Tag: salvation

2 Peter 3

The Day of the Lord

Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

3 Above all, you must understand that in the last days, scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Peter is talking about the time called the last days, which means the period between when Jesus was on Earth and when He will come back. Peter wants us to get ready for these days. It’s about being prepared, not scared. Some people might wonder, “Where is God?” and why it has taken over 2000 years for Jesus to return. They might think that because Jesus hasn’t come back yet, they can do what they want and not worry about their sins being noticed when He returns.

Peter reminds us that God is very patient. He doesn’t operate on our schedule because He wants everyone to have the chance to choose Jesus and avoid Hell. God hasn’t forgotten about us; He’s waiting for as many people as possible to accept Christ. We should appreciate the wait because it allows more people to be saved. God will return, and when He does, He will look at the lives we have led.

10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as 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. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. 2 Peter 3: 10-13

Some say Jesus won’t come back. If that’s true, there’s no judgment or help from God, meaning no hope or future for anyone. People might then focus only on today, thinking, “I came from nothing and am nothing, so I should just enjoy life.” Others might feel life has no meaning and stop caring about it altogether, thinking life doesn’t matter.

But believing in Jesus’ return brings hope and something to look forward to. Peter talks about this, asking what kind of people we should be, emphasizing how Jesus’ return impacts our current lives.

We know about the “day of the Lord,” which brings destruction and judgment, but we don’t look forward to it as it’s difficult to think about. Instead, we focus on what comes after: God’s eternal day where everything is made right, as mentioned in 1 Corinthians.

How should we live? Avoid getting caught up in worldly things because we don’t belong here; we’re visitors. Christians don’t belong to this world or want its things. We’re on a journey to a heavenly place, looking forward to a city made by God, eternal in heaven.

Peter urges us to act with holy conduct and godliness, which means behavior and heart. Live with hope, peace, purity, share faith, make wise choices, grow, and worship. These values should guide our actions and thoughts. Hoping in God’s glory pushes us to live holy and godly lives. Our hope in God helps us live holy lives.

14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. 2 Peter 3: 14-16

In verse 14, Peter advises Christ’s followers to aim for clean and good lives. Our faith needs to grow to become more Christ-like, which requires God’s help and self-reflection.

God wants us to be spotless in character and reputation. When God arrives, He desires purity in us. This involves acknowledging and disliking our sins, confessing them, and aiming for holiness. We should steer clear of temptation and engage in spiritual practices like Bible study, prayer, and worship to maintain purity.

Peter highlights God’s patience for the sake of our salvation, mentioned in verse 15. Consider this: “Am I truly striving to grow as a Christian?” Effort is vital, much like exercising muscles to develop strength—our spiritual life needs this effort too. Are we earnestly trying or just moving with the flow?

We should eagerly anticipate the Lord’s return with peace. Peter says embracing these promises brings peace. Being in harmony with others and God upon His return displays strong faith. Living in the peace of salvation, we need not fear worldly troubles or the Lord’s coming. If you knew the Lord would come tomorrow, would you rest peacefully? The challenge lies in living right with God amid a sinful world, thanks to Christ’s sacrifice.

As we wait for Christ, He offers everyone the chance for salvation. Let skeptics doubt, but God might be waiting for their salvation. 

17 Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. 2 Peter 3: 17-18

Peter highlights God’s patience for the sake of our salvation, mentioned in verse 15. Consider this: “Am I truly striving to grow as a Christian?” Effort is vital, much like exercising muscles to develop strength—our spiritual life needs this effort too. Are we earnestly trying or just moving with the flow?

We should eagerly anticipate the Lord’s return with peace. Peter says embracing these promises brings peace. Being in harmony with others and God upon His return displays strong faith. Living in the peace of salvation, we need not fear worldly troubles or the Lord’s coming. If you knew the Lord would come tomorrow, would you rest peacefully? The challenge lies in living right with God amid a sinful world, thanks to Christ’s sacrifice.

As we wait for Christ, He offers everyone the chance for salvation. Let skeptics doubt, but God might be waiting for their salvation.

