SINCE EVERYTHING WILL be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
Original Meaning
IN 3:3–10, PETER has focused on teaching Christians what to believe about the return of Christ in glory. Now, in verses 11–13, he turns to what Christians should do about it. Reminders about the coming of the Lord and the response that Christians should have toward it are common in the last sections of New Testament letters (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:58; Eph. 5:10–16; Phil. 4:5; Col. 4:5; 1 Tim. 6:14; 2 Tim. 4:1–5; 1 Peter 5:1–10). But since the false teachers are attacking orthodox Christian doctrine at just this point, scoffing at the idea of a history-ending Parousia, Peter finds an eschatological exhortation especially important. He must not only correct this false teaching but demonstrate to believers its practical significance.
In the first part of verse 11 Peter ties his exhortation to the coming destruction of the world, as presented in verses 5–10, but he goes on to give also a positive eschatological grounding to his imperative: the hope of a “new heaven and a new earth” (v. 13). The Parousia brings both destruction and renewal. Christians should live holy and godly lives, then, not only because this world is not going to last but also because a new world is going to take its place. They should pursue righteousness, both to distance themselves from this decaying and doomed world and to prepare for the next, “the home of righteousness” (v. 13).
The connection of verse 11 with verse 10 is especially close, since Peter uses the same verb in both, lyo (“will be destroyed”). The future rendering of this verb in verse 11 in the NIV is certainly possible. But technically the verb is in the present tense, and Peter may have chosen this tense to suggest that the destruction of “everything” is even now in process (cf. NJB: “Since everything is coming to an end like this”).1 Just as the bodies of Christians are “wasting away” (2 Cor. 4:16), so the very universe is in process of decaying (Rom. 8:21). God did not build this world to last forever.
That being the case, Peter asks, “What kind of people ought you to be?” The Greek word for “what kind” (potapos) can sometimes have the nuance, “How wonderful, how glorious” (see Mark 13:1; 1 John 3:1). Such a nuance would certainly fit well here,2 but it does not have this meaning often enough to make the idea certain. Yet even if the nuance is neutral (as in most modern English translations), Peter makes the point clear enough by immediately answering his own question: “You ought to live holy and godly lives.”
The NIV is a legitimate paraphrase of the Greek, which literally translated reads, “It is necessary for you to live in holy conducts and godlinesses.” The plurals, which are awkward in the Greek and impossible in English, bring out the manifold ways in which believers need to exhibit holy and godly conduct. All we do should be “holy”; that is, it should reflect God’s own character of “set-apartness” from this world—a point Peter made in his first letter: “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written, ‘Be holy, because I am holy’ ” (1 Peter 1:15–16). And all that we do should be “godly”; that is, it should reflect the God we have come to know in Jesus Christ. Peter has made this quality of “godliness” a central ingredient in his initial exhortation to believers in this letter (2 Peter 1:3, 6–7). As we noted there, Peter ends his letter by returning to some of the key ideas introduced at its beginning.
Having begun his exhortation to holy living with an eschatological reminder, Peter concludes it with another: “as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming” (v. 12a). The attitude of expectancy suggested by the word “look forward” is often mentioned in Scripture as particularly appropriate for God’s people (see, e.g., Hab. 2:3–4; Matt. 11:3; Luke 7:19–20). Peter uses the verb three times in verses 12–14, and it therefore becomes a key theme in these verses. Christians need the motivation of the forward look. They need to recognize that God has a plan, that it unfolds just as he wants it to, and that it culminates in blessing for his people. What Christians look forward to is “the coming of the day of God” (NASB, a more literal rendering than NIV here).
We have encountered the word “coming” (parousia) twice already in 2 Peter (1:16; 3:4), a word used throughout the New Testament to denote the coming of Christ in glory. But this is the only place in the New Testament where the word is not followed by a personal reference. And the phrase “day of God” itself is unusual; “the day of the Lord” (see the notes on 2:9 and 3:10) is the customary scriptural designation of the end times (“day of God” occurs elsewhere only in Jer. 46:10 and Rev. 16:14). This unusual wording naturally raises the question about a peculiar focus he wants to bring to us. Perhaps he wants to maintain the more “cosmic” flavor of end events, typical of his treatment in this chapter.3 On the other hand, Peter is famous for unusual words and constructions, so we should be cautious about reading too much into this one.
Christians, says Peter, are not only to “look forward” to this “day of God”; they are also to “speed its coming.” The verb used here (speudo) can also mean “strive,” “make an effort,” “be eager.” Peter uses a form of this word with this meaning in 1:5; and if it has this meaning here, we would translate something like the NIV margin note: “as you wait eagerly for the day of God to come.” But this word has the sense of “hastening” in its other New Testament occurrences (Luke 2:16; 19:5, 6; Acts 20:16; 22:18), and the idea that believers may actually “hasten” the end of history, while at first sight strange, is in fact deeply rooted in Jewish and Christian teaching.
