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2 Peter 3:14-18 - Grow in Grace

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Intro1:11:51:122:12:123:13:83:14

Peter’s last command to the beloved is “grow.” That word gathers the burden of the whole letter. The Day of the Lord is coming. His apparent delay is mercy for repentance. Difficult Scripture can be bent to serve an unstable heart. Across the letter, corruption takes related but distinct forms: false teachers have hearts trained in greed and entice unstable souls (2:14); scoffers walk according to their own desires (3:3); and untaught, unstable readers twist difficult Scripture (3:16). In the face of all three realities, Peter directs the Church toward a life that Christ can find in peace: cleansed rather than compromised, teachable rather than self-assured, steadfast yet still growing, and finally turned toward worship.

Be Found by Christ in Peace (2 Peter 3:14-15)

14 Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless; 15 and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you,

“Therefore” reaches back to the promised “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (3:13). Peter has refused to make the Lord’s coming a timetable for curiosity. He now asks what expectation should produce in a person. “Looking forward” becomes diligence; hope becomes a manner of life.

The phrase “to be found by Him” places the Christian before Christ Himself. The decisive question is how the coming Lord will find His beloved. Peter answers with three closely joined words: “in peace, without spot and blameless.” Peace here is more than a calm feeling. In the setting of judgment, repentance, and salvation, it is the wholeness of a life being reconciled to God and no longer making peace with hidden rebellion. The Lord’s patience gives time to confess what has been concealed, forgive the injury we keep rehearsing, repair what we have damaged, and seek peace while peace can still be made.

Peter’s wording also reaches back into his own letter. He called the false teachers “spots and blemishes” in 2:13; now he urges the beloved to be found “without spot and blameless.” The contrast is moral as well as doctrinal. False teaching had taken bodily form in greed, exploitation, impurity, and the corruption of others. Faithful teaching must also take bodily form, in a people whose hope is becoming holiness.1

This diligence does not purchase salvation. The next sentence names “the longsuffering of our Lord” as salvation, and the epistle’s final command places all Christian growth “in grace.” Divine mercy surrounds the effort Peter commands. Grace does not make diligence unnecessary; grace makes holy diligence possible. We answer Christ’s patience by bringing the whole life into His light.

“Consider” asks for a deliberate judgment. Scoffers interpreted the passing years as evidence that the promise had failed. Peter commands the Church to read the same interval as salvation. Another day is not an empty extension of history. It is mercy in which someone may return, an old resentment may be surrendered, a neglected prayer may begin again, and a servant of Christ may become ready to be found in peace. Patience is offered for repentance; it must never be turned into permission to remain unchanged.2

Peter then calls Paul “our beloved brother” and says that his wisdom was “given to him.” The affection has weight beside Galatians 2:11-14, where Paul publicly opposed Peter’s conduct at Antioch because it compromised the truth of the Gospel. Now Peter receives Paul’s wisdom without rivalry and commends his letters to the Church. Correction has not made Paul an enemy. A brother can speak a painful truth and remain beloved. This is peace with substance: truth is neither suppressed to preserve affection nor turned into a permanent grievance.

Receive Difficult Scripture Without Twisting It (2 Peter 3:16-17)

16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked;

Peter makes a distinction every Christian reader and teacher needs. Some things are genuinely “hard to understand.” Honest difficulty is admitted inside Scripture itself. A reader may need time, prayer, context, help from the Church, and the patience to leave a question partly unresolved. Confusion can become humility.

“Twist,” however, is stronger than misunderstanding. The Greek verb “strebloō” means to distort or wrench out of shape. Peter joins it to two conditions: being “untaught” and “unstable.” He is not scorning people who lack formal education. The danger is the refusal to be formed and established, especially when that instability makes the text serve a conclusion the reader already desires. The same word for “unstable” appears in 2:14, where false teachers entice unstable souls. By 3:16, instability has become active distortion. A vulnerable reader needs patient formation before borrowed error becomes a habit of bending Scripture.3

