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2 Peter 3:1-7 - Remember the Word

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Peter opens the final chapter by calling the Church back to memory. Scoffers look at the long continuity of ordinary life and treat it as evidence that Christ’s promise has failed. Peter reads that same continuity under the word of God: the word that established creation, judged the former world through the flood, and now preserves the present heavens and earth. The danger is deeper than an unanswered question about when the Lord will come. Desire can teach the mind what to ignore. Peter therefore awakens the Church to remember, because a life governed by Christ’s word can recognize mercy in the very time that scoffing mistakes for absence.

Remember the Word (2 Peter 3:1-7)

1 Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), 2 that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, 3 knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. 7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

“Beloved” sets the pastoral atmosphere for every warning that follows. Peter speaks as a shepherd who wants the Church to remain awake after the apostles are gone. He joins “the words” of the holy prophets with the apostolic commandment of “the Lord and Savior.” Prophetic promise and apostolic command form one received witness centered on Christ. The Church remembers His word so that passing desires, fears, and arguments do not become its teachers.

The phrase “I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder” gives remembrance the force of awakening. The Greek verb “διεγείρω” (diegeirō) means to awaken or rouse; “διάνοια” (dianoia) names the understanding or mind. Peter seeks an understanding made alert by what God has spoken. Holy memory clears the mind by returning it to God’s word before appetite or anxiety can rewrite reality.1

Verse 2 contains a small textual caution. The NKJV’s “the commandment of us, the apostles” reflects the reading behind its textual tradition, while modern critical Greek editions commonly read “your apostles.” Both readings place the commandment’s source in the Lord and Savior and its delivery in the apostolic witness. Peter directs the Church away from private cleverness and toward the word received from Christ through those He sent.2

Peter then names what must be known first: scoffers will come in the last days. The Greek intensifies the description with a cognate pattern, “mockers in mockery” or “scoffers, scoffing.” This is derision hardened into a way of seeing. Peter connects it with “walking according to their own lusts,” revealing a moral pressure beneath the argument. Desire wants a world free from accountability and recruits a theory of reality to justify that wish. Honest doubt belongs in a different category. A wounded person may ask why Christ seems delayed while still longing for truth; the scoffer in this passage uses the question to keep Christ’s claim at a distance.3

Their taunt, “Where is the promise of His coming?” turns the world’s ordinary continuity into evidence against God. Generations die, families grieve, work resumes, and the created order seems unchanged. Peter sees continuity as preservation. Each ordinary day exists under God’s command, and the next verses will show that stability has a Giver, a history, and an appointed end. What the scoffer calls absence is time still being upheld by the God whose promise remains sure.

Verse 5 uncovers the act of will beneath their conclusion: “For this they willfully forget.” The Greek phrase is compressed. The verb “λανθάνω” (lanthanō) concerns something escaping notice, while “θέλω” (thelō) supplies the willing or wanting: this escapes them because they want it to. Peter is naming chosen blindness. A truth can stand close enough to be known and still be kept outside attention because admitting it would require repentance.4

Creation and flood are the truths they choose to overlook. The heavens were of old by the word of God, and the earth stands “out of water and in the water.” Peter recalls the waters of Genesis 1, where God speaks, separates, gathers, and gives the world its ordered life. Psalm 33:6 (LXX Ps 32:6) sings the same confession: the heavens are made by the Lord’s word.5 The world is neither self-originating nor self-sustaining. Its very existence bears witness to a voice beyond it. The difficult wording about water does not supply a modern theory of planetary formation; it directs us to the Creator on whom the world depends.6

The flood gives Peter’s warning historical weight. The created order people treat as untouchable has already passed through divine judgment. Yet “this second epistle” also invites us to remember 1 Peter’s account of Noah and baptism. There, God’s longsuffering waits while the ark is prepared, and salvation through water leads Peter to the salvation of baptism through Christ’s resurrection (1 Peter 3:20-21). Here the flood exposes the folly of denying judgment. Together the passages refuse both a merciless account of God and a mercy that has forgotten repentance. The patience Peter will name in 3:9 is already visible in the days of Noah.

Verse 7 brings the argument into the present: the heavens and earth are “preserved by the same word” and “reserved for fire.” The Greek includes “θησαυρίζω” (thēsaurizō), to store up, and “τηρέω” (tēreō), to keep or reserve. Peter therefore interprets stability as continuing divine rule. The same word stands at every point in his sequence: creation, the former judgment through water, present preservation, and coming judgment. Continuity is real, but its meaning is the opposite of the scoffers’ claim. The world endures because God keeps it.7

Peter leaves the Church with awakened memory rather than a calendar. The heart becomes spiritually dull when it turns delay into excuse, mercy into permission, and continuity into denial. Judgment remains real, and the chapter will immediately reveal the Lord’s longsuffering and desire for repentance. Even before that fuller explanation, the warning is medicinal. Christ, the Lord and Savior whose coming is mocked, calls His beloved people to remember His word while there is still time to return.

The phrase “perdition of ungodly men” first places the hearer under God’s searching word. My desires, evasions, private mockeries, and comfortable delays are accountable to Him. Peter gives Christians no warrant to assign divine destruction to disliked people or communities, or to explain a neighbor’s disaster as punishment for a hidden sin. Those wounded by catastrophe need compassion, not someone else’s confident verdict about God’s purposes.

