Synopsis: In difficult times such as these, we may begin to ask, “Why hasn’t the Lord come already to make things right?” To be at peace, we must accept God’s timing and patience as well as our responsibility to obey the Law of Love by extending Love to others.
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Scripture: 2 Peter 3: 8-15.
What makes difficult times even more difficult is when there is strife close to home – when there is conflict with your spouse or children or other relatives. I know of at least one friend who has sadly become estranged from her parents over their different opinions around politics and the pandemic.
The same strife can occur within the church in tough times. Christians can lose their patience. They may wonder, “Why doesn’t Christ come already and set things right?” They may wonder if Christ is coming at all. They may begin to believe those who tell them, “Stop believing in fairytales. God doesn’t exist, and no one’s coming to save the world.”
This problem is why Peter wrote his second letter to the churches in Asia Minor. Some false teachers were scoffing at the idea of Christ coming again to judge the world. Peter wanted these Christians to focus on the Word of God as their primary instruction, not on the word of false teachers.
Those false teachers were living lustful, greedy lifestyles. The teaching about the final judgement was inconvenient, so they tried to persuade other Christians to abandon their faith in the Lord’s promise. Perhaps that way, they would lose having to constantly hear about the final judgment and gain some party friends.
The first subject Peter addresses is the question, “If Christ is coming again, why hasn’t he come already?” Peter’s explanation makes perfect sense. God’s timing is different from ours. We live only about 100 years, but God is eternal. Just like $2000 is like a penny to a billionaire, two thousand years is like a day to God.
Christ will come again at the right time, and only God knows when the right time will be. Only our eternal God can see what is happening in all times: past, present, and future because God is connected to everything. Through Christ, God is aware of everything because Christ is connected to God. Everything that has ever existed, is existing now, or will exist in the future is within this One Consciousness that we call Christ consciousness or the Mind of Christ.
We all share this One Consciousness. Those who designed this church, who built this church, who created every aspect of this church, who witnessed it being built share this One Consciousness with us. That is why we can all see this church and describe it the same way. Its creation is recorded in Christ Consciousness.
We do not have the ability to be aware of everything as these personal selves, but we all have the ability to perceive beyond our personal experiences to a certain extent because our individual consciousness is part of Christ Consciousness.
Some of you might have experienced this ability, known as “clairvoyance.” Some people have developed this ability to the point where they can help with things like criminal investigations by looking into the past or guide people by looking into the future.
It’s pretty cool! But not even the most skilled clairvoyant can see all that God sees, so we don’t understand what’s taking so long for Christ to return. We’re like the little kid who doesn’t understand calendar time, so she keeps asking, “Is it my birthday yet?” or the little kid in the car who has no concept of time as it relates to distance, so he keeps asking, “Are we there yet?”
Are you coming, Lord? Are you coming? Are you coming? We Christians have been asking this question nonstop at least since the 60 A.D mile marker. That’s when this letter was written. We’re at the 2,020 A.D. mile marker. Those Christians in Asia Minor thought they had been waiting a long time? Huh! The Lord promised he would come again, didn’t he? Yes, but God’s sense of time is different from ours.
Now, imagine if you were one of the people who was not yet saved when Christ returned. Wouldn’t you wish the Lord would have waited for you? What if one of your loved ones was not yet saved? Wouldn’t you wish Lord would have waited for them? That’s Peter’s second explanation as to why Christ hasn’t yet returned; it also makes perfect sense.
God loves all of humanity and doesn’t want anyone to perish. He’s not making us wait because he’s foolishly procrastinating or reluctant to keep his promise. He’s patiently waiting for as many people to come to Christ as possible. Let us not use His merciful patience against him by claiming that He can’t save us – or won’t.
It took about 100 years for Noah to build the ark. During that time, Noah preached repentance to the people, trying desperately to change their hearts. God didn’t want anyone to perish. He gave them as much time as he could to repent, but when it was it time, the judgment came in the form of a great flood, and no one could escape it.
That’s how it’s going to be when Christ comes again. If everyone is not saved by the time He comes, it isn’t because God failed; it’s because of our free will, which God gave us. Some will not enter into the kingdom of heaven, but eventually, all will return to the Kingdom of God.
What’s the difference between the kingdom of heaven and the Kingdom of God? I believe the kingdom of heaven is what we are working toward – the part in the Lord’s prayer where we say, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” At some point, most of humanity will choose to follow God’s Law of Love, and that will transform all of our lives on earth.
I believe humanity joined with Christ will judge the world, using God’s Law of Love as the measuring stick. Love supports Life unconditionally. Christ will judge all our earthly institutions, systems, policies, and laws to determine if they support Life. If they don’t, they will be destroyed or reconstructed to support Life. That’s my vision of how the kingdom of heaven will come.
I think Peter is alluding to something else: The Day of the Lord – the day when all of heaven and earth will pass away. I think of it as the pause between God inhaling and exhaling. When God exhaled, that was the Big Bang. Everything came into existence. Eventually, God will begin inhaling – drawing everything back into Himself. When all has returned, that is the Day of the Lord, the Kingdom of God – the pause before the next exhale. No manifested forms, only the Spirit of God.
Peter imagines this day as there being another loud noise, like the Big Bang, and everything being disclosed before it is dissolved in fire. It’s the end of the world – all worlds – all of Creation, and the beginning of a new Creation. It’s the Cycle of Life, and the Universe is part of it. It begins and seems to end only to begin again anew.
So, while not everyone will enter the kingdom of heaven when it arrives, all will eventually be drawn back into God Himself, the Kingdom of God, and purified before the next round of Creation begins.
