Exposition of 2 Peter 3:9
Dec 21, 2013 9:09:02 GMT
Post by Colossians on Dec 21, 2013 9:09:02 GMT
This material is for the teaching of the Body of Christ, however the author reserves copyright over it.
Forward
2 Peter 3:9 is one of the most-commonly quoted bible verses in the church.
It is also usually misrendered.
The misrendering is the product of ‘promise-box Christianity’: whether literally or metaphorically, one plucks out with tweesers a scrolled-up bible verse from amongst hundreds of others nestled tightly together in a rectangular container, for encouragement for the day.
Such ‘Christian fortune-cookie’ is perhaps fine when the scroll contains a proverb or portion of a psalm, but with other areas of scripture it often leads to misconception for want of context. The work of those in history who dedicated their lives to translation, is then unfortunately rendered vain in retrospect.
Below we show by way of context, nuance, and logic, that when Peter says that God is “not willing that any should perish”, he is not speaking of everyone in the world, but the people of God, and that Calvinism is therefore and contrary to commonly-held opinion in the church, not abrogated by 2 Peter 3:9, but rather, supported by it.
Our analysis shall centre on three pivotal phrases:
“us-ward”; “longsuffering”; “that all should come to repentance”
_________________________
EXPOSITION OF 2 PETER 3:9
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” 2 Pe 3:9.
“us-ward”
Elsewhere in scripture
The reader is invited to study the following passage from Romans 8, and to pay particular attention to the 6 occurrences of the pronoun “us”, which we have underlined:
[30] “Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.
[31] What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
[32] He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
[33] Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
[34] Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
[35] Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”.
At v31,34 and 35, “us” is invariably taken to be referring to the church.
However even though v32 is surrounded by notions such as predestination (v30), God’s guardianship over us (v31), our justification as God’s elect (v33), Christ’s intercession for us (v34), Christ’s love for us amidst persecution (v35), somehow or other we render the “us all” of this verse (32) to be speaking of everyone in the world.
Two factors are involved in such misrendering:
1. The phenomenon we have called “promise-box Christianity”, which isolates the text from its context.
2. The generalising of Christianity in the Western World, which ‘fuzzies’ the line between those who are born again and those who are not, rendering fellow countrymen as either brothers on track or brothers soon to be on track, and resulting in that which would have been unheard-of in the first century: those who have no idea of what it means to be born again, nevertheless list themselves as “Christian” on national census day.
And so the verse is placed on a Bible Navigator’s steering wheel as he drives to work, to be committed to memory out of context and provide impetus to throw pearls before swine for the rest of the day.
And yet curiously, we make no similar error with Galatians 4:26: when we read that “Jerusalem which is above … is the mother of us all”, there is a complete absence of any tendency to consider this “us all” to mean “everyone in the world”: the verse is harder to generalise and, owing to its not possessing any particular benefit (Rom 8:32 declares that God will “freely give us all things”), far less likely to be added to the promise-box.
Particularly in 2 Peter
The pronoun under consideration is used 6 times in 2 Peter.
The 6th occurrence is the one in focus at 3:9.
The 5th occurrence is with unarguably-narrow scope at 3:2: “us the apostles”.
The remaining 4 occurrences are at the very beginning of the epistle, and can be clearly considered as one. Here they are (underlined):
[1] “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ ...
[3] According as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
[4] Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust”.
There would therefore be no opportunity for the promise-box theologian to hijack the pronoun and render it as speaking of everyone in the world, if Peter had chosen to speak of God’s “longsuffering to us-ward” right up front rather than at 3:9.
For we would then have:
1:1:..........“them that have obtained like precious faith with us”
1:3:..........“His divine power hath given unto us all things...through
.................the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue”
1:4:..........“whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises”
1:5 (new): “God … is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should
.................perish”
: no-one would then even remotely consider this “us” now moved to 1:5 to be referring to everyone in the world: it would be invariably rendered as it is at v1,3 and 4.
It is unfortunately a bit like economics: the proletariat commonly think that the employing of cheap labour overseas to work in call centres and the like, represents competition to their own country, simply because there is an ocean in between; whereas if the ocean were to disappear so that their less-fussy counterparts were only a few dry-land kilometres over the border, such cheap labour would be rather considered as that which represented an extension of their country.
