8But 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. 9The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
10But 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 in it will be laid bare.
11Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12as 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. 13But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
Dig Deeper
He had messed up in a big way this time and he knew it. The young man had made a poor choice and had disobeyed his parents and now he knew that he was going to face the wrath of their judgment. That might have been bad enough but what made it even worse in his mind was waiting for his punishment. His parents told him that they needed to talk things over and would let him know "later" what his punishment would be. Later? Didn’t they know the mental anguish that he was going to go through having to wait and wonder? His little sister was also waiting. Except she had been the offended party in this whole situation and she couldn’t wait for her parent’s punishment to come down on her older brother. For both of them, the waiting seemed like forever. In fact, the parents were intentionally waiting, giving their son some time to think about what he had done and giving him a little more chance to repent for his behavior. The first day went by with no punishment handed down, and by the afternoon of the next day, the boy’s anguish began to turn to comfort, thinking that perhaps his parents had forgotten and there would be no judgment. At the same time, the little sister became more and more anguish. Where was the rightful and just punishment? Had she been forgotten? Would there no justice? They both underestimated their parents. They had said that there was going to be a reckoning and, in fact, there was. It was just on their own time for their own reasons.
False teachers had developed theories that didn’t at all coincide with the apostolic teachings of the gospel. They were claiming that Christians needn’t worry about God intervening into human affairs through judgment and that there would be no such thing as the return of Christ to inaugurate the age to come. After all, history had been rolling on for thousands of years with no discernible judgment from God. The present age, they claimed, was all there is, all there was, and all there ever would be. Yet, Peter is very clear. Do not mistake the Lord’s patience in brining final judgment to mean that He had forgotten, or that there would be no judgment at all. Like wise parents, God has reasons for delaying His justice. They are His reasons and He will not be rushed. As Peter describes the certainty of that judgment, he does so in terms that are very Jewish and apocalyptic (a very specific type of literature that used very symbolic, colorful, and cosmic language.)
The first thing that Peter reminds his dear readers is that God views time very differently from human beings. If we don’t get the justice we think we deserve in a day or two, we grow impatient. God is outside of time, however, and can see the whole scope of history. He sees the big picture. Think of it like a train. Time is like a train whizzing by. We are inside a tunnel and can only the small portion of the train that is directly in front of the tunnel at the moment. God, though, is on top of the tunnel and can look down and see the entire train of time all at once. Thus, what might seem like an incredibly long time of waiting for us, is nothing for God. He understands, we don’t. In fact, with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. Peter is teaching here about the patience of the Lord in judgment and this verse (which is a quotation from Psalm 90:4) should not be taken out of context and be applied to things like the length of the six days of creation or anything else that is outside of Peter’s point. Peter defends God’s righteousness against human impatience by pointing out that the Lord is not slow in keeping His promises. Rather, His delay in judgment is for the benefit of those very people who would stand in rebellion against God and mock His patience. He wants everyone to come to repentance and will allow just the right amount of time for that to happen for the most people possible.
Peter says that just when people are getting comfortable, thinking that the judgment of God is not coming, it will come like a thief (1 Thess. 5:2)). The day of the Lord, he ways will come quickly, with no warning. Some get confused here thinking that because the day of the Lord was a clear Old Testament concept of the righteous judgment of God being brought to bear in the physical universe that there is one Day of the Lord that must be identified. The fact is that there were many days of the Lord that all point to the ultimate, but clearly not the only, day of the Lord. The destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD was clearly a day of the Lord that fulfilled many aspects of Old Testament prophecy but it was only a pointer. It could not and should not be considered as the final and ultimate day of the Lord, a mistake that those of the full preterist school of biblical interpretation make today. It is quite clear in passages like 1 Corinthians 5:5 and 2 Corinthians 1:14, that the day of the Lord does not refer to the destruction of the Temple, but looks forward to the return of Christ, the end of the present age, and the onset of the age to come.
In fact, Christ will return to judge the entire cosmos, which Peter describes in the inclusive categories of the heavens, the elements, and the earth. His point, using very apocalyptic language, is that the present age will come to an end. The heavens, or the spiritual realm, as a distinct and separate category will disappear. But what about the elements being destroyed by fire? Doesn’t that mean that God is going to destroy the entire earth by fire and usher in a new spiritual age where we all go to the location of heaven forever? Not quite actually. Peter has made clear in his first letter, that the salvation for which we hope is being kept in heaven until the day of it’s coming (1 Peter 1:3-5). That is the day when God’s presence will fill the earth, reuniting the realms of heaven and earth. Much of our understanding of this passage hinges on how we understand "elements" and "laid bare" in verse 10. The term that Peter uses for elements is used in five other biblical passages (Col. 2:8, 20; Gal. 4:3, 9; Heb. 5:12). Although the word can mean the basic elements and atoms that make up the universe, in all of the other biblical passages in which it is used, it refers to the basic principles that the world operates by. As we have already seen in previous passages, God was the consuming fire of the Bible (Deut. 4:24; Isa. 33:14; Heb. 12:29). But what about "laid bare"? Other older versions have this word translated as "burned up," but the TNIV gets closer to the meaning with "laid bare." The way that this word is used commonly in Jewish texts and other first century writings seems to indicate that this is a word that implies judgment and purging. NT Wright says of this passage in "The Resurrection of the Son of God," that "the writer wishes to stress continuity within discontinuity, a continuity in which the new world, and the new people who are to inhabit it, emerge tested, tried and purified from the crucible of suffering." He goes on to say that Peter is not describing the physical destruction of the universe, that the consuming fire of God is "not simply to consume, but also to purge."
Verse 11 becomes clear then, if we recall that Peter has used "destroyed" to denote the revealing judgment of God throughout this passage. He’s certainly not that God will return one day to destroy the physical universe, annihilate it, and begin an age of solely spiritual existence. This, in fact, would encourage the false teachers who were arguing just that point, saying that what was done in the physical realm did not matter. No, says Peter. What we do now, should be done in light of God’s reality in the age to come because everything and everyone will be judged in the presence of God and only the pure will stand up to that fiery judgment. The day of the Lord will bring about the revealing judgment of the heavens by fire, and the principles of the world will melt in the heat (cf. Mal. 3:1-5).
We look forward to the time of the coming of this salvation, when God will renew and restore his creation and put things to right (Matt. 19:28). This will be the time of the new heaven and new earth (Rev. 21:1-5; Rom. 8:18-25). It is the restored universe, the new heaven and earth that is the home of righteousness and the hope of all of those who love God. This is the reality in which Christians should live in light of, anticipating with our actions, realizing that when the consuming fire of the presence of God comes, the heavens, the elements and principles of the world, and the earth will be laid bare in judgment, with only those things in Christ will remain in the age to come (cf. Col. 1:15-20).
Devotional Thought
Take at look at your own life; a good, long, hard look. Will the things with which you have filled your life stand up to the consuming fire and judgment of the presence of God? Peter says that we should live holy and godly lives because of this coming day. How are you doing?
No comments:
Post a Comment