To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, 2 who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Praise to God for a Living Hope

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have suffered grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. We should always praise our Lord. Even if we are walking through dark circumstances we know that we have an inheritance that this world can not take away from us no matter how hard others may try. Thankfully our inheritance is stored in heaven for us where no moth, rust or fire can destroy it. Peter reminds us that in this world we will have all kinds of trials. For some of us, our trials are focused on our marriage. Being married is not always easy. We are two totally different people, raised in different ways, with different hopes and goals for our future. That alone is just the tip of the iceberg on the mountain of problems that we can face in our marriage. Sometimes when I take a look at other marriages and the struggles they go through, it makes me rethink the significance of my own problems in our marriage. When I look at how some marriages struggle with addiction to porn, actions from their past that come back to haunt them, or how they have suffered devastating heartbreak. But Peter says no matter what we suffer, big or small, it is to refine our faith, and by that, we show Jesus honor and glory. Jesus doesn’t cause bad things to happen in our lives just so that He can get the glory. Bad things happen in our lives because we live in a sinful and fallen world. We unlike Jesus do not live sinless lives. We are bound to sin no matter how much we try not to. Why? Because we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, the sin curse was placed on them and every generation to follow. Even creation itself bears the curse of sin. We have weeds and pests that destroy crops, animals by the hundreds that can kill us easily and plenty of food that can and does make us sick. Sin is all around us and there is no way for us to escape it until we are in heaven. Peter says that these trials happen to us so that our faith is tested. We need to prove to God and ourselves how genuine our love for the Lord really is. If you encounter one bump in the road and then you ditch Jesus for something better, obviously your faith was only on the inside. There was no changed heart. You were only honoring him with your lips for the approval of man. I’m sure we all know people like that. They look like the perfect Christian on the outside but as soon as trials hit them, they bail. Maybe they just liked having Christian friends or they liked the people at church rather than at work, but no matter what the reason, their true intentions will show at some point in time. Then you have the others who it seems like no matter what life throws at them, no matter how bad the hurt, they keep praising Jesus. Sometimes Jesus is all we have at the end of the day. We may lose our friends, family, jobs, and house and all that’s left is you and Jesus. But He is all that you need, and He is the only one who can rebuild your life. Sometimes when it is just you and Jesus left standing, you realize how much you need Him, love Him, and completely trust and worship Him. You also see how much He loves you – in case you forgot about the cross – but you get to see His love in a very real way in your own life. Some people need big tragedies and trials to see it while others don’t. Either way, that overwhelming sense of love that you have for Jesus is expressed with praise and honor. I mean how else do you show the God of this world how much you love Him? Don’t let trials get you down, this may be the time when you feel closest and most loved by God.

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

If you are like me, you read the New Testament and think about how lucky the apostles were to be side by side with Jesus for three years. They ate with him, drank with him, and witnessed miracles firsthand. I know how I feel just reading about the miracles, I couldn’t imagine how I would feel if I saw one right before my very eyes. Even though we can look back at that point in time and think how lucky they were to be there with Jesus, many of the prophets and Old Testament people thought that we, the people on the other side of the cross, were the lucky ones. If you think about it, we have a perfect 20/20 hindsight vision of everything from the dawn of time and seeing scripture unfold through history, fulfilling proficay after proficy. Peter tells us that even the angels get excited about our salvation, and if angels love to look at the work of God in saving sinners like us, how much more should we who are the very beneficiaries of that salvation (not just onlookers) love to look into it and be thankful for it. When was the last time you thought about your salvation? The price it cost, the love it took, you know…all of it. It’s something as Christians that we think about when we get saved but not a whole lot after that. Sometimes we don’t want to think about it. There is so much emotion wrapped up in the cross and our salvation that it makes me ugly cry every time. As believers, I think it is good for us to take a step back and consider our salvation, to just really evaluate our lives, and how we are living out God’s calling on our lives. Most people around the age of 40-50 go through some sort of mid-life crisis. They realize that their time here on this earth is running out and most of the time they think about all the things they haven’t gotten to do or experience. Sometimes this involves sports cars or career changes. But when if we did a salvation mid-life crisis. What if we sat down and asked the hard questions? How am I doing at my job for God? Am I preaching the gospel, am I telling people about Jesus, does my behavior model that of our savior? It’s so easy for us to get comfortable with how things are going that we don’t stretch ourselves and flex our spiritual muscles. This can be a really good exercise for couples to do together. Discuss what you are doing well and what needs to be improved upon in your spiritual life with your spouse. Don’t be too hard on yourselves, not everyone is able to or needs to sell everything and move to a foreign land and become missionaries. You can be an amazing missionary to your family, friends, and co-workers right where you are but growth nonetheless is needed.

