Early in my marriage I was feeling a lump in the center of my rib cage, slightly below the sternum, accompanied by acute pains. For weeks my prayers for healing were mingled with angst as to what it might be—hoping that it might not be dreaded cancer or a heart problem. After finally consulting with a doctor, I was so relieved to learn that it was a natural part of my body, the pains instigated by muscular stress. Nothing to worry about! What a relief! When I didn’t understand the why behind the lump, I envisioned incorrect scenarios about my future. A true understanding of why led to a correct interpretation of my present condition and future expectation. I could rest easy.
As we’re considering 1 and 2 Peter, why did Peter write them? Knowing why shapes how we view them. Did the suffering of his fellow saints motivate him to comfort them? Did their scary present inspire him to arouse hope toward the bright future when Jesus comes again? What we presuppose of the author’s intentions biases how we construe his writings. These conscious or unconscious presuppositions in our approach can make us or break us in accurately interpreting and applying Scripture. So why did Peter write these letters?
Until recently I’d not seen how closely interwoven 1 Peter and 2 Peter are to each other. It’s more than the Captain Obvious fact that number two follows number one. I’ve discovered that the second letter expands beautifully upon what’s left unexplained in the first. In other words, 2 Peter serves as a commentary on 1 Peter! Let me show you some examples of this and then dig into what I find as the most convincing evidence.
As typical of New Testament letters, the opening verses of 2 Peter hint at what the letter will be about. Peter greets his readers with a typical blessing:
May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
1 Peter 1:2 ESV
Now, it’s easy to skip right past this as typical apostle-speak, well-worn salutations having no significance other than a hazy hope for happiness. Not so with Peter! We don’t always connect these as being an integral piece to the letter. Peter does. Look how the second letter expands this:
May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
2 Peter 1:2 ESV
The addition of “in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” supplies a framework in which this grace and peace is multiplied to us. It’s not just grace and peace in a generic sense but grace and peace resulting from a mature, experiential knowledge of God the Father and the Lord Jesus. This intimate knowledge is the means by which grace and peace get multiplied to us. We’ll develop this later on, but for now I want you to see how this naturally connects these two letters together. 1 Peter is better understood in light of its explanation letter!
Let’s take a look at another opening remarks instance:
Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:
2 Peter 1:1 ESV
It sounds like Peter is addressing two different groups here. It’s reminiscent of Peter’s preaching at the Jerusalem convention: “And God, who knows the heart…made no distinction between us [the Jews] and them [the Gentiles], having cleansed their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:8-9). But note how drastically this differs from his first letter: “To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” The Dispersion refers to the scattered Jews all over the Roman Empire. These scattered Jews all came together for the feast of Pentecost during which Peter preached and 3,000 of them embraced Jesus as their promised Messiah.
The differences in addressees between 1 and 2 Peter becomes more glaring when compared to Paul’s second letters to the same audience (e.g., 2 Corinthians, 2 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy). With Paul the addressees are pretty much the same (e.g., “To the church of God that is in Corinth…”), albeit with slight variations. Not so with Peter. Something prompted a change. This extreme makeover from “those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion” to “those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours” suggests that Peter may have received feedback from his first letter that necessitated this clarification. Perhaps the Gentile Christians wondered if Peter had intended to include them, seeing he specifically addressed it to the Dispersion. By placing all of his readers, Jew and Gentile, on the equal footing of faith, the answer to the Gentile’s niggling question, “Is this for me?” is a resounding yes! Peter went out of his way to affirm to his Gentile readers that they’re included in whatever he has to say now in the second letter and before in the first.
Here’s another introductory example from 2 Peter serving as commentary on 1 Peter:
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:
1 Peter 1:2 ESV
“Sprinkling with his blood” is unique opener among all New Testament letters. Hebrews summarizes what this means: “…Moses…took the blood of calves and goats…and sprinkled…all the people…Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb 9:20, 22). Christ’s blood sprinkled on us means we’ve been forgiven of sins. But as many times as I’d wrestled with Peter’s “sprinkling with his blood” phrase, I failed to see how it integrated into the letter’s main themes. Yes, it’s a wonderful truth that Jesus’ blood has secured forever our forgiveness! And, yes, Peter does comment on the precious blood of Christ later on in the chapter. But it came across to me as a bonus blessing arbitrarily tossed in. My heart was not fully satisfied until 2 Peter dawned this explanation of it on me:
“For if these qualities [virtue, knowledge, self-control, etc.] are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (2 Pe 1:8-9).
In the men’s Bible study I attend on Wednesday mornings, the leader often reminds us, “We’re good forgetters.” Peter acknowledges this about us, so he desires to remind us of the words of the prophets, as we’ll see next. Moses and the prophets spoke of the sprinkling of the blood. Peter bringing this to the forefront of our minds has to do with one of his chief purposes: fruitfulness in experiential knowledge of Jesus. Kicking it off with “sprinkling with his blood” immediately reminds us that we’re cleansed from our former sins, which is a key to knowing Jesus Christ better, as the second letter explains. Since this first letter has much to say about knowing Jesus better, this seemingly random blessing actually does align perfectly with it.