Peter says that such readers twist Paul’s letters “as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.” The wording places the Pauline letters under discussion alongside writings received as Scripture. It shows apostolic texts circulating beyond their first local setting and being handled as sacred authority. It does not, by itself, identify every letter known to Peter’s readers or prove that the final twenty-seven-book New Testament collection had already been formally enumerated.4

The warning reaches beyond obvious false teaching. Scripture is twisted whenever its words are severed from their context, the apostolic faith, and the kind of life they are meant to form. A correct quotation can still be made to serve pride, resentment, greed, or the need to win. The danger is especially sharp for servants: a person may teach a true verse while using it to protect an unrepentant heart. Peter therefore joins faithful interpretation to peace, blamelessness, and growth. The life of the reader matters because holy words are not given merely to supply arguments. They are given to lead the Church into truth and communion with Christ.

Gems from the Fathers 💎

St Irenaeus offers a vivid thematic picture of this danger. Describing Valentinian misuse of Scripture, he compares it to taking the precious stones from a royal portrait and rearranging them into a dog or fox, then insisting that the king is still there. The stones are genuine; the portrait has been destroyed. “In doing so, however, they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth.”5 His point is not that every mistaken reading is deliberate heresy. It is that recognizable biblical words can be assembled into a meaning opposed to the truth they were given to reveal.

St Augustine gives the constructive answer. When the wording of a passage is ambiguous, he directs the reader to the rule of faith received from clearer Scripture and the Church, then to what comes before and after. Elsewhere he places interpretation under the command to love: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.”6 He immediately adds that even a well-intentioned misreading should be corrected. Love does not make accuracy unnecessary; it teaches us to receive correction without defending our error as if it were our very self.

“You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware.” Foreknowledge is meant to produce vigilance, not superiority. Peter includes the hearers within the warning: “lest you also fall.” No one becomes immune to distortion by learning how other people distort. Steadfastness requires watchfulness over our own desires, loyalties, and habits of reading.

The phrase “being led away” also exposes the gradual character of the danger. A person rarely wakes intending to twist Scripture toward destruction. Drift begins when correction becomes intolerable, favorite teachers become unquestionable, or a verse becomes useful precisely because it excuses what Christ is asking us to surrender. Peter’s warning is sober because falling is possible. It is hopeful because the beloved have been warned and are given a positive safeguard.

Grow in the Grace and Knowledge of Christ (2 Peter 3:18)

18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.

The word “but” turns from the danger to the remedy. Christian steadfastness is living, not static. Peter does not tell the Church to survive by suspicion or define faithfulness only by the errors it opposes. He commands continued growth “in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” The present imperative “auxanete,” “grow,” gives the closing sentence an ongoing force. Earlier, Peter called for decisive diligence; now he sets before the Church a lifelong direction.7

Grace and knowledge remain together. Grace is Christ’s gift, favor, and saving action received by people who cannot cleanse themselves. Knowledge has a personal center: “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Peter’s answer to destructive knowledge is not ignorance but truer knowledge, received within grace and made fruitful in virtue. To know Christ is to become less willing to use His words against His purposes, less satisfied with an untouched conscience, and more ready to obey the One we confess as Lord.

This ending also returns to the beginning of the epistle. Peter opened with grace and peace multiplied “in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (1:2), then called the faithful to add virtue, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love (1:5-7). The final command gathers gift, knowledge, and formation into one sentence. Growth in Christ can be seen: patience interrupts anger, truth restrains the tongue, chastity refuses secret compromise, mercy changes the use of authority, and love becomes more important than being seen as correct.

The last line becomes doxology: “To Him be the glory both now and forever.” The natural antecedent of “Him” is Jesus Christ. Peter’s final word about Christ is therefore not merely explanation but worship.8 Knowledge reaches its proper end when the knower gives glory to the Lord he has come to know. “Now” includes ordinary life before the Day arrives: the conversation in which pride is restrained, the apology offered without self-defense, the difficult text received without manipulation, and the hidden act of obedience. “Forever” places that life inside the praise that will not end.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

The Coptic Church reads 2 Peter 3:14-18 as the Catholic Epistle on the first Sundays of Amshir and Hator.9 On the First Sunday of Amshir, the Liturgy’s Gospel is John 6:22-27: Christ directs His hearers from food that perishes toward the food that endures to everlasting life. Peter’s command to grow in Christ meets the Lord’s own call to seek what lasts. On the First Sunday of Hator, the Gospel is the sower in Luke 8:4-15. The good soil keeps the word and bears fruit with patience. Peter’s warning against instability is heard beside a picture of steadfast, fruitful reception: the word must take root, survive testing, and ripen into obedience.

