It Matters Which Teachers You Choose to Listen To -- an Introduction to 2 Peter
- mww
- May 7
- 20 min read
Peter is a trustworthy authority in matters of faith.
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for 2 Peter 1:1-21
The letter of 2 Peter kicks off with a bang, letting us know that our very relationship with Jesus our Savior is highly affected by which earthly teachers we listen to. Peter wants us to become more like Jesus -- the real Jesus he knew and followed -- which we can do in the power of the Spirit. We need to trust what he has told us about Jesus.
For we did not follow cleverly contrived myths . . . instead, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (1:16)
A reminder that at the beginning of my posts, I offer a series of questions or topics that might help you decide how you want to start your group time. Nobody expects you to use all of these (or wants you to) or any of them. They are to help you get your creativity flowing.
Happy Mother's Day!
This isn't the most obvious connection (because we don't get to choose our mothers), but I think this lesson says something very important to moms: your kids are going to learn much from you; are you being the best teacher you can?
We have so many stories about kids developing their faith by watching and learning from their moms. Well, that puts moms in the category of the teachers that Peter talks about in this letter. Are you as a mom teaching your kids about Jesus?
How Do You Get Better at Your Job?
Let's set aside the jokes that young workers really aren't interested in getting better at their jobs. (A New AI Worry: Many Young Coders No Longer Know How Their Code Really Works) Let's assume that you want to get better at your job. How do you do that?
Obviously, the answers will be a little different for different kinds of jobs, but I would be very in the commonalities.
Here's the "AI Overview" answer (which means it's a summary of oft-clicked pages on the web: "To get better at your job, focus on continuous improvement through skill development, effective communication, and a positive mindset. Prioritize task management, learn from mistakes, and actively seek feedback to enhance your performance." That may as well be a cat poster, but it's not wrong.
In this week's passage, Peter tells his readers that they must want to get "better" as Christians. My guess is that the techniques your group talked about with respect to job performance also apply (loosely) to Christian character and maturity. If you are willing to work at your job, how much more should you be willing to "work" at your Christianity? In this, Peter's final words aren't so different from Paul's final words to the church at Philippi:
Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. (2:12)
What "Christian Virtue" Do You Wish You Had More of?
This is as loaded as a question can get. What part of your Christian life do you think needs the most work? Is it your patience? Your knowledge of the Bible? Humility? Your involvement in your church?
Well guess what? Today you're going to be encouraged to put together a plan to work on that very thing! Peter wants us to have urgency in our Christian life -- don't put off to tomorrow what you can do today to become more like Jesus.
What Are Your Favorite Bible Promises to "Stand on"?
This is another question that can bring different answers based on what you're going through in life. But we all have promises in the Bible that tend to come to mind when we are in need. Examples,
No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it. (1 Cor 10:13)
He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Cor 1:4)
There are more internet resources and published books on this very topic than you could shake a stick at. I'm not sure I trust all of them (as in, I'm not sure they have appropriately interpreted every promise in the Bible). Here's one that just lists verses (and I didn't have a million ads pop up):
In this week's passage, Peter tells us that we have great and precious promises from God. We may as well start thinking about what they are!
This Week's Big Idea: 2 Peter!
If you do enough research, you will inevitably find a set of "scholars" who believe that Peter did not write 2 Peter. They argue that the language is different from 1 Peter and that the author talks about things that became important in the second century (namely Gnosticism and apostolic tradition). Those are not strong arguments. What is a strong argument is the fact that a number of early church leaders doubted that Peter wrote the letter. However, a lot of material was circulating in the second and third centuries claiming to have been written by Peter, so the easier thing was to throw all of it out. Eventually, 2 Peter was included in the biblical canon because the church leaders eventually agreed that Peter did in fact write the letter. I'm siding with them.
Peter says that he wrote the letter and that it was the second letter, and there is enough overlap between the two letters that I have zero reason to even consider doubting that Peter wrote it.
When and Why
There are differences between the two letters; how do we explain them?
The easiest-to-follow explanation I've heard is that Peter wrote this letter shortly before his execution in Rome -- somewhere between 65 and 68 AD. He may not have had his "normal helpers" around anymore, or maybe it was Mark. Regardless, somebody else helped him write this letter, not Silas. Why not identify the scribe? I don't know. Maybe it was for their own good, considering Peter was about to be executed for teaching things like what's in this letter!