The rabbis claimed that the Messiah would come if only all Israel would repent or obey the law perfectly for one day—a teaching found in different forms in Jewish literature.4 Peter himself reflects this tradition in his sermon in the temple precincts (Acts 3:19–20): “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.” We may think that the idea of Christians hastening the coming of Christ takes away from the sovereignty of God, for doesn’t the Bible make clear that God determines the time of the end? We have here another instance of the biblical interplay between human actions and God’s sovereignty: Human acts are significant and meaningful, but God is nevertheless fully sovereign. As Bauckham argues, what Peter is suggesting is that God graciously factors his peoples’ actions into his determination of the time of the end.5
If we ask for further details on how Christians can hasten Christ’s return, Peter gives no explicit answer. But he has already claimed that the apparent delay in the Parousia is because God wants everybody (or, as we argued, all God’s people) to repent—the same point made in the temple sermon just quoted. God’s people can hasten Christ’s return by their sincere and complete rejection of the hold of sin on their lives. By connecting what he says here about hastening the coming of the day of God with his exhortation in verse 11b, Peter also suggests that the holy living of God’s people is a way to speed up the eschatological timetable. And we can include evangelism; recall Jesus’ words: “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). Finally, we may also add to the list the prayers of God’s people, for we have been taught to pray “Your kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10).
In the last part of verse 12, Peter describes again the cosmic effects of the day of God: “The heavens will be destroyed by fire, and the elements will melt as they are burned” (a more literal rendering of the Greek than the NIV). “Heavens” refers again to the unseen spiritual dimension of the universe (see 3:5, 7, 10). “Destroy” (Greek lyo) occurs again as a key verb (see also vv. 10–11). The word “elements” (stoicheia; see comments on v. 10) is either the heavenly bodies or the basic physical components of the earth—more likely the latter. Peter is then here announcing the destruction of the entire universe—heavens and earth (see also vv. 5 and 7). The word “melt” is a particularly appropriate one in this context, for it was used in the Old Testament to depict the cosmic disasters that will accompany the Day of the Lord:
Look! The LORD is coming from his dwelling place;
he comes down and treads the high places of the earth.
The mountains melt beneath him
and the valleys split apart,
like wax before the fire,
like water rushing down a slope. (Mic. 1:3–4; see also Isa. 63:19–64:1, LXX)
But Christians do not “look forward” only to destruction of the universe; they also “look forward” to its renewal. God has promised a “new heaven and a new earth.” The promise Peter has in mind is almost certainly the one in Isaiah 65 and 66, the only Old Testament passage in which this idea is mentioned:
Behold, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind. (65:17; see also 66:22)
The same image is picked up in Revelation 21:1 in the description of the eternal state that follows the Millennium and the judgment of God.
Peter’s intertwining of predictions about the destruction of the universe and its renewal raise questions about the exact nature of what we are to envisage happening in the last day.6 But the important point here for Peter is not speculation about the exact nature of this “new heaven and earth,” but that it will be “the home of righteousness.”7 We live in a world where wrong often prevails; a world in which faithful Christians are often persecuted for doing God’s will, while evil people enjoy the rewards of their sin; a world in which innocent lives are ripped from wombs and God’s laws are flaunted and mocked. All that will be eradicated in the next world. As John puts it in Revelation 21:3–4:
Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
Bridging Contexts
THE FOCUS ON eschatology in 2 Peter 3 is, of course, not unusual in the New Testament. The early Christians were joyfully convinced that they were participating in the “last days” (see the “Bridging Contexts” section on 2:1–4). But they never allowed their joy in the present to dim their hope for the future. For, while experiencing the blessings of the “age to come,” Christians also continue to suffer the difficulties of “this age”: sickness, persecution, struggles with temptation, and sin. Thus, “the last things” were never far from their thinking, and we find frequent reference to the Parousia and associated events throughout the New Testament.
But what does stand out as distinctive in 2 Peter 3 is the cosmic orientation of the discussion of the last things. New Testament authors typically focus on the personal dimension of the return of Christ: judgment of sinners and transformation (through rapture and resurrection) of believers (see, e.g., Rom. 8:18–30; 13:11–14; 1 Cor. 15; 2 Cor. 5:1–10; Phil. 3:10–11, 20–21; 1 Thess. 4:13–5:10; 2 Thess. 2:1–9). Only in Revelation do we have the kind of emphasis on the effects on the physical world of the return of Christ that we find in 2 Peter 3. And, as we have noted, Peter is the only biblical author explicitly to predict that the universe will be destroyed by fire (3:7, 10, 12; see the discussion in the “Bridging Contexts” section on 3:1–7).