Verses 14-15 are also heard within 2 Peter 3:8-15 on Tuesday of the seventh week of Great Lent; the whole ending is heard within the full chapter on the Fifth Sunday of Lent and the First Sunday of Nasie.9 In these seasons of repentance and watchfulness, growth is how Christian waiting becomes visible. Her shared feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul on Abib 5 also lets us remember the beloved brother of verse 15: two apostles, once divided over conduct at Antioch, are honored together in their witness to Christ.10 The love that receives correction belongs to the peace for which Peter asks us to labor.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

  1. Use the Lord’s patience instead of presuming upon it. A delayed confession, an unrepaired injury, or a hidden compromise can begin to feel permanent simply because another day has passed. Peter calls that day “salvation.” Receive it as time Christ has mercifully given. Name what must be brought into the light, seek confession where needed, and take the first truthful step toward peace.

  2. Let Scripture correct the desire that brought you to it. The unstable heart often searches for a verse that will approve resentment, fear, ambition, or a decision already made. Before teaching or arguing from a difficult passage, pray for willingness to be corrected. Read what comes before and after, receive the Church’s guidance, and distinguish an honest unresolved question from a convenient interpretation.

  3. Guard steadfastness through teachability. Peter’s warning is addressed to the beloved, including those who know the danger beforehand. When correction feels humiliating, remember that being taught is protection, not disgrace. Christ can establish a person who says, “I do not yet understand,” far more readily than one who must always appear certain.

  4. Grow toward Christ, not merely away from error. Fear can identify a threat, but it cannot become the center of Christian life. Choose a concrete act in which grace and knowledge meet: forgive the person whose offense you keep rehearsing, obey a command of Christ you have postponed, study a difficult text without rushing to display an answer, or serve without needing recognition. Steadfastness deepens when Christ Himself becomes more desired.

  5. Turn understanding into glory. Peter ends in praise because right knowledge should make Christ greater and the self smaller. When study leaves you eager to win but slow to worship, the lesson has not yet reached its goal. Give thanks for the wisdom you received, pray for the person with whom you disagree, and let one clarified truth become obedience before it becomes an argument.

Footnotes

  1. Compare 2 Peter 2:13 and 3:14 in the SBLGNT text of 2 Peter. ↩

  2. See the 2 Peter 3:15 interlinear and lexical entries for makrothymia and hēgeomai. The verse identifies the saving purpose of the Lord’s patience without teaching that judgment is cancelled or that every response will be saving. ↩

  3. See the 2 Peter 3:16 interlinear and lexical entries for dysnoētos, strebloō, amathēs, and astēriktos. ↩

  4. See the 2 Peter 3:16 interlinear, the lexical entries for loipos and graphē, and Rodenbiker, “The Second Peter”. The exact Pauline letters known to the readers remain uncertain. ↩

  5. St Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.8.1, New Advent. This is a thematic analogy, not direct exegesis of 2 Peter 3:16. ↩

  6. St Augustine, On Christian Doctrine I.36.40-41 and III.2.2, Book I and Book III. The quotation is from I.36.40. ↩

  7. 2 Peter 3:14 interlinear; 2 Peter 3:18 interlinear; lexical entries for “σπουδάζω” and “αὐξάνω”. ↩

  8. See the 2 Peter 3:18 interlinear. Jesus Christ is the nearest and natural antecedent of “Him”; the line should first be received as worship rather than made to carry an entire Christological argument by itself. ↩

  9. 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

  10. Light and Logos, Coptic lectionary data, version 1.3.6, Synaxarium for Abib 5, “The Martyrdom of Sts. Peter and Paul, the Apostles.” Fixed-date readings may yield to Sunday or seasonal appointments. ↩

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