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2 Peter 3:8-9, not wishing that any should perish

Simon Wartanian | 14,198 views | 2,323 words | 0:12:04 hours | 11 February 2014 13:56

...by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (1:1), thus believers, God’s elect. 2 Pet 3:1 says that those recipients have had received another letter from Peter, that is 1 Peter and we directly see in v 1, “…To those who are elect exiles…” We see again at the beginning of 2 Pet 3:8 that Peter is talking to the “beloved,” a term used referring to Jesus or the believers. Thus we have established that the context and the audience to whom these passages are directed are fellow believers of Peter. In chapter 3 Peter warns his fellow believers about those who will come scoffing about the Second Coming, that it has not yet happened yet Jesus said that He will come soon. He tells them that this present Universe is stored up for wrath (v 7); time is nothing with God (v 8); God is patient toward His sheep, waiting for the ones who yet have to be born and/or be saved, so the Lord is patient toward His own and He’s not willing that any of them perish, but all of them come to Him (v 9).

In 2 Peter 3, the Christians – all God's elect are represented by Peter's audience as His beloved, even when they were dead in trespasses God loved them (Eph 2:1-10) and in love predestined them (Eph 1:3-6). It is for their sake that God is delaying the Parousia of our blessed Savior. God is waiting until the number of His elect is complete then He will send the Savior to judge the world in righteousness.

Commentaries

John MacArthur says the following in the ESV MacArthur Study Bible: [1]

2 Pet. 3:9 not slow. That is, not loitering or late (cf. Gal. 4:4; Titus 2:13; Heb. 6:18; 10:23, 37; Rev. 19:11). patient toward you. “You” is the saved, the people of God. He waits for them to be saved. God has an immense capacity for patience before he breaks forth in judgment (cf. 2 Pet. 3:15; Joel 2:13; Luke 15:20; Rom. 9:22; 1 Pet. 3:15). God endures endless blasphemies against his name, along with rebellion, murders, and the ongoing breaking of his law, waiting patiently while he is calling and redeeming his own. It is not impotence or slackness that delays final judgment; it is patience. not wishing that any should perish. The “any” must refer to those whom the Lord has chosen and will call to complete the redeemed, i.e., the “you.” Since the whole passage is about God’s destroying the wicked, his patience is not so he can save all of them, but so that he can receive all his own. He can’t be waiting for everyone to be saved, since the emphasis is that he will destroy the world and the ungodly. Those who do perish and go to hell, go because they are depraved and worthy only of hell and have rejected the only remedy, Jesus Christ, not because they were created for hell and predetermined to go there. The path to damnation is the path of a non-repentant heart; it is the path of one who rejects the person and provision of Jesus Christ and holds on to sin (cf. Isa. 55:1; Jer. 13:17; Ezek. 18:32; Matt. 11:28; 23:37; Luke 13:3; John 3:16; 8:21, 24; 1 Tim. 2:3–4; Rev. 22:17). all should reach repentance. “All” (cf. “you,” “any”) must refer to all who are God’s people who will come to Christ to make up the full number of the people of God. The reason for the delay in Christ’s coming and the attendant judgments is not because he is slow to keep his promise, or because he wants to judge more of the wicked, or because he is impotent in the face of wickedness. He delays his coming because he is patient and desires the time for his people to repent.

Th...

The Early Church Fathers on Eschatology (especially the millennial question)

Simon Wartanian | 2,149 views | 207 words | 0:01:03 hours | 02 January 2022 14:56

Amillennialism Premillennialism Eschatology Second Coming Final Judgment Resurrection Revelation

This work is based on Dr. Charles E. Hill’s fine work entitled Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity. In it, he surveys eschatological thought in the first three centuries of the church. One focus of the study is the interesting observation of something common in all premillennialists (except one, Methodius of Olympus [c. 270-311]) that did not believe in the immediate entry of believers into heaven. Rather, believers and unbelievers were held in some subterranean place until the resurrection and the millennium. On the other hand, those who believed in an intermediate state in heaven, gave no indications of chiliasm (belief in an earthly millennium), but rather, some of them even give explicit evidence of non-chiliasm (i.e., amillennialism). What I’ve done here, is search for the fuller statements of the authors from the early church which are freely available in the Schaff sets on CCEL, and included citations of Dr. Hill from the book itself.

I thought of sharing it on the internet for anyone interested in these issues. In reading these statements, you will find both the good and the bad of the exegesis of the ancient fathers.

(For those not able to see the IFrame, here is the link.)

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