The text that lies between 2 Peter’s initial instances of “us” and its later instance at 3:9, is unfortunately an ocean in the mind of the promise-box theologian.
Watchful sailing
The remainder of chapter one is devoted to the spurring on of the believers to perfection. The following sample will suffice:
[6] “And [add] to [your] knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness … [11] For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”
Pirates ahead!
It is however at chapter 2 that the “us” to whom the letter is written, is contrasted starkly with the enemies of Christ. In fact Peter devotes the entire chapter to nothing but vehemence toward such people.
Without reservation he declares them to be:
2:1: false teachers of damnable heresies who shall bring upon themselves swift destruction
2:3: manipulators of the brethren via covetousness and flatteries, on a sure path to damnation
2:4-6: like Satan’s angels and the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah
2:12: like brute beasts made to be destroyed, who shall utterly perish in their own corruption
2:13: Spots and blemishes
2:14: those who have eyes that cannot cease from sin; cursed children
2:17: wells without water, clouds carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever
2:22: like dogs returning to their vomit.
One gets the impression that these chaps weren’t on Peter’s Christmas-card A-list.
But never fear, for only a few verses later at 3:9 Peter cools down and tells us that, despite his vitriol for the whole of chapter 2 and the early portions of chapter 3, God is not willing that any of these people perish.
And that water freezes on the sun.
Those damn[ed] pirates!
It is quite clear that Peter ascribes a certain permanence to the station of these buccaneers: he has in fact at v12 declared that they “shall utterly perish in their own corruption”. And no wonder, for the same God who authored 2 Peter, also authored the following:
“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened ... If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance” Heb 6:4,6
: it is unlikely that God forgot what He had written in Hebrews, when He told Peter to get cracking on his second letter.
Paul too seems to be not too concerned for the plight of them who he implies are irreversibly perishing:
“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” 1 Cor 1:18.
Our Lord seems to concur:
“Let them alone … if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” Mt 15:14
: “Let them alone” would seem unlikely to have mobilised the disciples into intercessory prayer.
Finally, and returning to our main text, Peter has declared at 3:5 that such people are “willingly ignorant”. Say no more.
Summary of “us”
Thus far we have shown that a more careful analysis of the passage under consideration, in particular the pivotal pronoun “us”, leads us (but not everyone in the world) to a very different conclusion to that of the promise-box theologian’s.
Commensurately, we have shown that the “all” whom God wills not to perish but to come to repentance, cannot be taken to mean “everyone in the world”, simply by virtue of the fact that it at least excludes those who are willingly ignorant.
These two things of themselves are not sufficient to show that 2 Peter 3:9 refers only to the people of God, but it provides at the very least a good head start for the Calvinist.
We shall now move to the second of our pivotal phrases.
“longsuffering”
We now consider the following prototypical rendering of the promise-box theologian with regard to the longsuffering Peter mentions at 3:9:
“The Lord is not slack with regard to His return: it’s just that He’s waiting for as many as possible to come in to the fold.”
The rendering is invalid because every minute brings thousands of new lives into the world (with regard to whom the Lord would have to begin His longsuffering all over again): rather than solving the problem, He would only be making things worse.
Commensurately, it produces an “us” which is inherently impersonal: the longer the Lord delays, the more candidates for both heaven and hell there will be. It therefore becomes a numbers game, the personal identity of those involved fading into obscurity. What is more, in view of the fact that only “few” will find the narrow path to life, such numbers game becomes downright bloody-minded.
And so any rendering which interprets this “longsuffering” of 3:9 as essentially the Lord’s delaying His return, is unacceptable according to logic. And this should be expected, for only one verse prior Peter advises the critics that God is not constrained by time, necessarily entailing the fact that His scheme of things is not reactive, but proactive.
According to God’s scheme of things, not man’s
In order to better understand what is going on then, we do well to turn to a certain discourse between Paul and Barnabas and the Jews ...
Upon the preaching of the gospel by Paul and Barnabas at Antioch of Pisidia, the Jews rejected their words, prompting the two apostles to immediately declare that they (the Jews) obviously considered themselves “unworthy of everlasting life” (Acts 13:46).
