to the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul. For he speaks of his death as causing a “setting aside” (apothesis) of the “tent of his body” (v. 14). Nowhere else in the New Testament is this term used to describe death. It is a term that connotes the “taking off” of clothes; and the New Testament uses it, and its cognate verb, to speak of the believer “removing” sinful behavior (see, e.g., 1 Peter 2:1; 3:21). What we have here, then, is another instance in which Peter uses language untypical of the rest of the New Testament and which could be said to have a “Greek flavor.” But, as is the case in 1:3–11, we have no reason to think that Peter also adopts the Greek concept along with the word—that is, that he abandons the common early Christian conviction that his “putting aside” of the earthly body will be followed by the taking on of a heavenly one.
The growing popularity of Eastern religions throughout the Western world has brought into prominence quasi-mystical ideas about the afterlife that are often a part of these religions. Many people today look at their death as a time when their soul becomes merged with a god, or with “Mother Nature,” or with geia (the Greek word for “earth,” used for a mystical “goddess” concept in some New Age religions). And Christians, consciously or not, are influenced by such ideas. I have heard believers describe their hopes for the afterlife in language that sounded a lot more like Shirley MacLaine than the apostle Paul.
Faced with such influences, we need to reaffirm that the body is central to the afterlife. For those of us who die before the Lord returns, death will, as we have suggested, lead first of all to a bodiless experience of the presence of the Lord. But the biblical writers make clear that this is only an “intermediate state”; we need to continue to set our hopes on that time when we will possess a body suited for life in the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 15:44). Such hopes have relevance for the present time also. For downplaying the place of the body in the life after death can lead us to depreciate its significance for the present. The Corinthians did just that, dismissing the importance of the body and justifying all kinds of immoral behavior because the sins involved were “only” bodily sins. Against such a view, Paul reminds us that the body, being a permanent part of us, is a “temple of the Holy Spirit” and that we must “honor God with [the] body” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).