3:14
Belief in the return of Christ is never an excuse for inaction or careless living, quite the opposite. The Bible always presents it as a motivation for making a greater effort to live to please God. Why is this? Well the reasons are manifold. One is that we are on the winning side! Jesus is Lord of All, He is the one with all power and authority, and He is coming back. So it makes perfect sense to live to please Him rather than living to please the world. Second, God is at work in us to transform us, to make us more and more Christlike, so we should co-operate with Him. Thirdly, imagine what it is going to be like on the day He returns, or the day we die. Do we want to be found doing nothing? Or would we rather be found seeking to live a life pleasing to Him? Pleasing to the one who loves us, and to the one whom we love? Notice also that Peter says “make every effort”. We are saved by grace through faith, purely by the work of Christ, not our works. However, the Bible has no problem whatsoever with us making every effort. If you have a problem with making every effort then it is your stupid theology that is the problem!
3:15,16
The “delay” in the return of Christ does not mean He is not coming back, or that the teaching that He will return is wrong. Rather it means that He is exceedingly patient with mankind, giving people every opportunity to repent.
It seems that Paul’s letters were known to the readers, or at least several of them. There were also attempts by various false teachers to either discredit Paul or twist what he wrote. There is nothing new about people distorting Paul’s teaching. It happened then, it happens now. Note how Peter describes the people who distort Paul’s teaching, he calls the, “ignorant and unstable”. Perhaps we need to be a little more direct about false teachers in our day. They are not offering “an alternative view”, they are ignorant and unstable, and heading to destruction.
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