The point here is that, although it was Paul and Barnabas who were rejected, the two rather and immediately reclaimed the high moral ground quicker than their stiff-necked friends could say “mazeltov!”: knowing the true protocol of things, they were not going to let these spiritual pip-squeaks leave without reminding them just Who it was that set the price for unleavened bread.
Likewise, Peter’s “[God] is longsuffering to us-ward” (also) constitutes no attempt to answer the opposition on their own terms, but rather and from a position of authority, displaces their view of things with God’s view of things.
That is, the correct rendering we are seeking is:
“You’re off track when you imply the Lord is slack with regard to His return, for the time of His return is not at the forefront of things anyway: He is rather focussed on making us into the people He wants us to be.”
So Paul:
“Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” Phil 1:6
: the longsuffering being worked in us is not primarily geared toward “the day of Jesus Christ”, for the overwhelming majority of us will exit the earth well before that day.
And so it is as we have said: God will perform His work in each individual in the Body regardless of when such individual exists, and that He will continue to do this right up until the day of Jesus Christ.
“I’m putting up with you” vs “I love you”
At Rom 9:22 Paul suggests the following:
“What if God, willing to shew His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy …”.
With regard to the matter at hand, we note two things:
1. The longsuffering here is not unfettered so that it might persist without limitation, but is rather subservient to a lesser kind of (limited) endurance.
2. Commensurately, we are told that such (limited) endurance is in the opposite direction to God’s ultimate will: when the limit is reached, God will “shew his wrath”.
Given then that we are told elsewhere that “love endureth forever”, we see that the longsuffering of which Paul here speaks, is not of the “I love you” kind, but the “I’m putting up with you” kind.
Contrasting, the longsuffering of 2 Pe 3:9 is born not of any will of God’s to show His wrath, but the complete opposite: that none of the “any” of the “us” should perish: it is therefore rather a longsuffering of the kind which lasts for as long as it takes.
The concomitant longsuffering of the Body
Unless one is decapitated, one’s head is connected to one’s body.
Christ is not decapitated.
The longsuffering of the Head that is Christ Himself and to which we have thus far referred, should therefore be also worked out through the Body of Christ.
Conversely, if indeed this “us” of 2 Pe 3:9 refers to the people of God only, we should not expect to find any teaching in scripture to the effect that we must direct our longsuffering toward the people of the world.
Here are a couple of examples which attest to the former:
“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” Gal 6:1.
“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love” Eph 4:1,2.
It is however more difficult to prove the latter, for such were necessarily tacit. Suffice to say in this necessarily-brief work, that the first epistle of John, which consists almost entirely of directives to love in a longsuffering sense, is notably void of any directives which might challenge our assertion: we are told throughout that we are to love “the brethren”, nothing more.
In short then, what we should expect to find, we find, and what we should expect to not find, we find not, and by such we understand that because this “longsuffering” of the Head at 2 Pe 3:9 is directed to “us-ward”, the referent of this “us” necessarily consists solely of the people of God; for as we have inferred, the longsuffering of the Head and the longsuffering of the Body are necessarily directed toward the same people.
Experientially confirming
We have pointed out that all roads lead to the fact that the longsuffering of which Peter speaks is, rather than relating a waiting on the part of God for souls to enter the fold, that which relates God’s working in the lives of His people toward a desired result, and that necessarily on a personal level.
Accordingly we note the following only a few verses beyond our head verse:
“And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation …” 2 Pe 3:15.
Such adjunct is irresistibly included because, despite Peter’s status as an apostle, it were not enough for him to simply assert that God is long-suffering to us-ward any more than one might validly enquire of him whether one was born again: in the end we each stand alone before God.
That is, any longsuffering Peter has asserted as being from God to us-ward, must of necessity be identified on an experiential level, for Christianity is experiential by virtue of the Spirit.
At 3:15 here then Peter adjures his readers to bring to remembrance their own individual experiences of the longsuffering of Christ in their lives, that which will no doubt have been primarily manifested as His advocacy on their behalf in the face of Satan’s accusations and therefore that which Peter is able to declare to be one and the same thing as salvation.