Now let’s look at the one that sealed the deal for me:
This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles,
2 Peter 3:1-2 ESV
“In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.” Depending on your translation you may or may not see the word “both.” The Greek grammar here is ambiguous. The Bible Gateway website indicated more than half—39 of 61—of the English translations say “both.” Some denote “both” in italics, a clue that it isn’t in the Greek but was added by the translators to convey the sense. My rule of thumb with textual ambiguity is to consider both possibilities as true. Remember when after the resurrection Jesus asked Peter on the beach, “Do you love Me more than these?” These what? These fish? These disciples? It’s ambiguous, but most likely means both. The Holy Spirit, Chief Editor of the Scriptures, influenced the human author’s selection of words. If He deemed it important that the wording be clear and definite, then it was. I side with the majority of English Bible translations that Peter had both letters in mind. So the underlying purpose of “stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder” applies not only 2 Peter but 1 Peter as well.
“Stirring up” is diegeirō (dee-eg-i’-roh), a combination of egeirō (eg-i’-roh), to awaken or arouse from sleep, and dia, which intensifies it. Peter uses it here metaphorically to arouse the mind. Since I’m a picture guy, imagining diegeirō within a story really helps getting the gist of it. “The sea became rough [diegeirō] because a strong wind was blowing” (Jn 6:18). Matthew’s version of this rough sea depicts it like this: “…the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them” (Mt 14:24). This same wind is what distracted Peter’s focus as he walked upon the turbulent waters, causing him to sink. So diegeirō contrasts a sea that’s still and at rest with one that’s whipped up into a frenzy of wind and waves. Sea asleep, sea awake. There’s a world of difference between the two. Now, as an awakened sea is alive with activity, so Peter’s reminder is that fierce gale to whip up our brainwaves. The Message translation catches the essence: “My dear friends, this is now the second time I’ve written to you, both letters reminders to hold your minds in a state of undistracted attention.” The end result of these reminders is that we be fully awake, active and alert. But reminders of what? What demands our sustained, focused thinking?
“In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.” This is really significant! Peter’s disclosure of his bottom-line motivation for writing is crucially important for understanding him. Our guesses as to why Peter penned these letters are probably as varied as there are people. Far better if Peter divulges it, “for who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him?” (1Co 2:11). Thankfully, Peter did share his otherwise unfathomable thoughts. “In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets…” To understand Peter, then, is to understand how the prophets function in his letters.
Peter desired his beloved readers to remember “the commandment of the Lord” as well. At first this confused me because, unlike the plentiful quotations of the prophets, Peter never quotes Jesus in either letter. It’s also “commandment,” singular, not “commandments,” plural. So which one commandment did he have in mind?
In today’s day and age we have several ways to emphasize words. We can put them in bold. Or italics. Or underline. Or ALL CAPS (which you do in a text if you want to yell at someone). The Greek written manuscript, though, had no such visual cues. If a Greek author desired a particular word or words to be emphasized, he’d place them at the beginning of a sentence. A descriptive adjective could also be emphasized by placing it before the noun instead of afterwords as per the usual construction. That’s what Peter is doing here with “the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.” The word order in the Greek is “the through your apostles commandment.” This sounds weird and Yoda-like in English. We don’t talk that way. Although clunky, by adjusting my thinking to the Greek order like this, it translates the nuance of emphasis better to my mind than proper English grammar. So for better or for worse, I’m going to use “the through your apostles commandment” (using the italics) going forward. It is the Lord’s commandment, yes, but it’s the through your apostles commandment that Peter specifically has in mind. Along our journey I will point out more instances like this to facilitate a crisper understanding of Peter’s original thought process.
As mentioned, nothing is cited that identifies that one commandment. I think what Peter means by the through your apostles commandment of the Lord is love one another. Three times does Peter in his first letter use the command to love, and always in context of loving the brothers and sisters in Christ (1:22, 2:17, 4:8). This commandment originated from what Peter heard from the lips of Jesus: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (Jn 13:34). Peter’s gospel cohort, John, expresses the through your apostles commandment in his letter: “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” (1Jn 3:23). As we go on in the study, we’ll see how the words of the prophets (which is how we come to believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ) and the through your apostles commandment of the Lord are inseparably linked. But for now we’ll focus on being awake to the words of the prophets since it comes first here in 2 Peter 3 and in 1 Peter.
So what’s to hold your mind and mine in a state of undistracted attention is remembering the “predictions of the holy prophets.” “Predictions” is two Greek words literally meaning “the words which were spoken beforehand.” This implies prediction, especially seeing that it’s God’s prophets we’re talking about. Since Peter’s passion is that we remain wide awake to the prophets’ words spoken long ago, it stands to reason that we should pay particularly close attention to how those prophets function within the letters. The prophets’ words, then, are not simply filler material or of secondary importance. They are the primary reason for which Peter is writing, so we’ll be closely examining how he employs them to keep our minds awake!
Our immersion into the letter of 1 Peter won’t go verse by verse. Remember how I contrasted Peter as an art guy with Paul as a math guy? I commented that Peter’s writing appeals to the imaginative beauty of art more so than the numerical precision of engineering. Our approach will be to enter Peter’s letters as one might enter a manicured garden, meandering along its pathways, admiring its beauties. The visual appeal of botanical gardens includes mesmerizing collections of lush greenery—plants, bushes and trees—colorful flowers, dancing butterflies, lawns, ponds and artsy fountains, all expertly cared for by master landscapers and specialists. Allow me to be your guide to direct your attention to the premier attractions of our garden experience. By starting with the chief exhibit first, the prophets and their words, rather than 1 Peter chapter one verse one, I trust we’ll better catch God’s heartbeat pulsing through Peter’s words. So let’s begin our adventure, shall we?
Glory Unveiled: Discovering Jesus 