Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: 2 Peter 2-3
Key Verse
2 Peter 2:21 — “For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.”
Devotional Thought
Peter writes his second letter with a pastor’s heart and a watchman’s urgency. He has already told his readers that Scripture is not of private interpretation, and now he turns to the counterfeiters. In the first century, false teachers slipped into the assemblies “privily,” peddling “damnable heresies” and denying the Lord who bought them. Peter does not deal in abstractions. He reaches back into Israel’s history for his evidence: the angels who sinned and were cast down; the ancient world drowned in the Flood while Noah, “a preacher of righteousness,” was saved; Sodom and Gomorrha turned to ashes while righteous Lot was delivered, his soul vexed “from day to day” by the filthy conversation around him. Then he names Balaam, who loved “the wages of unrighteousness” and had to be rebuked by a dumb ass speaking with a man’s voice. These are not fairy tales to Peter; they are precedents. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly and to reserve the unjust unto judgment.
The false teachers Peter describes are not cartoon villains. They are “wells without water,” “clouds carried with a tempest,” men with “great swelling words of vanity” who promise liberty while they themselves are “servants of corruption.” They feast alongside the saints, spots and blemishes at the love feast, beguiling “unstable souls.” Peter’s proverb is unforgettable: the dog returns to his own vomit, and the washed sow to her wallowing in the mire. There is a warning here for anyone who has “escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” only to be entangled again. The latter end is worse than the beginning.
Then the letter turns, and the tone warms. “This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you.” Scoffers will come in the last days asking, “Where is the promise of his coming?” Peter answers with Genesis and with patience: by the word of God the heavens were of old, and by that same word they are “kept in store, reserved unto fire.” And here is the mercy hidden inside the delay: “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years,” and “the Lord is not slack concerning his promise… but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” The day will come “as a thief in the night,” with the heavens passing away with a great noise. But the same chapter that ends the old creation announces a new one: “we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
It is late March, and the church is walking through Lent toward Easter. The days are lengthening, but the air still carries winter’s chill, and the ground is only beginning to stir. Peter’s final word suits the season exactly: “beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” The scoffers count the delay as slackness; the faithful count it as salvation. While we wait, we are not to stand still. We are to be found of him “in peace, without spot, and blameless,” diligent and growing, looking for the day when righteousness at last has a home.
Reflection
- Peter says the Lord’s delay is longsuffering, “not willing that any should perish.” Where in your own life has God’s patience been the very space in which repentance became possible — and are you using the time He has given you, or merely presuming upon it?
- Lot was “vexed” daily by the wickedness around him, yet he stayed. What “Sodom” have you grown comfortable in, and what would it look like this week to guard your soul rather than quietly tolerate what grieves it?
Prayer
Our Father, we thank Thee that Thou art longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Search us, and see whether we have grown at ease among the very things that vexed righteous Lot. Deliver us from swelling words and empty wells; keep us from returning to our own vomit. Make us diligent to be found of Thee in peace, without spot and blameless, looking for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. And while the day tarries, grant that we may grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom be glory both now and for ever. Amen.