And so we see that Peter’s statement here in fact constitutes an illocutionary act: in admonishing the believer to account God’s longsuffering as salvation itself, the gratitude naturally inherent in such consideration produces of itself the very salvation of which he speaks.
Summary of “longsuffering”
We have shown that the longsuffering of which Peter speaks at 2 Pe 3:9
1. does not relate any delay of God’s with regard to His return, but rather His working in us with regard to effect
2. is without limitation
3. is categorised by way of its being personally discernible in the lives of those who are born again
We now move to our third and final pivotal phrase.
“that all should come to repentance”
Our final phrase is perhaps the most-readily misrendered of the three under analysis.
This is largely due to the superficiality often present in the evangelical message of the church, which superficiality is then naturally and unfortunately carried forward into the lives of those who are said to have ‘made a decision for Jesus’.
Specifically, the very prevalent omission today in the evangelically-centred churches, is holiness: Jesus Christ is often presented as Saviour, but not too often as Lord.
In line with our having shown by context, nuance, and logic, that the phrases “us” and “longsuffering” pertain not to the people of the world but the people of God, it is not primarily first-stage/evangelical repentance to which Peter here refers (though such is necessarily included in that the elect of God must of necessity come to Christ in the first place), but rather, the necessary Lordship of Jesus Christ.
And so Peter subsequently declares:
“Wherefore, beloved … be diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless” 2 Pe 3:18.
And no wonder, for only a little further again he declares that the righteous are “scarcely saved”: a sobering thought indeed.
In fact Peter’s admonishment at 3:9 that we are to repent, being immediately followed by his declaration at 3:10 that the Lord will come as a thief in the night, shadows Christ’s adjuration to the ‘church at Sardis’:
“Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee” Rev 3:2,3.
And we note that he does the same in his first epistle with regard to the exact same subject, only this time shadowing Christ’s words to the ‘church at Laodicea’:
Peter:
“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ ... Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls” 1 Pe 1:7,9.
The Lord:
“I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” Rev 3:18,19.
in which words of the Lord we note that, in line with what we have shown in this exposition, it is only those whom God loves whom He also chastens unto repentance.
And so Paul:
“And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother” 2 Thes 3:14,15.
And again:
“For though I made you sorry with a letter … Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” 2 Cor 7:8-10.
Summary of “that all should come to repentance”
We read in Paul the following regarding our final state:
“Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” 1 Cor 3:11-15.
No part of those whom Peter has earlier declared to be (solely) “spots” and “blemishes”, shall survive the fire of which Paul here speaks: they are the sons of perdition.
Those of us who are not solely spots and blemishes, but upon whom spots and blemishes nevertheless appear, shall, as Paul tells us here, live in heaven but suffer loss on the way in: those ‘parts’ of each of us that are spotted at the time of our departure from the earth, shall not survive the purging fire that is the Holy Ghost.
Let us pray therefore the Lord of the Manor, that as many spots and blemishes are washed from us before that great day, so that the ‘parts’ of each of us that are currently spotted, may in the end pass through the fire and come with us into eternity.
The sum of it all
We mentioned at the early part of this discourse that the generalising of Christianity has fuzzied the line of demarcation between those born again and those living beside them who are not.
And so we pointed out that, as a result of this, the pronoun “us” in 2 Pe 3:9 is errantly generalised by the church at large to mean “everyone in the world”, when in fact it refers to the people of God.
The point is that, at the time of the early church when persecution was rife and believers were being let down over walls in baskets and hiding in catacombs, letters to the church from the apostles were naturally very much ‘in house’: no-one running from potential execution would have needed to hear, nor even been interested in hearing, that God did not want those pursuing them to perish: the very idea were obnoxious.
Accordingly note the following from Peter’s first epistle:
“For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit” 1 Pe 4:6.
Specifically, although Peter speaks of “them that are dead”, he in fact is only speaking of those who have died in Christ, for that which is here predicated of this “them” is solely the fact that they now live with God in the spirit.
That is, the epistle was so much ‘in house’ that Peter considered it unnecessary to refer to this “them” as “them in Christ who are dead”, but simply as “them that are dead”: he knew such ones’ being in Christ would go without saying in the minds of those to whom he wrote.