13 Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy because I am holy.”

As a child, I couldn’t wait to grow up and be an adult. I couldn’t wait until I could make my own rules, and do what I wanted when I wanted. Then you grow up to be an adult and you realize that you can do whatever you want but there are consequences for everything. Then when you get saved you become a child again, a child of God this time. God expects us to be obedient to Him, our heavenly father. We are told not to conform to our evil desires. From birth, we have certain ways that we act. At first, they are for self-preservation but then later they develop into more complex emotions and behaviors. As a baby, which is at the mercy of the world around it (and its own needs), we really have no ego to speak of until we begin to differentiate ourselves from our caregivers and the demands of the outer environment. Then as we grow to become toddlers, we become impulsive, driven by our emotions, including sexual and aggressive drives, and interpret caregiver responses in black-and-white terms as either being ”nice to me” or ”mean to me.” The world is ”good” if it meets my needs and ”bad” if it doesn’t. As small children, we are only able to focus on present events rather than being caught up in the past or future. As children, we are very selfish. It isn’t until we grow and mature that we start to consider others, start to consider how our current actions will affect our future, and so forth. The same should be true as we grow and mature as Christians. We are called to be sober-minded and act in holy ways because now our heavenly father is Holy, unlike our earthly fathers. He wants us to stand out so that when others see us, they can immediately recognize who our father is. This also includes acting holy even when things are difficult with your spouse. Your spouse is also a child of God and even the times when he is not acting holy, you still need to do so.

17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. 22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,

“All people are like grass,

and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;

the grass withers and the flowers fall,

25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

And this is the word that was preached to you.

Have you ever thought about how truly short our time on this earth is. Sometimes that thought is just so deep it’s hard to grasp or understand. The thought of dying someday can feel overwhelming and very scary, but as born-again Christians, we know that our physical lives will end but then we go on to spend eternity with Jesus in heaven. We have been reborn again with an imperishable seed so when our body withers away and eventually dies, our soul lives on forever. But what about the time that we have here on this Earth? Peter tells us we have been purified and that we are to obey God so we can have sincere love for one another. But what does it mean to have sincere love for others? Sincere love is not something we are used to here in our sin-cursed world. Most of the time we love people when they make us feel good, but what about those who are difficult to be around and therefore difficult to love? In this world, people will not keep you happy 100% of the time. This is why you need to learn to love them even when they seem to be unlovable.

When we hear of people getting divorced and we ask them what the issues were, inevitably you will hear one of the reasons be, “I’m just not happy anymore”. I do not dismiss that some people have incredibly difficult marriages and circumstances that they live through, but we are called to stay married until death do us part, not until our happiness fades. Your spouse is the one person on planet Earth who should love you unconditionally. Unfortunately, we don’t know what unconditional love looks like. Only God truly understands that kind of love. As we walk and grow in our relationship with Jesus, we should grow in our marriages and understand that love is just more than having lustful feelings or being happy 24/7. Love means sticking by your spouse no matter what he may be walking through. Life gets tough and hard but if you throw in the towel every time that happens, you are cheating yourself and others from valuable learning experiences. I don’t know about you but I learn the most and grow closer to God when I am going through trials. Sincere love is all about sticking by your spouse, comforting him, and praying for him and with him. Unbelievers walk away from their marriages. If you claim to be a Christian then you need to stick by your spouse instead of walking away. Walking away is easy but if God wanted us to have easy lives, He would fix all the problems in our lives the instant we were born again. We know that He does not spare us from the trials of this life. He is testing our faith and seeing if our actions line up with our behavior. What does your behavior say about you??