This letter still has some important things to say to the church. Its opening greeting looks for an abundance of grace and peace for its readers “through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Pet. 1:2), and its closing exhortation is to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (3:18). The writer is clear that there is no place in the church for those who decline to increase their knowledge of their Savior. Christians are to be continually learning. They are to add knowledge to goodness (1:5).
A particularly important part of Christian knowledge is that Scripture occupies a unique place. No prophecy of Scripture originated in human will (“came about by the prophet’s own interpretation”), but “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20-21). This is understood by many modern scholars to mean that it is the church that tells its members how to interpret the Bible (cf. “no one can interpret any prophecy of Scripture by himself” [1:20, NEB]). But the passage says nothing about the church; it speaks of what God has done by his Holy Spirit. The writer is affirming the divine origin of Old Testament Scripture. Later he goes on to speak of what “our dear brother Paul also wrote” and says that “ignorant and unstable people distort” his writings “as they do the other Scriptures” (3:15-16). Clearly Peter is not bolstering up the place of the church as an authoritative interpreter, but affirming in strong language the divine origin of the prophetic writings and the place of Paul among the writers of Scripture. It is not so much the church as the divine revelation on which the writer is placing his emphasis.
It agrees with this that he repeatedly calls on his readers to remember. His whole letter is a reminder to them (2 Pet. 3:1), and he says he will “always remind” them of the things he is writing about (1:12). He is refreshing their memory (1:13) and wants them always to be able to remember these things, even after his death (1:15). He has some new things to say to the readers, but his really important point is that God has spoken in Scripture and that it is important that they bear this in mind. In view of the way the place of the ministry came to be stressed in the church, not least its connection with Peter, it is all the more significant that Peter here makes no reference to the official ministry. And in view of the way the church has often stressed the place of tradition as distinct from written Scripture, it is important that our writer makes no such distinction. For him it is the apostolic traditions that God has caused to be written in Scripture that are important. It is Scripture that is authoritative, and in making this point Peter has his eye on future generations of believers as well as on those to whom he writes immediately (1:15). The words that “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (1:21) are clearly of more than local and temporary concern.
Peter shares with Jude a strong denunciation of false teachers (2 Pet. 2). No heretical teaching is known from antiquity that has exactly the characteristics he singles out, and it is probably wasted effort to try to track it down. What matters in any case is not precisely who taught these things but the fact that even in the earliest days of the church there were people who departed from the teaching God gave through his prophets and apostles. Indeed, departure from the true way is as old as the flood generation (2:5), and it extends even to the angels (2:4). But whoever those people are who have sinned have undergone punishment, Peter leaves his readers in no doubt that later sinners will also undergo the punishment they deserve (2:12). An interesting feature of his treatment of the judgment theme is his inclusion of Noah and Lot (2:5, 7), for in the midst of destruction “the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment” (2:9). Judgment is real, but it is not indiscriminate. There is deliverance for those who serve God.
Then there is an important section on the second coming (2 Pet. 3:3-13). Even in those early days there were teachers who took the delay in Christ’s parousia to mean that he would never come back (3:4). Their contention that things have always been much as they are now is refuted first by the reminders that “the earth was formed out of water and by water” (3:5) and that the flood destroyed the world of its day (3:6). Created beings should never forget that the present heaven and earth will in due course be destroyed (3:7) and that God does not measure time as we do (3:8). Since the created universe is temporary and will one day be destroyed, “what kind of people ought you to be?” (3:11). The writer is driving his readers to reflect on the implications of who God is and what he has revealed. They are not to be led astray by false teaching, no matter how plausible. The purposes of God will infallibly be accomplished in God’s good time.
We should not overlook Peter’s teaching about the importance of upright Christian living. He has a notable list of qualities that should characterize the Christian (2 Pet. 1:5-7); his denunciation of the wicked together with his announcement of their punishment carries with it the thought that God’s people should be living very different lives. The second coming is not to be taken as a curious piece of information but as an incentive to holiness of living (3:11).