Peter’s description of the end of the world is terrifying for those who don’t know who they are, but it isn’t terrifying for me or for you. Beneath all of the layers of my humanity, I know there is a part of me that will always be me, and that part is God.
And you know that beneath all of the layers of your humanity, there is a part of you that will always be you, and that part is God.
I will always be aware of me, and you will always be aware of you, and we will always be aware of each other because in Christ, we are literally God’s identity. We are his “I AM.”
That is the good news that Jesus came to not only teach us but to demonstrate to us. There is no need to fear because in Christ we never lose our “I AM,” not when we die physically, not even when all of heaven and earth passes away.
So, what do we do with this knowledge? First, let us be grateful that we know this and have no fear of death. We know the death of our physical bodies is not the end of our “being.” But not everyone knows that, and those who don’t are living their lives very afraid. That should touch or hearts. That should inspire us to go out and spread the good news.
Unfortunately, the way we Christians have spread the “good news” has often been a fire-and-brimstone kind of approach. Fear is what blocks love. We can’t expect people to turn to love by making them feel afraid. And if we make people feel guilty or ashamed, how will that make them fear God less?
So, let us extend love to others, not judgment. The more you make people feel safe and accepted as they are, the more likely they will be open to hearing the good news that they are just as safe and accepted with God because of who they are, not what they have done. They are God’s child, and God has given them eternal life in Christ.
The more we extend love to others, the faster the kingdom in heaven will arrive. So, when you’re feeling a bit impatient, let that impatience be the fuel that motivates you to extend love to more people to alleviate their fears and to make them more open to hearing the good news from you.
Peter advises us to “strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish.” What did he mean by this?
One of the biggest misconceptions some Christians have is the belief that Jesus abolished Torah Law. Part of the problem is the anti-Semitic teachings of Marcion, who basically taught that Jesus canceled the entire Old Testament. Although he was declared a heretic in 144 A.D, some remnants of his teachings have unfortunately remained in Christian thought.
Another part of the problem is with the interpretation of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5: 17-18, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
Brad H. Young, professor of Biblical Literature in Judeo Christian Studies at the Graduate Department of Oral Roberts University, believes that three words in this verse have taken on different meanings than they would have had in ancient Jewish thought.
First, the word “law.” The Hebrew word “Torah” comes from the root “yarah,” which means “shoot an arrow,” or “teach.” So, the word Torah refers to the teaching or instruction that is true and straight so that it hits the bulls-eye, which is to guide us toward experiencing the fullness of life God intended for us.
So, Torah is more than just the first five books of the Old Testament with all the rules Jews follow. When Jesus used the word, it meant far more to him than that. Remember Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees’ question about which is the greatest commandment in the law in Matthew 22: 36-40.
He answered, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Jesus loved Torah. Paul loved Torah. Torah was their life. To them, the Torah is Life because it gives Life – the abundance of Life. As Christians we do not need to follow Torah the way Jews do as part of their covenant with God, but we do need to follow the Law of Love, which is essentially the spirit of Torah. This is the bridge that Paul constructed for us – a bridge that was intended to enable Jews and non-Jews to live in harmony with one another within the community of believers.
Second, the word “abolish.” In ancient Jews thought, to abolish the law meant to destroy it through wrong interpretation. “Fulfill” refers to the proper understanding of the text, which leads to a lifestyle of holiness dedicated to God.
Another passage that is often misunderstood due to a difference in understanding the wording from an ancient Jewish point of view is Paul’s words in his letter to the Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”
The word “faith” in ancient Jewish thought is not just belief, it is also action. It is faithfulness or obedience to God’s Law of Love. We are not saved by works, but grace doesn’t remove our responsibility to be obedient.
What’s the role of grace then? The flesh is not evil all by itself. It’s just that we humans, being of the flesh, have the potential to commit evil deeds when we forget who we really are. God designed us that way, so how can he judge us for it? He does not.
Instead, he gives us grace through how he created us. We are experiencing ourselves as human beings with a deluded nature that often causes us to sin, but who we really are in Christ never fails to follow the Law of Love because it is Love.
So, when we identify with Christ, we are freed from the condemnation of the flesh – from the “evil inclination” of the flesh. Because of what Jesus accomplished for us, we don’t need to die in order to be “released” from bondage to the flesh and its “evil inclinations.” We can experience freedom while we are still in a body.
The less deluded we are about who we really are, the more we will be obedient to God and faithful to the Law of Love and the more we will be at peace as we wait for the coming of the Lord. This is the Light that we shine, the Light that drives away the darkness, the Light that draws people to Christ, the Light that will hasten the coming of the kingdom of heaven.
Let’s pray together: Lord, when we feel dismayed over the events of the world, we sometimes begin to doubt your promise to return, or we become impatient, wondering why you haven’t returned yet. Forgive us, for we know that God loves everyone and is as patient with them as he has been with us. In gratitude, we are willing to extend God’s Love to others as we wait in peace for your coming. AMEN.
Resources
Cole, Steven J. “Lesson 12: Why Doesn’t Christ Return? (2 Peter 3:8-9).” Bible.org, bible.org/seriespage/lesson-12-why-doesn%E2%80%99t-christ-return-2-peter-38-9
Cole, Steven J. “Lesson 13: Living in Light of That Day (2 Peter 3:10-13). Bible.org, bible.org/seriespage/lesson-13-living-light-day-2-peter-310-13
Perron, Mari. A Course of Love: Combined Volume . Take Heart Publications. Kindle Edition.
Young, Brad H. Paul the Jewish Theologian. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Rev. Joan M. Kistler 