Ditto Jim Hukari’s sentiment from the previous post. I hate to wait. And my dislike of waiting has two dimensions. I don’t like to wait for good things, like the arrival of some nice package or dinner when I’m hungry. But strangely enough, it’s hard to wait for the advent of bad things, whether it’s the report on a biopsy or some difficult confrontation with a friend or family member. I usually want to get such things over with as soon as possible, rather than drag out the time before they happen.
Our text this week from II Peter 3:8-15a seems to capture both those dimensions of our discomfort with waiting, our desire to have the good as soon as possible and our wish to get through the bad without delay.
Peter is writing to a community of Christians troubled by false teachers saying that neither sort of anticipation should concern them. The fact that Jesus had not returned for what must have seemed a long time to them was being cited as evidence that belief in His return was false hope. Their complaint is voiced in verse 4 preceding our text (using language about the world continuing the same as it always as which might bring to mind the so-called “steady-state” theory of cosmology, which has had its ups and downs in physics). As if they were children waiting for a ride home from school, the delay in the Second Advent was understood to mean He was not coming at all.
So Peter did some good theology by turning to Scripture to understand why things might be taking so long. He found Psalm 90 verse 4 and quoted it here in verse 8, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” The point is not that the passing of time is beneath God’s notice, but that in His eternal perspective, He is able to be particularly patient with us human beings. Our wait is not divine delay, but divine patience.
God is being patient because He wants to provide an opportunity for us to escape the bad which is coming, His fiery judgment on our world and cosmos. It’s impossible to say exactly what is meant by the passing away of the heavens with a loud noise, the dissolution of the elements, and the revealing or laying bare of all that is done on earth. Nor is the meaning of the repetition of some of this in verse 12 clear. But it doesn’t sound good for human life.
The point is not so much to provide a spiritual answer to cosmological questions about the end of the universe, but to warn and urge human beings to be ready for that event, ready for the fire of judgment. Peter wants us to consider what sort of people we need to be to survive the holy fire. He wants to us to holy and godly, says verse 11, “without spot or blemish, says verse 14.
Out of what we find in the text, we can spin some theories and raise some questions about how God will bring an end to this world. One of the larger and more significant ones is whether Peter is talking about the complete obliteration and replacement of our world with a new one or whether he’s looking toward a fiery and cataclysmic process of refining and renovating our earth. From other Scripture, like the Revelation, I’m inclined to the latter view, but that’s not the big concern in the present text.
No, Peter’s aim is eminently practical and ethical. He is asking for believers in Christ to become people able to go through the fire of the world’s end and remaking. He wants us to be the sort of persons who will not be devastated when God’s fire lays open all that is done in this world, including our own secret deeds. May we not miss that call in other theological concerns. Let’s seek an integrity and transparency that need not fear any fire.