Peter does not identify the audience like in the first letter, but his line "my second letter to you" (3:1) seems clear enough. Peter felt a strong personal responsibility toward this group of churches in Asia Minor, and he knew that he would not be able to see them again in this life, so he wrote this letter as his "final words of wisdom and warning" to them.
For a great summary of the letter, please watch the Bible Project video:
We will talk about the letter of Jude next week when we cover chapter 2.
Peter's message is pretty straightforward:
Trust the teachers who pass on the truths of Jesus.
Reject the teachers whose lifestyle is not like Jesus'.
Know that Jesus is indeed coming back.
Bonus Big Idea: The Apostolic Tradition and Catholicism
With the conclave starting this week, there will be plenty about Roman Catholicism in the news. Some of it may even point to 2 Peter!
So, if you hear something strange this week in the news about Peter, here are a few words about the topic; if you are not interested in this, please skip!
Here is a representative statement on what the Catholic Church calls "The Primacy of the Successor of Peter"
On the basis of the New Testament witness, the Catholic Church teaches, as a doctrine of faith, that the Bishop of Rome is the Successor of Peter in his primatial service in the universal Church; this succession explains the preeminence of the Church of Rome, enriched also by the preaching and martyrdom of St Paul.
In the divine plan for the primacy as "the office that was given individually by the Lord to Peter, the first of the Apostles, and to be handed on to his successors", we already see the purpose of the Petrine charism, i.e., "the unity of faith and communion" of all believers. The Roman Pontiff, as the Successor of Peter, is "the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity both of the Bishops and of the multitude of the faithful."
Their "New Testament witness" is nothing more than what we have talked about quite a bit in our recent Bible studies -- that Jesus indeed identified Peter to be the lead voice in the new church. Peter took that responsibility very seriously.
The leap in logic comes from basically everything else the Catholic Church says about this, that whoever leads the church in Rome automatically inherits the "mantle" of Peter to be the absolute leader over all Christian churches everywhere. To defend this teaching, those Catholics point to the original documents on which that teaching is based (i.e., a circular argument), none of which is the New Testament.
Let's start with 2 Peter -- Peter reiterates a common theme in the New Testament: there are true teachers and there are false teachers. Follow the true ones! Peter tells his readers to observe the lifestyle of the teachers and compare how they live and what they teach to what Peter has said about Jesus. This is in line with what Jesus Himself said:
Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You’ll recognize them by their fruit. (Matt 7:15-16)
But let's be honest -- that's hard to do! We know from experience how easy it is to fall for the teachings of a false prophet. And in the days of the early church, there were no New Testaments the people could go to for reference. So, the people had to take the word of their church leaders. Not long after Peter's death, it became obvious that different teachings were becoming popular in different parts of the Empire, and some of those teachers turned out to be heretics (Arius, Nestorius, etc.).
Eventually, the leader of the church of Rome (still the largest and most important city in that part of the world) pulled out a "trump card": "Peter died in Rome, and before he died, he passed on his authority to the next leader of the church in Rome, and that authority has been passed all the way down to me. Therefore, I'm the one who gets to decide what is right and what is wrong." Set aside the unbelievable gaps in logic -- that is a statement that is easy for people to understand. The groups who rejected that statement broke away to form their own churches (like the Eastern Orthodox Church), and the Bishop of Rome (later called the Pope) consolidated authority over all of the churches in the western part of what used to be the Roman Empire. (And yes, you should think about what we said in last week's lesson related to "ruling elders".)
The history of all of this is fascinating and worth studying. But for our purposes, nothing in the New Testament remotely suggests a church hierarchical structure like that used by the Roman Catholic Church. I'm sure Peter would be horrified to hear his name used in that context.
Part 1: Take Your Christianity Seriously (2 Peter 1:3-8)
[1 To those who have received a faith equal to ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. 2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.]
3 His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 By these he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, 6 knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, 7 godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I included vv. 1a-2 because they're a great summary of this letter:
"Your faith is equal to mine" (contrary to what the Catholics say about the Pope) which means "you are fully equipped to be a church after I'm dead" as well as "you are just as much a church in the Gentile backwaters as even the church in Jerusalem".
But make sure you have the "right" faith!
The foundation of the faith is righteousness. (Keep this in mind.)
The guardrail of the faith is knowledge.
The result of the faith is grace and peace.
If any of those things are missing, you might be "doing Christianity wrong".
Anyway, expect to see those themes again and again in this letter.