So too with 2 Peter 3:9: there was no need to say that God was longsuffering to “us in Christ”, but simply to “us”.
Amen.
Forward
2 Peter 3:9 is one of the most-commonly quoted bible verses in the church.
It is also usually misrendered.
The misrendering is the product of ‘promise-box Christianity’: whether literally or metaphorically, one plucks out with tweesers a scrolled-up bible verse from amongst hundreds of others nestled tightly together in a rectangular container, for encouragement for the day.
Such ‘Christian fortune-cookie’ is perhaps fine when the scroll contains a proverb or portion of a psalm, but with other areas of scripture it often leads to misconception for want of context. The work of those in history who dedicated their lives to translation, is then unfortunately rendered vain in retrospect.
Below we show by way of context, nuance, and logic, that when Peter says that God is “not willing that any should perish”, he is not speaking of everyone in the world, but the people of God, and that Calvinism is therefore and contrary to commonly-held opinion in the church, not abrogated by 2 Peter 3:9, but rather, supported by it.
Our analysis shall centre on three pivotal phrases:
“us-ward”; “longsuffering”; “that all should come to repentance”
_________________________
EXPOSITION OF 2 PETER 3:9
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” 2 Pe 3:9.
“us-ward”
Elsewhere in scripture
The reader is invited to study the following passage from Romans 8, and to pay particular attention to the 6 occurrences of the pronoun “us”, which we have underlined:
[30] “Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.
[31] What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
[32] He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
[33] Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
[34] Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
[35] Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”.
At v31,34 and 35, “us” is invariably taken to be referring to the church.
However even though v32 is surrounded by notions such as predestination (v30), God’s guardianship over us (v31), our justification as God’s elect (v33), Christ’s intercession for us (v34), Christ’s love for us amidst persecution (v35), somehow or other we render the “us all” of this verse (32) to be speaking of everyone in the world.
Two factors are involved in such misrendering:
1. The phenomenon we have called “promise-box Christianity”, which isolates the text from its context.
2. The generalising of Christianity in the Western World, which ‘fuzzies’ the line between those who are born again and those who are not, rendering fellow countrymen as either brothers on track or brothers soon to be on track, and resulting in that which would have been unheard-of in the first century: those who have no idea of what it means to be born again, nevertheless list themselves as “Christian” on national census day.
And so the verse is placed on a Bible Navigator’s steering wheel as he drives to work, to be committed to memory out of context and provide impetus to throw pearls before swine for the rest of the day.
And yet curiously, we make no similar error with Galatians 4:26: when we read that “Jerusalem which is above … is the mother of us all”, there is a complete absence of any tendency to consider this “us all” to mean “everyone in the world”: the verse is harder to generalise and, owing to its not possessing any particular benefit (Rom 8:32 declares that God will “freely give us all things”), far less likely to be added to the promise-box.
Particularly in 2 Peter
The pronoun under consideration is used 6 times in 2 Peter.
The 6th occurrence is the one in focus at 3:9.
The 5th occurrence is with unarguably-narrow scope at 3:2: “us the apostles”.
The remaining 4 occurrences are at the very beginning of the epistle, and can be clearly considered as one. Here they are (underlined):
[1] “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ ...
[3] According as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
[4] Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust”.
There would therefore be no opportunity for the promise-box theologian to hijack the pronoun and render it as speaking of everyone in the world, if Peter had chosen to speak of God’s “longsuffering to us-ward” right up front rather than at 3:9.
For we would then have:
1:1:..........“them that have obtained like precious faith with us”
1:3:..........“His divine power hath given unto us all things...through
.................the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue”
1:4:..........“whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises”
1:5 (new): “God … is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should
.................perish”
: no-one would then even remotely consider this “us” now moved to 1:5 to be referring to everyone in the world: it would be invariably rendered as it is at v1,3 and 4.
It is unfortunately a bit like economics: the proletariat commonly think that the employing of cheap labour overseas to work in call centres and the like, represents competition to their own country, simply because there is an ocean in between; whereas if the ocean were to disappear so that their less-fussy counterparts were only a few dry-land kilometres over the border, such cheap labour would be rather considered as that which represented an extension of their country.
