Peter-2 Chapters

1 | ¹Symeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have been sanctified by our God and Savior Jesus Christ, and have received a faith as precious as ours:

²may grace and peace abound in you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus, our Lord.

We Share in the Divine Nature

•  ³His divine power has given us everything we need for life and piety. First, we need the knowledge of the One who called us through his own glory and Might, by which we were given the most extraordinary and precious promises. ⁴Through them, you share in the divine nature after repelling this world's corruption and evil desires.

⁵So strive with the greatest determination, and increase your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, ⁶knowledge with moderation, moderation with constancy, constancy with piety, ⁷piety with mutual affection, and mutual affection with charity. ⁸If all these riches are in you, so as to abound in you, you will not be idle and useless; you will, instead, be rooted in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, our Lord. ⁹Whoever is not aware of this is blind and shortsighted and is forgetful of the cleansing of former sins.

¹⁰Therefore, brothers and sisters, strive more and more to respond to the call of God who chose you. If you do so, you will never stumble. ¹¹Moreover, you will be generously granted entry to the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

¹²So, I shall always remind you of these things, though you know them, and remain firm in the truth that you have. ¹³It seems fitting that as long as I live in the tent of this body, I refresh your memory of them, ¹⁴knowing that my tent may soon be folded up, as our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me. ¹⁵I will, nonetheless, endeavor to see that you will be constantly reminded of all this after my departure.

The Foundation of Faith

¹⁶Indeed, what we taught you about the power and the return of Christ Jesus our Lord was not drawn from myths or formulated theories. We, ourselves, were eyewitnesses of his majesty ¹⁷when he received glory and honor from God the Father, when, from the magnificent glory, this most extraordinary word came upon him: “This is my beloved Son, this is my Chosen One.” ¹⁸We, ourselves, heard this voice from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

¹⁹Therefore, we believe most firmly in the prophets' message, which you should consider rightly as a lamp shining in a dark place until the break of day when the Morning Star shines in your hearts.

²⁰Know this well: no prophecy of Scripture can be handed over to private interpretation, ²¹since no prophecy comes from human decision, for it was men of God, moved by the Holy Spirit, who spoke.

False Teachers

2 | •  ¹Just as there have been false prophets in the midst of the people of Israel, so will there be false teachers among you. They will introduce harmful sects, and by denying the Master who saved them, they will bring upon themselves sudden perdition. ²Many, nonetheless, will imitate their vices, and because of them, the way of truth will be discredited. ³They will take advantage of you with deceitful words for the sake of money. But the judgment made upon them long ago is not idle, and the destruction awaiting them is not asleep.

⁴In fact, God did not pardon the angels who sinned but cast them into hell, confining them in the dark pits, keeping them there until the day of judgment. ⁵Neither did he pardon the ancient world when he unleashed the waters of the flood upon the world of wicked people, but protected only Noah, the preacher of righteousness, along with seven others. ⁶God also condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, reducing them to ashes, to serve as a warning to the wicked in the future. ⁷But he saved Lot, a good man, deeply afflicted by the unbridled conduct of those vicious people. ⁸For Lot, a righteous man who lived in their midst, suffered day after day in the goodness of his heart as he saw and heard of their crimes.

⁹So, then, the Lord knows how to free from trial those who serve him and keep the wicked for punishment on the day of judgment.

¹⁰He will do this, especially for certain people who follow the baser desires of their nature and despise the Lord’s majesty. Proud and daring they are, not afraid of insulting fallen spirits, ¹¹while the angels who are superior to them in strength and power do not permit themselves any injurious accusation in the presence of the Lord.

¹²Those people are like irrational animals, born to be caught and killed; after slandering what they cannot understand, they will end like animals, ¹³and suffer the repayment of their wickedness.

They delight in giving themselves to depravity, even in the daytime; they are deceiving you, even when sharing your table. ¹⁴With their eyes always looking for adultery, they do not tire of sinning and seducing weak souls. They are full of greed—an accursed people.

¹⁵They abandoned the right way and followed Balaam, son of Beor, who was attached to what he gained from his wrongdoing. ¹⁶But he was rebuked for his sin: his she-ass began to speak with a human voice, stopping the prophet in his madness. ¹⁷These people are like waterless springs, clouds driven by a storm which move swiftly into the blackest darkness.

¹⁸With their boastful and empty discourses, they encourage the lust and impure desire of those who have just freed themselves from the common errors.

¹⁹They promise freedom when they, themselves, are slaves of corruption, for people are slaves to whatever dominates them. ²⁰Indeed, after being freed from worldly vices through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they returned to those vices and surrendered to them, and their present state has become worse than the first. ²¹It would have been better for them not to know the way of holiness than, knowing it, to turn away from the sacred doctrine that they had been taught. ²²In their case, these sayings are relevant: “The dog turns back to its own vomit,” and: “Hardly the pig has been washed, it wallows back in the mud.”

Why Is the Second Coming of Christ Delayed?

3 | •  ¹Dearly beloved, this is the second letter I write to you. In both of them, I have intended to remind you of sound doctrine. ²Do not forget the words of the holy prophets and the teaching of our Lord and Savior, as you heard it through his apostles.

³Remember, first of all, that in the last days, scoffers will appear, their mockery serving their evil desires. ⁴And they will say, “What has become of his promised coming? Since our fathers in faith died, everything continues as it was from the beginning of the world.” ⁵Indeed, they deliberately ignore that, in the beginning, the heavens existed first, and earth appeared from the water, taking its form by the word of God. ⁶By the same word of God, this world perished in the flood. ⁷Likewise, the word of God maintains the present heavens and earth until their destruction by fire; they are kept for the day of judgment when the godless will be destroyed. ⁸Do not forget, beloved, that with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. ⁹The Lord does not delay in fulfilling his promise, though some speak of delay; instead, he gives you time because he does not want anyone to perish, but that all may come to conversion. ¹⁰The Day of the Lord is to come like a thief. Then the heavens will dissolve with a great noise; the elements will melt away by fire, and the earth, with everything on it, will be burned up.

¹¹Since all things are to vanish, how holy and religious your way of life must be, ¹²as you wait for the day of God and long for its coming when the heavens will dissolve in fire, and the elements melt away in the heat. ¹³We wait for a new heaven and a new earth, in which justice reigns according to God’s promise.

¹⁴Therefore, beloved, as you wait in expectation of this, strive that God may find you rooted in peace, without blemish or fault.

¹⁵And consider that God’s patience is for our salvation, as our beloved brother, Paul, wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him. ¹⁶He speaks of these things in all his letters. However, some points in them are difficult to understand, which people who are ignorant and immature in their faith twist, as they do with the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

¹⁷So then, dearly beloved, as you have been warned, be careful, lest those people who have gone astray deceive you, in turn, and drag you along, making you stumble and finally fall away. ¹⁸Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: to him be glory, now, and to the day of eternity. Amen.