Waiting is often not an intentional activity for me. When I go to a restaurant, or to a doctor’s office, or to the DMV, and I am told to wait, my response is probably similar to yours in those kinds of situations: I sit around and let the moments pass by, eager for it to be over so I can get back to real life. We have “real life” in one category and “waiting” in another, and whenever we have to wait, we think of it as a break from the real business of life.
We are now in the last Sunday of Advent, a season in the church calendar that is defined by intentional waiting. Advent is a season that reminds us that we cannot divide our lives into different compartments of “real life” over here and “waiting” over there, because as long as we are in this present age, life itself is an act of waiting for the coming of the Messiah. In Luke 2:25 we are introduced to an old man named Simeon who took up the baby Jesus in his arms and rejoiced. Luke tells us that Simeon was “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (that is, the Messiah). In the same context we read about a prophetess named Anna, of whom it is said that she was speaking about the baby Jesus “to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). When Jesus first came into this world, there was a remnant of faithful believers whose lives could be accurately described as lives of waiting for the Messiah.
We too are called to make waiting for the Messiah’s (now second) coming a way of life. And that is not an easy task. Waiting can cause weariness. The day-in, day-out grind of life in this world, combined with skeptical voices questioning the hope for which we are waiting, can sow doubt in our minds about the truth of our faith and can cause us to lose focus. If you are not convinced that Christ is really going to return, your motivation to wait expectantly for him will wane, and your attention will be drawn to other things. And let’s face it: after 2,000 years, there is a real temptation to question if this whole thing is just a fairy tale. Thankfully, the Lord gave us this passage from Peter, a passage devoted to the very question we face today: if it has been so long, how can we continue to hold on in hope that Christ will indeed come again? Shouldn’t we just give it all up and go back to real life? No, says Peter. Christ will come again. You can be sure of that. And until he comes, the Christian life is a life of intentional waiting. So how can we wait well for Christ’s return instead of drifting along passively? Peter gives us three words of direction on this question
First,
When you watch a skilled baseball player at the plate, what you are watching is the fruit of hours upon hours of practicing the basics: how to grip a bat, how to stand in the box, how to watch the trajectory of a pitch, how to step, how to turn your hips in a swing, how to follow through. These basic skills must be learned in the beginning, but once they are learned, they must be practiced over and over and over again, with pitch after pitch after pitch. With repeated practice, a batter can learn the fundamentals well enough that he can apply them simultaneously to any kind of pitch that is thrown at him in the split second that he has to swing at it. In those moments when a ball is flying at him at 80 or 90 miles an hour, the batter is engaged in the focused work of remembering the basics. And that’s how the Christian life is for us. We learn the basic story of the Bible, a story about God, humanity, sin, the redeeming work of Christ, and of a coming judgment. But we don’t learn it just so that we can file it away in our heads. We learn it so that, as each new challenge arises in life, we can set it within the context of the bigger story that we know is true. We must seek to apply the basic teachings of our faith that we ought to know very well to the varying situations that arise in our own lives. That is what “remembering” means.
Peter tells us in verses 1-2 that his purpose in writing is to cause us to remember the basics: “This is now the second letter 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.” Peter’s point in writing this letter and his previous letter (First Peter) is not so much to teach new material. It is to remind his readers of what they already know by bringing truth once again to their minds and applying it to the situations in front of them. And he tells them that this truth has come to them from the predictions of the holy prophets (the Old Testament) and from the Lord Jesus Christ himself through the apostles. When Peter speaks of “the commandment of the Lord and Savior” in verse 2, he means the same thing he had said earlier in 2:21 about false teachers: “For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.” The “holy commandment” is apparently the gospel itself, including its call to repentance, faith, and new life in Christ. That is what Peter refers to here in verse 2, arguing that the gospel itself has come to us from the Lord Jesus Christ, and it has come through “your apostles,” or the apostles who first brought the gospel to the readers of this letter. Paul was apparently one of those apostles, according to verse 15.
By pointing us to the words of the Old Testament prophets and the faithful teachings of the New Testament apostles (as Christ’s own teachings), Peter is pointing us to the Old and New Testaments. Scripture is the lodestar of our faith. Waiting well means giving focused attention to Scripture, cultivating a life of listening to God as he has spoken to us in his Word.