The text that lies between 2 Peter’s initial instances of “us” and its later instance at 3:9, is unfortunately an ocean in the mind of the promise-box theologian.
Watchful sailing
The remainder of chapter one is devoted to the spurring on of the believers to perfection. The following sample will suffice:
[6] “And [add] to [your] knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness … [11] For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”
Pirates ahead!
It is however at chapter 2 that the “us” to whom the letter is written, is contrasted starkly with the enemies of Christ. In fact Peter devotes the entire chapter to nothing but vehemence toward such people.
Without reservation he declares them to be:
2:1: false teachers of damnable heresies who shall bring upon themselves swift destruction
2:3: manipulators of the brethren via covetousness and flatteries, on a sure path to damnation
2:4-6: like Satan’s angels and the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah
2:12: like brute beasts made to be destroyed, who shall utterly perish in their own corruption
2:13: Spots and blemishes
2:14: those who have eyes that cannot cease from sin; cursed children
2:17: wells without water, clouds carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever
2:22: like dogs returning to their vomit.
One gets the impression that these chaps weren’t on Peter’s Christmas-card A-list.
But never fear, for only a few verses later at 3:9 Peter cools down and tells us that, despite his vitriol for the whole of chapter 2 and the early portions of chapter 3, God is not willing that any of these people perish.
And that water freezes on the sun.
Those damn[ed] pirates!
It is quite clear that Peter ascribes a certain permanence to the station of these buccaneers: he has in fact at v12 declared that they “shall utterly perish in their own corruption”. And no wonder, for the same God who authored 2 Peter, also authored the following:
“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened ... If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance” Heb 6:4,6
: it is unlikely that God forgot what He had written in Hebrews, when He told Peter to get cracking on his second letter.
Paul too seems to be not too concerned for the plight of them who he implies are irreversibly perishing:
“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” 1 Cor 1:18.
Our Lord seems to concur:
“Let them alone … if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” Mt 15:14
: “Let them alone” would seem unlikely to have mobilised the disciples into intercessory prayer.
Finally, and returning to our main text, Peter has declared at 3:5 that such people are “willingly ignorant”. Say no more.
Summary of “us”
Thus far we have shown that a more careful analysis of the passage under consideration, in particular the pivotal pronoun “us”, leads us (but not everyone in the world) to a very different conclusion to that of the promise-box theologian’s.
Commensurately, we have shown that the “all” whom God wills not to perish but to come to repentance, cannot be taken to mean “everyone in the world”, simply by virtue of the fact that it at least excludes those who are willingly ignorant.
These two things of themselves are not sufficient to show that 2 Peter 3:9 refers only to the people of God, but it provides at the very least a good head start for the Calvinist.
We shall now move to the second of our pivotal phrases.
“longsuffering”
We now consider the following prototypical rendering of the promise-box theologian with regard to the longsuffering Peter mentions at 3:9:
“The Lord is not slack with regard to His return: it’s just that He’s waiting for as many as possible to come in to the fold.”
The rendering is invalid because every minute brings thousands of new lives into the world (with regard to whom the Lord would have to begin His longsuffering all over again): rather than solving the problem, He would only be making things worse.
Commensurately, it produces an “us” which is inherently impersonal: the longer the Lord delays, the more candidates for both heaven and hell there will be. It therefore becomes a numbers game, the personal identity of those involved fading into obscurity. What is more, in view of the fact that only “few” will find the narrow path to life, such numbers game becomes downright bloody-minded.
And so any rendering which interprets this “longsuffering” of 3:9 as essentially the Lord’s delaying His return, is unacceptable according to logic. And this should be expected, for only one verse prior Peter advises the critics that God is not constrained by time, necessarily entailing the fact that His scheme of things is not reactive, but proactive.
According to God’s scheme of things, not man’s
In order to better understand what is going on then, we do well to turn to a certain discourse between Paul and Barnabas and the Jews ...
Upon the preaching of the gospel by Paul and Barnabas at Antioch of Pisidia, the Jews rejected their words, prompting the two apostles to immediately declare that they (the Jews) obviously considered themselves “unworthy of everlasting life” (Acts 13:46).