Peter starts his letter off with a bang -- God's "divine power" (v. 3) and "divine nature" (v. 4). I'll put some more detail about this below. "His" points to Jesus Christ; the construction in the previous verse means that "Jesus Christ" is "God and Savior" (the CSB translation makes this clear). This is some extremely high-level theology, and it's part of the reason why some skeptics don't think Peter could have written this letter. I talked about this when we introduced 1 Peter -- you really don't think that after 30 years of preaching and teaching everything Jesus said and did that Peter couldn't, with the help of the Holy Spirit, develop some very powerful ideas about who Jesus was?
Peter's multiple references to the Transfiguration in his letters makes it pretty clear to me that Peter simply began to understand the significance of what he saw. I have no problem with Peter saying high-level stuff.
Don't miss Peter's lifechanging observation: The basis of Peter's hope for the churches is not his teaching but Jesus' power manifest among them. (And again, let me be clear that the Catholics do not use the Bible to defend their doctrine of a pope; 2 Peter very clearly speaks against any sort of human hierarchy like that.)
Jesus taught Peter and the apostles everything they "needed to know" about being His followers, and at Pentecost He sent the Holy Spirit to help them remember and obey those things. Peter and the apostles passed that on to the first generation of Christians who in turn passed it on to the next generation. But constant through it all is Jesus' divine power confirming His teaching and enabling Christians to obey it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
But knowledge is important. This is why Peter will say much about true and false teachers. That word for "knowledge" (epignosis) is also used of "relational knowledge" -- "make sure you have a relationship with the right savior".
Because he has seen evidence of Jesus' power at work in their lives, Peter knows that his readers have been "called" (kaleo) to salvation. In the Bible, when God "calls" someone, they always "answer" (Rom 1:6, Gal 1:6, etc.); in other words, they have been saved.
So let's work backwards through verse 3:
On the basis of His own glory (and not their worthiness), Jesus called the Christians in these churches to salvation.
In their relationship with Him, those Christians have a knowledge of Jesus that has enabled them to appreciate Peter's instructions.
Therefore, in Jesus' power, through their salvation and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Christians have everything they need to be Jesus' followers.
Great!
Uh oh, we're only through the first verse of the lesson.
I interpret verse 4 to mean that God has given us promises on the basis of His own glory and goodness, just as He has called us on the basis of His own glory and goodness. In other words, everything important in our life -- our salvation, our foundation, our direction -- is on the basis of God, not our worthiness or ability. That should be a great comfort.
Great and Precious Promises. Peter's readers didn't have Bibles, so what is Peter talking about? The same thing. They had the same promises that we have today; we simply have them all written down in one place. Do you know what God has promised you in the Bible? Do you know how to find those promises in a time of need? A promise is based on God's trustworthiness, not our worthiness. (I know I've said that a lot, but it's a key point that Peter is making.)
Divine Nature. I'll talk about this below, but I want to make sure we don't shortchange this. As we obey Jesus and trust in Him, we become more like Him. I think Baptists are more likely to undersell this than oversell it. Do we not say that our desire is to become more like Jesus? It had better be! But what do we mean when we say "more like Jesus"? We had better not mean an ability to save someone's soul or walk on water! Instead, we mean our character. We want to know "how would Jesus want me to act in this situation?" We aren't becoming gods, but we are becoming "little Christs" ("Christians").
Peter gives us two directions:
life and godliness in Jesus Christ
corruption in the world
If you live "in" the world, you will be corrupted by it. But if you live "in" Christ, you will become more like Jesus. [Or, as Peter puts it, "live in Christ and you will not be corrupted by the world".] This shouldn't be hard to understand. Spent time around mud, and you'll get muddy.
(Peter's warning about "evil desire" will come up again next week.)
It's our choice how we live. Jesus has given us everything we need to live the godly life He wants for us; He has given us the knowledge of it and even the power to do it. But we still have to make the choice to do it. Just like we have to choose to want to get better at our jobs, we have to choose to want to become more like Jesus.
Peter gives us this incredible stairstep illustration to help us know what to do. It begins with faith (in Jesus), and it ends with love.
faith (i.e. the what and the why of your faith in Jesus)
goodness ("moral excellence" - v. 3)
knowledge
self-control
endurance ("steadfastness")
godliness ("desiring to please God")
brotherly affection ("philadelphia" love like in 1 Peter 1)
love ("agape" love)
Peter is not necessarily saying this is a hard, comprehensive sequence, but this is the general path toward being like Jesus. Peter is certainly not saying that you can't develop self-control until you have mastered your knowledge of the faith (i.e., learned the Bible thoroughly)! Rather, every Christian should be increasing (growing) in all of these all the time; we just grow in them at different rates.