Gems from the Fathers 💎

St Augustine comments directly on this passage in City of God XX.18. He takes Peter’s appeal to the flood seriously: a former judgment teaches us to expect the coming judgment, and the world that now endures remains under the same divine word. “And by his reference to the deluge he seems as it were to suggest to us how far we should believe the ruin of the world will extend in the end of the world.”8 The flood is a warning against presumption, not a reason to despair of the Creator’s faithfulness.

St Clement of Rome confronts a similar complaint about promises that seem too long delayed: “These things we have heard even in the times of our fathers; but, behold, we have grown old, and none of them has happened unto us”.9 He answers with the vine, whose fruit reaches ripeness through stages that impatient eyes might dismiss. His exhortation is a companion to Peter’s warning: the passage of time does not make God’s promise empty. Faith learns to wait without ceasing to obey.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

The Coptic Church hears 2 Peter 3:1-18 as the Catholic Epistle on the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent, the Sunday of the Paralytic. The Liturgy’s Psalm is Psalm 33:5-6 (LXX Ps 32:5-6), including the confession that the heavens were made by the Lord’s word; its Gospel is John 5:1-18, where Christ commands the long-disabled man to rise.10 The word that gives creation its being is heard beside the word that raises a man to walk. Remembering God’s power becomes a summons to receive His command today, rather than making the length of our waiting a reason to stop hoping.

The full chapter is heard again on the First Sunday of Nasie, the Little Month at the end of the Coptic year. The Liturgy joins it to Matthew 24:3-35, Christ’s teaching about deception, tribulation, and His coming.10 A year draws to its close, but God’s word has not grown old. The Church answers passing time with remembrance, repentance, and steady faithfulness.

Iconography and Visual Teaching 🖼️

The early Christian catacomb image of Noah and the ark recalls flood, judgment, and preservation.11 Noah’s rescue belongs to the same remembered history as the flood. Judgment can awaken repentance without taking away hope.

An Asia Minor map offers a possible broader setting: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia are the provinces named in 1 Peter. The phrase “this second epistle” invites comparison with that letter, though 2 Peter 3:1-7 names no province, city, or route.12 The geography is less certain than the spiritual address. Wherever the beloved live, Peter calls them back to the word they have received.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

  1. Bring one avoided truth into Christ’s light. Verse 1 describes remembrance as awakening, and verse 5 exposes the truth we prefer to leave unnoticed. Name one concrete matter in prayer this week: a confession postponed, an apology resisted, a habit defended, or a commandment treated as optional. Then take the first obedient step while the word is still stirring your mind.

  2. Give honest questions room to seek the truth. Peter’s target is mockery joined to self-directed desire. A sincere question about suffering, science, delay, or judgment can be spoken before Christ without shame. Bring it to Scripture, prayer, and a trusted servant of the Church, asking for light and remaining willing to obey what becomes clear.

  3. Notice when a question has become armor for desire. The scoffers’ conduct and argument reinforce one another. When reasoning repeatedly protects the same appetite, resentment, secret habit, or refusal to reconcile, ask Christ for the courage to desire truth more than exemption. Confession can separate the real question from the desire that has been hiding behind it.

  4. Receive ordinary time as preserved mercy. The same word that created now keeps the world. Let today’s continuity become time to pray with attention, repair a relationship, forgive, fast, confess, serve, or return to the Eucharistic life of the Church. Another ordinary day is a gift in which repentance can become concrete.

  5. Let judgment produce sobriety and hope. Peter’s fire language places every hidden life before God, while the next verses reveal His patience toward repentance. Refuse both fascination with catastrophe and despair over your sin. Turn toward Christ the Lord and Savior, whose warning awakens because His mercy still calls the beloved home.

Footnotes

  1. BibleHub, 2 Peter 3:1 Greek Interlinear, διεγείρω Greek Lexicon, εἰλικρινής Greek Lexicon, and STEP Bible, THGNT text for 2 Peter 3:1-7. ↩

  2. BibleHub, 2 Peter 3:2 Greek Interlinear; Blue Letter Bible, Textus Receptus for 2 Peter 3:2; STEP Bible, THGNT text for 2 Peter 3:1-7. ↩

  3. BibleHub, 2 Peter 3:3 Greek Interlinear, ἐμπαιγμός / ἐμπαιγμονή Greek Lexicon, and ἐμπαίκτης Greek Lexicon. ↩

  4. BibleHub, 2 Peter 3:5 Greek Interlinear, θέλω Greek Lexicon, λανθάνω Greek Lexicon, NET Bible note on 2 Peter 3:5, and NRSVUE 2 Peter 3:5. ↩

  5. Psalm 33:6 (LXX Ps 32:6), NKJV; Septuagint and Brenton. ↩

  6. BibleHub, 2 Peter 3:5 Greek Interlinear, συνίστημι Greek Lexicon, NET Bible notes on 2 Peter 3:5-6, and NRSVUE 2 Peter 3:5. ↩

  7. BibleHub, 2 Peter 3:7 Greek Interlinear, θησαυρίζω Greek Lexicon, and τηρέω Greek Lexicon. ↩

  8. St Augustine of Hippo, City of God XX.18, New Advent. ↩

  9. St Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 23, New Advent. Clement quotes the complaint before rebuking it. ↩

  10. Light and Logos, Coptic lectionary data, version 1.3.6. Coptic lectionary data from Light and Logos (andraws.net), licensed under CC BY 4.0. ↩ ↩2

  11. Wikimedia Commons, Noah catacombe.jpg, public-domain file page. ↩

  12. Wikimedia Commons, Asia Minor in the second century AD, Roman provinces under Trajan, CC BY-SA 4.0, creator Caliniuc. ↩

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