So notice how Peter appeals to the well-known teaching of Scripture to counter false teaching in the remaining verses of this section. In verses 3-4 he writes, “knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’” These scoffers are apparently the same as the false teachers warned against in chapter 2. They scoff at the idea that Christ will come again to judge humanity, and their argument is that you can go all the way back in history to the time of “the fathers”—the patriarchs of Israel—and you can see that the world goes on as it always has. We personally have never witnessed the kind of divine, cataclysmic intervention that the second coming of Christ represents. And so we have a tendency to assume, “Well, if it’s outside the realm of my experience, it must not be true.” And thus we define what is real in relation to what we personally have experienced. That kind of thinking is one of the greatest lies imaginable, and it is one of Satan’s most successful strategies. He convinces us to narrow our understanding of what is real and true by the standard of our own limited experience. Projecting our limited experience onto the structure of reality, rather than allowing God to tell us what is real, is a profoundly arrogant thing to do. And that is the kind of thinking behind this scoffing.
But notice Peter’s subtle hint at what really drives these scoffers in verse 3 again: “knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires.” What really motivates this kind of intellectual scoffing at the truths of the Christian faith? It is sinful desire. The sinful heart will never run out of ways try to justify its own lusts. That’s why, if you see a professing believer start to doubt and then depart from established Christian teachings, you should ask yourself, “What sinful practice is he or she involved in right now?” Scoffers denied Christ’s coming, not because their arguments against it were so compelling, but because they didn’t want his coming to be true. It would cause problems for the way they wanted to live their lives.
Nevertheless, Peter corrects their error by a simple appeal to biblical teaching. In verses 5-6 he writes, “For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.” The scoffers’ problem is that they have forgotten basic teachings. Yes, the world goes on as it always has, but don’t forget that in the beginning, when it was a watery chaos, God intervened by his powerful word to bring order to creation, separating the land from the waters. And don’t forget, furthermore, that in the days of Noah the Word of God intervened again to return the world to the watery chaos that it had once been. God flooded the world and eliminated the human race, creating a new world for Noah and his family. God has intervened dramatically twice before, in both creation itself and in the event of the flood.
Think of it this way: the pre-flood world had its own history. Civilizations rose and fell. Generations came and went. Just like our world, it had its own cultures, heroes, and stories. And then one day God ended it all. The former world met its own day of “final judgment” with the cataclysmic event of the flood. Do you think God can’t or won’t judge the world again? He absolutely will. In verse 7 Peter writes, “But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” The old world was destroyed by the word of God working through water. But God promised never to flood the earth again. So this present world will one day meet its end by the same word of God, only this time working through fire that destroys and purges. Peter is connecting the day of the final judgment to the promise of Christ’s coming, arguing that just as God has done before, so will he do again. The scoffers are guilty of forgetting basic biblical teaching.
So let us devote ourselves to remembering. For those of you who are married, what rituals do you have that draw attention to the special bond you have with your spouse? Do you wear your wedding band everyday? Do you greet each other with a kiss every morning as you leave for work and/or every evening as you come home? Do you always say certain special words when you hang up the phone? Different couples do these things differently, but almost all married couples have these kinds of rituals. What’s the point of these actions? They constantly point you back to what is real, namely, that you are in an exclusive and permanent covenant bond with this other person. Every kiss, every “I love you,” every day you wear your ring, you are choosing to remember the covenant that gives shape to your life. And that’s how it is with the Christian life as well. We live in a posture of waiting, but we do so by actively remembering the basic truths of our faith over and over again: who God is, who we are, what Christ has done to save us, and what future hope we have in him. What rituals have been built into your life to make you remember those things regularly? What changes do you need to make to cause yourself to remember these things better? We must fight to remember the basic teachings of our faith.