Two important questions for your group to think about:
Why do you think Peter chose to order these virtues like he did?
What happens if you try to eliminate any one of those virtues?
That first question is helpful to us as we struggle to follow Jesus. That second question directly applies to Peter's letter as it sets up Peter's warning about false teachers. "If you claim to be a follower of Jesus but you clearly ignore one of those areas of Christian growth, that's a red flag that you are not the follower you think you are." The false teachers Peter talked about were clearly ignoring at least one of those things.
And then here's the key question Peter asks all of us:
Do you want your faith to be useless, or do you want your faith to mean something and make a difference in your life?
A commonality among all those who "walked away from the church" is that their faith never really meant anything to them. Peter would say that there are two equally depressing possibilities:
They weren't really called by God to salvation; their faith never really did anything in their lives because it wasn't real to them at all. -or-
They never worked to develop their faith. Their "faith" hadn't grown at all from the time they were 7 to the time they graduated from high school (or whenever). That's not God's fault; that was their choice.
Are you choosing to grow in your faith (and by this, Peter is talking about your knowledge of and relationship with Jesus Christ)?
We could spend hours just talking about these verses.
Aside: Participating in the Divine Nature
This rabbit hole goes deep, and it's not for the faint of heart. I just want you to be forewarned about its existence. As you do your own research on 2 Peter 1, you will eventually come across the words theosis or apotheosis. It is a key element of Eastern Orthodox theology, and it often traces back to this verse.
The idea is that people can actually become divine. It has roots in paganism and can be found in all manners of world religions. In Eastern Orthodoxy, they use it to mean that Christians can (and should) literally become more like Jesus in His divinity.
That is not what Peter said. Peter just said that we are to become "partakers" (koinonoi) of the "divine nature" (theias physeos). The doctrine of theosis is just not present here.
Peter has emphasized Jesus' "goodness", which means "moral excellence"; that is His nature. Christians needs to share that goodness/moral excellence in common with Jesus.
Now -- let me "zag" here. In running away from the disturbing consequences of the doctrine of theosis, I believe that many Christians have "thrown the baby out with the bathwater". They don't believe they can become like Jesus at all and don't even try!
I believe very strongly in what we call "spiritual transformation" (see Romans 12) -- and that's one of the key purposes of Sunday School! We want to create an environment in which spiritual transformation can happen. "Transformation" means that we change. We change from the person we were to the person God wants us to be -- and that's a person who is more like Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. That doesn't have to mean that we become divine, and Peter wasn't saying anything about us becoming divine. He meant that we share Jesus' goodness in common with Him.
I hope we all want that for ourselves and every Christian in our church.
Part 2: Trust the Apostles as Teachers (2 Peter 1:16-18)
16 For we did not follow cleverly contrived myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; instead, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased!” 18 We ourselves heard this voice when it came from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.
The lesson skips a few verses. Those verses establish Peter's urgency -- he knows he will be executed soon -- as well as his logic -- a person who has experienced the grace and mercy in salvation will desire to follow Jesus with all his heart.
Here, Peter introduces a concern: new teachers have shown up and are saying things contrary to what Peter has taught them. Why should the people listen to Peter and not to them? This will dominate the rest of the letter. Peter is not going to be around to defend himself or his teachings, so this is his "closing argument".
Reason #1: Peter (and the other apostles) are reliable eyewitnesses. It was no accident that the church leaders who established the canon (identified which books should be in the New Testament) used "apostolic eyewitness" as one of their criteria. Peter was there for all of it. When he taught the churches, he was teaching what he had seen and heard -- he was passing down to them what Jesus said to him. (Note: "we" does not include the pope.)
I went so long on that first section that I have no choice but to fly through these last two rather quickly. Do your best to budget your time wisely!
The Transfiguration is a key event in every Gospel, and for good reason. It was in that event that Peter (and James and John) actually saw a glimpse of Jesus in His divine, eternal glory. In other words, Peter saw Jesus in His "God form". We have studied this event multiple times in the Gospels; if you need a refresher:
Clever Myths. We realize that the false teachers Peter will talk about were accusing Peter of teaching falsehoods about Jesus (!). One "myth" is the Second Coming -- we will talk more about this in two weeks.
If it turned out that Jesus is in fact not coming back, what would that change about Christianity? I hope you realize that everything changes. Consider Acts 1:
9 After he [Jesus] had said this, he was taken up as they were watching, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going, they were gazing into heaven, and suddenly two men in white clothes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you have seen him going into heaven.”
