SCOFFERS
SCOFFERS
2 PETER 3:1-7
If God broke into human history in Jesus, is there any reason why he should not do so again?
Peter now returns to the subject of Christ’s second coming. The very formality of 3:1 shows that chapter 2 was a digression, caused probably by his recent reading of Jude. Far more important than false teachers is our attitude to Christ’s return. After all, if our attention is fixed on Christ and his coming, we are not likely to be led astray by the false prophets and teachers. “The commandment of the Lord” (3:2) refers to his statements in passages like Matthew chapters 24–25; Mark chapter 13; Luke 12:32-18; 17:22-37; 21:5-36, with their repetition of the command to watch. “Through your apostles”: the letters are full of admonitions reinforcing Christ’s command. 1 and 2 Thessalonians make it clear that Christ’s second coming must have played a large part in Paul’s preaching and teaching in Thessalonica: see especially 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2; 2 Thessalonians 2:5.
There is no reason for identifying the “scoffers” (3:3) with the false teachers of chapter 2, though from the nature of their doctrines Christ’s second coming will have played little or no part in their thinking as they follow their own sinful desires (3:3). The future “will come” (3:3) implies that the scoffers are there and will continue, for, in company with the other apostles, Peter regarded the period of the church as “the last days,” see also 1 John 2:18; Romans 13:12. These scoffers were those who wanted to live “natural” lives bounded by the here and now. The concept of a God who can break into history and transform it is abhorrent to them. They may appeal to science as a justification but their god is human security.
Peter reminds them that in the flood there was already a drastic re-creating of the earth. His words are a warning against minimizing the flood, but equally to read into them a meaning in conflict with all the evidence of science is foolish. Peter is not giving a new revelation of how Genesis is to be understood. Since the flood, though a destruction, was a re-creating, so the fire (3:7) will be a re-creating; see also Revelation 21:1.