2 Peter

Though the return of Christ to judge the earth may seem slow in coming, the Apostle Peter assures us in his second letter that it will indeed occur. Christ’s return is delayed so that mankind has the opportunity to repent.

The purpose of the Apostle Peter’s inspired letters is to stimulate the followers of Christ to wholesome thinking. If our thinking is not wholesome we will have a wrong view of God.

The Apostle Peter tells us the purpose of his inspired letters in the second letter, chapter 3 and verse 1. He writes: “This is now, beloved, the second letter that I have written to you; and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by reminding you;” [NIV, “stimulate you to wholesome thinking”] In other words, it is Peter’s intention to help the followers of Christ think properly.

The Apostle Peter spends a good portion of his second inspired letter warning the followers of Jesus about false teachers. But why is this necessary? Why is the message of false teachers so attractive? It is because of the false promise that these teachers make.

Jesus said, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.” (Luke 6:43 NIV) With this in mind we should pay careful attention to what Peter writes in his second inspired letter about the character of false teachers. Since their characters are bad, the outcome of their lives will be bad as well.

In chapter 2 of his second inspired letter, the Apostle Peter warns the followers of Jesus that false teachers will come among them just as false prophets had come in earlier times. But Peter also assures his readers that false teachers will be destroyed.

In the first part of his second inspired letter Peter explained that his teaching about Jesus is true because it is based on eyewitness testimony and because it agrees with the words of God which the prophets delivered. But how can we know what is truly a message from God instead of merely the words of men? In the next section of his letter Peter tells us that we can recognize a false teacher by comparing him to a true prophet.

In his second inspired letter the Apostle Peter writes that we can place confidence in what he taught about Jesus because he was an eyewitness of the events of Jesus’ life.

In order to safeguard ourselves from false teaching it is essential that we have a correct knowledge of who Jesus is. But how can we know that what we have been taught about Him is true?

The theme of the Apostle Peter’s second inspired letter is that in order avoid the errors of false teaching and to avoid misunderstanding God’s promises, we must have a correct understanding of who Jesus is. But a correct understanding of Jesus is more than an intellectual knowledge of who He is. It is not enough to know about Jesus, we must know Him.