The point here is that, although it was Paul and Barnabas who were rejected, the two rather and immediately reclaimed the high moral ground quicker than their stiff-necked friends could say “mazeltov!”: knowing the true protocol of things, they were not going to let these spiritual pip-squeaks leave without reminding them just Who it was that set the price for unleavened bread.
Likewise, Peter’s “[God] is longsuffering to us-ward” (also) constitutes no attempt to answer the opposition on their own terms, but rather and from a position of authority, displaces their view of things with God’s view of things.
That is, the correct rendering we are seeking is:
“You’re off track when you imply the Lord is slack with regard to His return, for the time of His return is not at the forefront of things anyway: He is rather focussed on making us into the people He wants us to be.”
So Paul:
“Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” Phil 1:6
: the longsuffering being worked in us is not primarily geared toward “the day of Jesus Christ”, for the overwhelming majority of us will exit the earth well before that day.
And so it is as we have said: God will perform His work in each individual in the Body regardless of when such individual exists, and that He will continue to do this right up until the day of Jesus Christ.
“I’m putting up with you” vs “I love you”
At Rom 9:22 Paul suggests the following:
“What if God, willing to shew His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy …”.
With regard to the matter at hand, we note two things:
1. The longsuffering here is not unfettered so that it might persist without limitation, but is rather subservient to a lesser kind of (limited) endurance.
2. Commensurately, we are told that such (limited) endurance is in the opposite direction to God’s ultimate will: when the limit is reached, God will “shew his wrath”.
Given then that we are told elsewhere that “love endureth forever”, we see that the longsuffering of which Paul here speaks, is not of the “I love you” kind, but the “I’m putting up with you” kind.
Contrasting, the longsuffering of 2 Pe 3:9 is born not of any will of God’s to show His wrath, but the complete opposite: that none of the “any” of the “us” should perish: it is therefore rather a longsuffering of the kind which lasts for as long as it takes.
The concomitant longsuffering of the Body
Unless one is decapitated, one’s head is connected to one’s body.
Christ is not decapitated.
The longsuffering of the Head that is Christ Himself and to which we have thus far referred, should therefore be also worked out through the Body of Christ.
Conversely, if indeed this “us” of 2 Pe 3:9 refers to the people of God only, we should not expect to find any teaching in scripture to the effect that we must direct our longsuffering toward the people of the world.
Here are a couple of examples which attest to the former:
“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” Gal 6:1.
“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love” Eph 4:1,2.
It is however more difficult to prove the latter, for such were necessarily tacit. Suffice to say in this necessarily-brief work, that the first epistle of John, which consists almost entirely of directives to love in a longsuffering sense, is notably void of any directives which might challenge our assertion: we are told throughout that we are to love “the brethren”, nothing more.
In short then, what we should expect to find, we find, and what we should expect to not find, we find not, and by such we understand that because this “longsuffering” of the Head at 2 Pe 3:9 is directed to “us-ward”, the referent of this “us” necessarily consists solely of the people of God; for as we have inferred, the longsuffering of the Head and the longsuffering of the Body are necessarily directed toward the same people.
Experientially confirming
We have pointed out that all roads lead to the fact that the longsuffering of which Peter speaks is, rather than relating a waiting on the part of God for souls to enter the fold, that which relates God’s working in the lives of His people toward a desired result, and that necessarily on a personal level.
Accordingly we note the following only a few verses beyond our head verse:
“And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation …” 2 Pe 3:15.
Such adjunct is irresistibly included because, despite Peter’s status as an apostle, it were not enough for him to simply assert that God is long-suffering to us-ward any more than one might validly enquire of him whether one was born again: in the end we each stand alone before God.
That is, any longsuffering Peter has asserted as being from God to us-ward, must of necessity be identified on an experiential level, for Christianity is experiential by virtue of the Spirit.
At 3:15 here then Peter adjures his readers to bring to remembrance their own individual experiences of the longsuffering of Christ in their lives, that which will no doubt have been primarily manifested as His advocacy on their behalf in the face of Satan’s accusations and therefore that which Peter is able to declare to be one and the same thing as salvation.
And so we see that Peter’s statement here in fact constitutes an illocutionary act: in admonishing the believer to account God’s longsuffering as salvation itself, the gratitude naturally inherent in such consideration produces of itself the very salvation of which he speaks.