Peter repeatedly emphasizes that the Day of the Lord/of God will bring destruction to the material universe. But at the same time, he predicts the coming of a “new heaven and a new earth” (v. 13). What is the relationship between these two ideas? Does Peter think that the new heaven and earth will replace the current material universe? Or does he envision a transformation of the existing world? These questions are not just academic ones, for the answer we give will have an effect on a number of issues, ranging from our hope for resurrection to our stance on environmental issues.8
Peter does not give a clear answer to these questions, though his language—“disappear,” “destroy,” “melt”—certainly tends toward the idea of replacement. But other biblical passages give us pause. Jesus speaks of the time when he will sit on his throne and the apostles with him at the “renewal [or rebirth, palingenesia] of all things” (Matt. 19:28). Peter himself probably alludes to a similar idea in his sermon in Acts 3. We quoted verses 19–20 from that sermon above; in verse 21, he goes on to say, “He [Messiah] must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.” Debate focuses on the word the NIV translates “restore,” which can also mean “consummation” or “establishment.”9 But “restoration” is a better translation here.10 Restoration suggests not destruction, but transformation. And Peter’s claim that this restoration will fulfill the promises of the prophets also points in this direction, since the Old Testament typically envisages the last days in terms of a transformed earth.
Perhaps the most important passage tending in this direction is Romans 8:19–22. These verses come in the midst of Paul’s reassuring message about the certainty of the believer’s hope. Believers, who share Christ’s sufferings, can be fully confident that they will also share his glory (v. 17). This glory far outweighs our earthly struggles (v. 18); indeed, it is the signal for the transformation of creation. Note how Paul puts this idea in verse 21: “The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” What Paul seems to be anticipating is not the simple destruction of the present universe, but its transformation.
Complicating this issue is the place of the Millennium in the whole scheme. If one adopts a premillennial eschatology (as I do), then we must allow for an “interim” period of earthly blessing following the return of Christ but before the eternal state. Could the prophecies about transformation find fulfillment during the Millennium, with the prophecies of destruction coming to pass after? This distinction may help us in some texts, but it does not finally resolve the tension. For one thing, most of the New Testament eschatological texts simply do not allow us to distinguish between the Millennium and the eternal state. Furthermore, we often find a tension between transformation and replacement in the same text. In John’s vision of the eternal state, for example, he sees, “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and first earth had passed away” (Rev. 21:1), which certainly sounds like replacement. But just four verses later, he quotes the Lord as saying, “’I am making everything new!’ ” (v. 5), which sounds like transformation.
Another way of accounting for this tension is to assume that the language of “passing away” and “burning” refers not to annihilation but to purification. Fire is certainly often a purifying agent in Scripture. The most relevant text here is 1 Corinthians 3:13–15, in which Paul predicts that each person’s “work” will be tested “by fire” and that some believers will be saved “through fire.” Peter, then, may be predicting the purification of the world through fire, not its destruction. The problem with this view, as we have seen (see the “Bridging Contexts” section on 3:1–7), is the specific language of “destruction” that Peter uses.
We face here, then, a tension that cannot apparently be resolved. It is not that the Bible speaks in contradictory terms about the end of the world. It is rather that it must, in the nature of the case, seek to describe what is unique and quite beyond our experience—the transition from the temporal world to the eternal state—with language and analogies drawn from our own world. Such analogies always fall short of matching the reality; each can, at best, capture only one side of the full picture. What the Bible does make clear, we think, is that the destruction of this present universe at the end of history does not mean the end of the material world. There is continuity as well as discontinuity in the shift from the present heavens and earth to the new heaven and earth.11
Contemporary Significance
AS WE LOOK back at Peter’s discussion of eschatology in 3:3–13, three points merit particular attention by Christians today.
(1) Christians need to remember the ultimate, “bottom-line,” purpose of biblical eschatology: to make us better Christians here and now. Careful study of eschatological passages in the Bible is, of course, appropriate and necessary. And our own human curiosity naturally leads us to speculate about just how and when the events those passages teach will actually take shape in history. But we must not study eschatology for its own sake or for the gratification of our curiosity. Christians bitten by the “eschatological bug” usually end up with vision problems—a tunnel vision in which all they see is “the last days.” We must never forget, as Peter makes clear in verse 11, that biblical eschatology is to stimulate in believers a holy and godly lifestyle. In fact, you will find no passage in the New Testament on eschatology that does not have that kind of specific, practical focus.