Peter is not talking about some minor disagreement in interpretation, or even something as big as Premillennialism vs. Postmillennialism. No, these other teachers were saying that Jesus isn't coming back, and Peter was lying by saying otherwise.
But Peter was there. That's why we should listen to him.
Aside: The Importance of Personal Testimony
Many Christian evangelists teach that we should lean into our "personal experience" in our testimony. Why? Because people can argue about many things, but they cannot effectively argue about what you did or did not personally experience.
My favorite example of this is the man born blind who we read about in John 9:
25 He answered, “Whether or not he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I can see!”
Realize that when we read the Bible, we are trusting that the authors of the Bible are telling us the truth, so to speak. We are taking Peter at his word that he was there at the Mount of Transfiguration.
Enough has happened in my life to give me peace in trusting the Bible absolutely. If you want to know more about this, here's a simple article:
Part 3: Trust the God of the Bible (2 Peter 1:19-21)
19 We also have the prophetic word strongly confirmed, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you know this: No prophecy of Scripture comes from the prophet’s own interpretation, 21 because no prophecy ever came by the will of man; instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
I would love to have saved more time to talk about these verses, but I don't think my Bible study group has any doubts about this, so it wouldn't be necessary for me to go into much detail.
The "prophetic word" Peter mentions is almost certainly the Old Testament. Hear what Jesus said about the Old Testament:
37 The Father who sent me has himself testified about me. You have not heard his voice at any time, and you haven’t seen his form. 38 You don’t have his word residing in you, because you don’t believe the one he sent. 39 You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. 40 But you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life. (John 9)
Peter says that the Old Testament is "strongly confirmed" (or "altogether reliable"). You might remember the number of times Peter cited the Old Testament in his first letter.
The specific note Peter is making is that the Old Testament clearly refers to a "return of Christ" (called "the day of the Lord"), so these false teachers have no leg to stand on. In other words, "If you have doubts about my teaching of the Second Coming, just study the Old Testament, and God will help you see that His prophets have been teaching the same thing."
But the more general note for Christians in every age is that we can "pay attention to" the Old Testament. In fact, the Old Testament will help us better understand Jesus and the teachings about Jesus!
The Morning Star. This was Venus (though they didn't know what that meant in ancient times). Pre-dawn, it was the brightest object in the sky -- it was the "herald of the dawn". When Venus became clear, it meant that the sun was going to rise soon. The worship of Venus was associated with paganism (and may have been in Peter's readers' backgrounds). Peter was turning that on its head: "You used to believe that the rising of Venus pointed to the sun. But now, take that impulse and realize how God uses many things (in this case the Old Testament) to point us all to Jesus, the true Light of the world."
And then Peter launches into one of the most important teachings about the Bible in the Bible. There's a lot of debate about this, and I didn't save time to go into any of it. Here's the gist of what Peter is saying: "Men didn't make up the prophecies in the Bible. They didn't try to twist the prophecies. They simply "reported" what God revealed to them. We can trust the Bible (the Old Testament, to Peter)."
Today, we realize that this applies to the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, because the same God was clearly inspiring all of it. Perhaps think of it like this:
The Old Testament prepares us for Jesus;
The Gospels tell us about Jesus' life and ministry;
The rest of the New Testament helps us know what it all means.
The way many Christian scholars interpret verse 21 is that the Holy Spirit revealed the message God wanted the Bible writers to write down, but those authors kept their individuality and writing styles. In other words, God did not "dictate" the entire Bible (in the same way that He dictated the Law of Moses), and yet we can fully trust that the Bible is the Word of God.
Listen, if we could fully and easily understand all of this, I would doubt that it came from the mind of Almighty God.
Aside: Do You Realize That Every Info Source Is Biased?
Here's one last thing to remember -- everything written by a person is biased in some way, right? If you don't believe that, get in touch with me and we can talk about it.
Every preacher, every commentary, every Bible study is biased in some way. Even the translations of the Bible are biased by whatever translation principles were used!
So, what do we do? We place our emphasis on the study of the Bible itself, and we pray that the Holy Spirit who inspired the Bible will illuminate it to us today.
In other words, the Bible is our only "Teacher". Those books and preachers and commentaries aren't our teachers; they are our helpers in learning the Bible for ourselves.
The Bible is fully trustworthy, like Peter said. We simply work together as Christians, listening to the Spirit together to seek to understand and interpret the Bible rightly in our language and context.
And I believe that we can trust the Holy Spirit to do that in and with us.