Summary of “longsuffering”
We have shown that the longsuffering of which Peter speaks at 2 Pe 3:9
1. does not relate any delay of God’s with regard to His return, but rather His working in us with regard to effect
2. is without limitation
3. is categorised by way of its being personally discernible in the lives of those who are born again
We now move to our third and final pivotal phrase.
“that all should come to repentance”
Our final phrase is perhaps the most-readily misrendered of the three under analysis.
This is largely due to the superficiality often present in the evangelical message of the church, which superficiality is then naturally and unfortunately carried forward into the lives of those who are said to have ‘made a decision for Jesus’.
Specifically, the very prevalent omission today in the evangelically-centred churches, is holiness: Jesus Christ is often presented as Saviour, but not too often as Lord.
In line with our having shown by context, nuance, and logic, that the phrases “us” and “longsuffering” pertain not to the people of the world but the people of God, it is not primarily first-stage/evangelical repentance to which Peter here refers (though such is necessarily included in that the elect of God must of necessity come to Christ in the first place), but rather, the necessary Lordship of Jesus Christ.
And so Peter subsequently declares:
“Wherefore, beloved … be diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless” 2 Pe 3:18.
And no wonder, for only a little further again he declares that the righteous are “scarcely saved”: a sobering thought indeed.
In fact Peter’s admonishment at 3:9 that we are to repent, being immediately followed by his declaration at 3:10 that the Lord will come as a thief in the night, shadows Christ’s adjuration to the ‘church at Sardis’:
“Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee” Rev 3:2,3.
And we note that he does the same in his first epistle with regard to the exact same subject, only this time shadowing Christ’s words to the ‘church at Laodicea’:
Peter:
“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ ... Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls” 1 Pe 1:7,9.
The Lord:
“I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” Rev 3:18,19.
in which words of the Lord we note that, in line with what we have shown in this exposition, it is only those whom God loves whom He also chastens unto repentance.
And so Paul:
“And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother” 2 Thes 3:14,15.
And again:
“For though I made you sorry with a letter … Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” 2 Cor 7:8-10.
Summary of “that all should come to repentance”
We read in Paul the following regarding our final state:
“Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” 1 Cor 3:11-15.
No part of those whom Peter has earlier declared to be (solely) “spots” and “blemishes”, shall survive the fire of which Paul here speaks: they are the sons of perdition.
Those of us who are not solely spots and blemishes, but upon whom spots and blemishes nevertheless appear, shall, as Paul tells us here, live in heaven but suffer loss on the way in: those ‘parts’ of each of us that are spotted at the time of our departure from the earth, shall not survive the purging fire that is the Holy Ghost.
Let us pray therefore the Lord of the Manor, that as many spots and blemishes are washed from us before that great day, so that the ‘parts’ of each of us that are currently spotted, may in the end pass through the fire and come with us into eternity.
The sum of it all
We mentioned at the early part of this discourse that the generalising of Christianity has fuzzied the line of demarcation between those born again and those living beside them who are not.
And so we pointed out that, as a result of this, the pronoun “us” in 2 Pe 3:9 is errantly generalised by the church at large to mean “everyone in the world”, when in fact it refers to the people of God.
The point is that, at the time of the early church when persecution was rife and believers were being let down over walls in baskets and hiding in catacombs, letters to the church from the apostles were naturally very much ‘in house’: no-one running from potential execution would have needed to hear, nor even been interested in hearing, that God did not want those pursuing them to perish: the very idea were obnoxious.
Accordingly note the following from Peter’s first epistle:
“For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit” 1 Pe 4:6.
Specifically, although Peter speaks of “them that are dead”, he in fact is only speaking of those who have died in Christ, for that which is here predicated of this “them” is solely the fact that they now live with God in the spirit.
That is, the epistle was so much ‘in house’ that Peter considered it unnecessary to refer to this “them” as “them in Christ who are dead”, but simply as “them that are dead”: he knew such ones’ being in Christ would go without saying in the minds of those to whom he wrote.
So too with 2 Peter 3:9: there was no need to say that God was longsuffering to “us in Christ”, but simply to “us”.
Amen.