(2) Christians need to understand the nature of this intimate relationship between eschatology and exhortation, between teaching about the world to come and living in the present world. We have all heard the criticisms directed against Christianity, that it promises only “pie in the sky, by and by,” and that Christians are so “heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.” Karl Marx made a similar point when he called Christianity “the opium of the masses.” He saw Christians as people who were so focused on the life to come that they simply could not get excited about changing their current world. The faith lulled people to sleep and left them content in the midst of injustice and oppression. Liberation theologians in our day make much the same point, arguing for a serious recasting of the Christian faith so that it can become a truly revolutionary movement.
But, as the historian Barbara Tuchman has observed, “Revolutions produce other men, not new men.”12 Only a force from outside this world can change this world. And Christians find that force in the grace of God and in the Holy Spirit. But does a robust eschatology have to dampen Christian ardor to change the world?
It must be admitted that it can, and it has. And there is, of course, a sense in which Christians will always be pessimistic about this world, for Scripture makes clear that no real and permanent transformation can be expected until Christ returns. Some Christians, therefore, give up on this world, pursuing their own private path of holiness and letting the world literally “go to hell.” But the “holy and godly life” that Peter calls on us to lead in light of the world’s end certainly must include zealous evangelism and the kind of concern for social justice that Jesus said so much about. The scriptural model of the world to come, “the home of righteousness,” should stimulate us to make that model as much a reality here and now as possible.
It is at this point that the balance between replacement and transformation as sketched in the “Bridging Contexts” section becomes important. The replacement model is, as we have seen, the one that 2 Peter 3 tends most to support. Peter connects the destruction of the world with his call to holy and godly living (v. 11). The replacement focus reminds Christians to sit fast and loose to all things earthly, for they are not lasting.
I well remember a student I taught many years ago, a new convert with all the beautiful zeal of someone who was bowled over with the grace of Christ. I mentioned that I was going on vacation and was frustrated that I did not have a decent telephoto lens for my camera. He appeared not long after on my doorstep with a very expensive telephoto lens that he insisted I borrow. I told him I didn’t think I could do that because I wasn’t sure I could take good care of it. “That’s OK,” he replied. “It’s all going to burn anyway.” I thought then, and I think now, that this young man embodied a thoroughly Christian attitude toward material possessions. The old adage that “you can’t take it with you” is no less true for being repeated so often. Western Christians especially need to put material things in their place—to see them as means to spiritual and ministry ends and to keep them at a distance from our hearts and souls.
If, however, we stop with the replacement model and go no further, we are in danger of ending up with an unbiblical dismissal of this world as of no account before God. The transformation model reminds us that the world, though “subject to decay,” will ultimately be liberated (Rom. 8:21). This suggests that the world God created, fallen though it is, is still valuable in his sight. I think this insight holds significance for a Christian response to the environmental movement. Many Christians I know, rightly offended by radical environmentalists’ deification of nature and their dismissal of human beings as the pinnacle of God’s creation, have written off the whole movement. Some imply that Christians should not bother about nature, because, after all, “it’s all going to burn.”
But this is the wrong lesson to draw from Peter’s teaching about the fiery end of the world. It is one thing to display a lack of attachment to material things by, for instance, loaning an inept and clumsy professor a telephoto lens; it would be quite another to leave the lens out in the rain to get ruined. Thus, while Christians recognize that the planet we now inhabit is not destined to last forever and must, therefore, be given a relative value, we should recognize that it does have value. A commitment to preserve it as best we can seems eminently appropriate in light of the transformation model.
(3) A final point of application in this text comes from the balanced approach to imminence that Peter encourages Christians to adopt. Calvin, commenting on verses 11–13, notes the balance that Peter achieves on this issue in this passage:
Almost all of us labour under two very different evils, too much impatience and too much laziness. In our impatience we snatch at the day of Christ as something expected imminently, but in our carelessness we push it far off. Therefore just as the apostle has earlier corrected our reckless ardour, so now he shakes our sleepiness off us, so that we may look expectantly for the coming of Christ at any time.13
Peter’s reminder that “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years” is a rebuke to those who want to “snatch at” the Parousia—the kind of people Paul seeks to calm down in 2 Thessalonians 2. As we noted above, we still find a few people like this around in our day: setting dates for the return of Christ and disappointed when their dates pass without incident. But surely far more of us fall into the second category: sleepy Christians who have settled down into the world and who would be positively irritated if Christ were to come along and take us out of it. As C. S. Lewis has said, “Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it,’ while really it is finding its place in him.”14 Prosperity, what so many people think to be an unadulterated good, can be a serious problem for the Christian. A realization that Christ can return at any time will help us to keep our prosperity in perspective.