The second way that we wait well for the coming of Christ is this:
In his book A Grief Observed C.S. Lewis wrote about his experiences immediately following the death of his wife. It is a raw, honest look at all the ups and downs of his emotions during that season of life, along with all the struggles he had with God through it. In one passage he relates a particular experience in these words:
“One moment last night can be described in similes; otherwise it won’t go into language at all. Imagine a man in total darkness. He thinks he is in a cellar or dungeon. Then there comes a sound. He thinks it might be a sound from far off—waves or wind-blown trees or cattle half a mile away. And if so, it proves he’s not in a cellar, but free, in the open air. Or it may be a much smaller sound close at hand—a chuckle of laughter. And if so, there is a friend just beside him in the dark. Either way, a good, good sound. I’m not mad [i.e., crazy] enough to take such an experience as evidence for anything. It is simply the leaping into imaginative activity of an idea which I would always have theoretically admitted—the idea that I, or any mortal at any time, may be utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in.”1 I get that same impression when I read Peter’s teaching in verses 8-10. We who are inclined to think that God has delayed the return of Christ for a long time, raising questions about his own faithfulness to his promise, are utterly mistaken about the situation we are really in. And these verses are meant to reorient our perspective to what is really going on; the situation is far better than we are inclined to think.
Peter’s main point here is to assure us that God has not broken his promise. The apparent delay in Christ’s coming is not at all inconsistent with what God has promised. There are three arguments that Peter makes here in support of that conclusion. First, Peter tells us that God is Lord of time in verse 8: “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Echoing the words of Psalm 90:4, Peter tells us here that God’s experience of time is not like ours. Time wears on us. It is something we pass through as we experience change. Time is a mode of being for creatures with inherent limitations. But God is Lord of time. The passing years do not wear on him. He comprehends the end from the beginning all at once, and thus what seems to us a delay is nothing of the sort to God.
The second argument defending God’s faithfulness is that the apparent delay in Christ’s return serves God’s merciful purpose. Verse 9 reads, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” The longer we wait for Christ to come, the more time God is giving us to repent so that we are ready when he does come. The apparent delay is not at all an indication that God is slow to fulfill his promise; it is an indication that he is merciful.
How does the teaching of this verse cohere with the fact that not all will be saved in the end? Here we have to distinguish between God’s will in the sense of desire or command and God’s will in the sense of plan. God’s will of desire or command is that all people should repent and be saved. Repentance and salvation are actions that are pleasing to him in and of themselves. He takes no delight in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 18:23). Condemnation and judgment are not expressions of his heart. Nevertheless, condemnation and judgment will happen in the outworking of his plan, because we can all agree that, while God desires the salvation of all people, he is more committed to something even higher than that. What that is will differ depending on your theology. If you hold to a view that could be described as more Arminian, you would say that God is more committed to allowing people to act according to a certain definition of free will than he is to saving all people, and so in the end many people will not be saved because God will allow them the choice not to be saved. And if you are more on the Calvinist side (as the elders here are), then you would say that God is more committed to the full display of his glory in both salvation and judgment. But either way, you have to draw some distinction between God’s will of desire or command, and how God’s plan will actually unfold in history. Nevertheless, Peter’s main point here is not to deal with all that but to reassure us that God’s heart is for repentance. He delights in saving sinners, and every single day that passes without Christ’s coming in judgment is another day that God has allowed more sinners to repent and be saved from the judgment to come.
But God’s patience is not unending, and that is what brings us to Peter’s third argument, which is that Christ definitely will come. In verse 10 he writes, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies [better: ‘elements’] will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” At some point, time for repentance will be up, and Christ will come. When he does, Peter describes a cataclysmic event: the very destruction of the heavens and the earth. The visible heavens will pass away with the roar of a crackling fire. The physical elements of creation will be dissolved by fire. But what does Peter mean when he says, “the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed”? It seems that Peter is saying that, when this world passes away, God is going to bring everything in human history to light. On that coming day, nothing will be left hidden, but as Paul says in Romans 2:16, God will judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. Every sin ever committed will receive a complete answer from God the righteous judge. Every wrong will be exposed and made right. And every unrepentant sinner will be condemned forever.
We live in a day when the concept of justice has become a rallying cry. There are competing visions of what constitutes justice out there, but one thing almost all people agree on is that they want justice (however that is defined) to come. There is an instinctive longing for justice in the human heart. It’s as though we live in a world that we fully realize has gone wrong, and we hold out hope that somehow, in some way, those wrongs will be made right. As Christians we have the message that answers to that longing. It is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which includes the message of his return in glory to judge the living and the dead. May we proclaim to a generation that longs for justice that justice indeed will come, but when it does, it will sweep away all who have not bowed the knee to Christ. Let us point this generation to the truth that yes, the world has gone wrong and yes, the world will be set right. But unless you repent, you will perish with the old order when Christ comes to destroy it.
And so while it may seem to us that Christ’s coming has been delayed far too long now, we must trust the character of God. He is Lord of time, with every passing day he is only showing more mercy, and at the appointed time Christ will come to bring all that is hidden to light. We must trust that these things are true and continue to wait expectantly.
Third, and finally,
Peter uses a strange verb in verse 12. He says that we are to be “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies [or, again, ‘the elements’] will melt as they burn!” It makes sense enough to say we must wait on that coming day. But how can we possibly hasten it? Can we somehow change God’s plan and cause him to send Christ back ahead of schedule? Is God waiting to see what we do before he decides what he will do?
No, God does not change, and his plans do not change. But God has appointed our actions as means in the unfolding of his plan, and thus from our perspective, what we do matters for the unfolding of history. When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we are calling upon God to send his Son from heaven and manifest his reign over the world. And God will answer that prayer. So what does Peter mean when he tells us to hasten the coming of the day of God? If you look back to verse 11 you can see what he means: “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness?” It is by pursuing holiness and godliness that we hasten the coming of the day of God. Now why would that be? It is because the more people are living in holiness, the more God’s purpose for delaying the return of Christ from verse 9 is fulfilled. In other words, if God is giving more time for people to repent, then the more we turn from sin and consecrate ourselves unto God in holy lives, the more we are bringing that purpose to fulfillment and thus drawing this present age to its end.
So when we pursue holiness, we actually participate in hastening the coming of Christ (from our perspective). But there is another reason to pursue holiness in these verses, and that is outlined for us in verse 13: “But according to his promise we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” Peter is speaking here of God’s promise in Isaiah 65:17, the promise of a new creation. It is a place in which righteousness dwells, and we can interpret that to mean it is a place in which only righteousness dwells. There will be no sin, no falsehood, no impurity of any kind in the new creation. When this present order is destroyed and gives way to the new, sin will done with forever. And that is why we must not pursue sin now, but must rather pursue obedience to the Lord, because only that which is righteous will endure into the coming age.
When I say that, of course, I do not mean that our own righteousness can merit our place in the new creation. Justification, or being declared righteous before God, is by faith alone. We will enter the new creation on the basis of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, received by faith, or we will not enter it at all. Roman Catholics call this teaching a legal fiction, a declaration that is disconnected from reality. But it’s not disconnected from reality, because when God grants us the status of righteousness in Christ, he also destines us to become righteous, progressively so now, and perfectly so in the world to come. And why does that matter? Because salvation is not just about your destination; it is also about your condition. Being saved is not only about where you end up, but also about who you will become. Salvation is ultimately being conformed to the image of Christ, and nothing that remains otherwise will be allowed entrance into the new creation.
As Americans, we tend define ourselves in relation to what we do or what we aspire to do. We find our goal in life in some kind of activity, job, or career that can give us some sense of significance. What is my purpose in life? It is to be a teacher, or a nurse, or an entrepreneur, or a missionary, or a pastor, or an athlete, or a doctor. When we think like this, we are missing out on the biblical teaching that the goal of our lives is not functional, but ethical. The biggest question is not, “What do I do?” but rather, “What kind of person am I?” And the purpose for which you were created is not ultimately to be a teacher, a nurse, an entrepreneur, a missionary, a pastor, etc., but the purpose for which you were created is to love God with your whole being and to love your neighbor as yourself. Waiting well means making holiness the goal of your life in anticipation of the coming day when all that is unholy will be removed.
And so I call upon you to pursue holiness by making God your greatest desire and by loving your neighbor because he is made in the image of God. Kill the sin within you that would dishonor God and dehumanize your neighbor. Be holy, as God is holy.
As we see another Advent season come to an end this week, remember that waiting is not something separate from the real business of life. For us, waiting for Christ to come is our life, just as it was for Simeon, for Anna, and for the holy remnant who rejoiced in his first coming. So while we must wait, let us wait well. Amen.