7. "And in your godliness brotherly kindness"; not suffering your godliness to be moroseness, nor a sullen solitary habit of life, but kind, generous, and courteous [Alford]. Your natural affection and brotherly kindness are to be sanctified by godliness. "And in your brotherly kindness love," namely, to all men, even to enemies, in thought, word, and deed. From brotherly kindness we are to go forward to love. Compare [1Th 3:12], "Love one toward another (brotherly kindness), and toward all men (charity)." So charity completes the choir of graces in [Col 3:14]. In a retrograde order, he who has love will exercise brotherly kindness; he who has brotherly kindness will feel godliness needful; the godly will mix nothing stoical with his patience; to the patient, temperance is easy; the temperate weighs things well, and so has knowledge; knowledge guards against sudden impulse carrying away its virtue [Bengel].
8. be--Greek, "subsist" that is, supposing these things to have an actual subsistence in you; "be" would express the mere matter-of-fact being ([Ac 16:20]).
abound--more than in others; so the Greek.
make--"render," "constitute you," habitually, by the very fact of possessing these graces.
barren--"inactive," and, as a field lying fallow and unworked (Greek), so barren and useless.
unfruitful in--rather, ... in respect to, "The full knowledge (Greek) of Christ" is the goal towards which all these graces tend. As their subsisting in us constitutes us not barren or idle, so their abounding in us constitutes us not unfruitful in respect to it. It is through doing His will, and so becoming like Him, that we grow in knowing Him ([Joh 7:17]).
9. But--Greek, "For." Confirming the need of these graces ([2Pe 1:5-8]) by the fatal consequences of the want of them.
he that lacketh--Greek, "he to whom these are not present."
blind--as to the spiritual realities of the unseen world.
and cannot see afar off--explanatory of "blind." He closes his eyes (Greek) as unable to see distant objects (namely, heavenly things), and fixes his gaze on present and earthly things which alone he can see. Perhaps a degree of wilfulness in the blindness is implied in the Greek, "closing the eyes," which constitutes its culpability; hating and rebelling against the light shining around him.
forgotten--Greek, "contracted forgetfulness," wilful and culpable obliviousness.
that he was purged--The continually present sense of one's sins having been once for all forgiven, is the strongest stimulus to every grace ([Psa 130:4]). This once-for-all accomplished cleansing of unbelievers at their new birth is taught symbolically by Christ, [Joh 13:10], Greek, "He that has been bathed (once for all) needeth not save to wash his feet (of the soils contracted in the daily walk), but is clean every whit (in Christ our righteousness)." "Once purged (with Christ's blood), we should have no more consciousness of sin (as condemning us, [He 10:2], because of God's promise)." Baptism is the sacramental pledge of this.
10. Wherefore--seeking the blessed consequence of having, and the evil effects of not having, these graces ([2Pe 1:8], ).
the rather--the more earnestly.
brethren--marking that it is affection for them which constrains him so earnestly to urge them. Nowhere else does he so address them, which makes his calling them so here the more emphatical.
give diligence--The Greek aorist implies one lifelong effect [Alford].
to make--Greek middle voice; to make so far as it depends on you; to do your part towards making. "To make" absolutely and finally is God's part, and would be in the active.
your calling and election sure--by ministering additionally in your faith virtue, and in your virtue knowledge, &c. God must work all these graces in us, yet not so that we should be mere machines, but willing instruments in His hands in making His election of us "secure." The ensuring of our election is spoken of not in respect to God, whose counsel is steadfast and everlasting, but in respect to our part. There is no uncertainty on His part, but on ours the only security is our faith in His promise and the fruits of the Spirit (2Pe 1:5-7, 11). Peter subjoins election to calling, because the calling is the effect and proof of God's election, which goes before and is the main thing ([Ro 8:28], 30, 33, where God's "elect" are those "predestinated," and election is "His purpose," according to which He "called" them). We know His calling before His election, thereby calling is put first.
fall--Greek, "stumble" and fall finally ([Ro 11:11]). Metaphor from one stumbling in a race ([1Co 9:24]).
11. an entrance--rather as Greek, "the entrance" which ye look for.
ministered--the same verb as in [2Pe 1:5]. Minister in your faith virtue and the other graces, so shall there be ministered to you the entrance into that heaven where these graces shine most brightly. The reward of grace hereafter shall correspond to the work of grace here.
abundantly--Greek, "richly." It answers to "abound," [2Pe 1:8]. If these graces abound in you, you shall have your entrance into heaven not merely "scarcely" (as he had said, [1Pe 4:18]), nor "so as by fire," like one escaping with life after having lost all his goods, but in triumph without "stumbling and falling."
12. Wherefore--as these graces are so necessary to your abundant entrance into Christ's kingdom ([2Pe 1:10], ).
I will not be negligent--The oldest manuscripts read, "I will be about always to put you in remembrance" (an accumulated future: I will regard you as always needing to be reminded): compare "I will endeavor," [2Pe 1:15]. "I will be sure always to remind you" [Alford]. "Always"; implying the reason why he writes the second Epistle so soon after the first. He feels there is likely to be more and more need of admonition on account of the increasing corruption ([2Pe 2:1], ).
in the present truth--the Gospel truth now present with you: formerly promised to Old Testament believers as about to be, now in the New Testament actually present with, and in, believers, so that they are "established" in it as a "present" reality. Its importance renders frequent monitions never superfluous: compare Paul's similar apology, [Ro 15:14], .
13. Yea--Greek, "But"; though "you know" the truth ([2Pe 1:12]).
this tabernacle--soon to be taken down ([2Co 5:1]): I therefore need to make the most of my short time for the good of Christ's Church. The zeal of Satan against it, the more intense as his time is short, ought to stimulate Christians on the same ground.
by--Greek, "in" (compare [2Pe 3:1]).
14. shortly I must put off--Greek, "the putting off (as a garment) of my tabernacle is speedy": implying a soon approaching, and also a sudden death (as a violent death is). Christ's words, [Joh 21:18], , "When thou art old," &c., were the ground of his "knowing," now that he was old, that his foretold martyrdom was near. Compare as to Paul, [2Ti 4:6]. Though a violent death, he calls it a "departure" (Greek for "decease," [2Pe 1:15]), compare [Ac 7:60].
15. endeavour--"use my diligence": the same Greek word as in [2Pe 1:10]: this is the field in which my diligence has scope. Peter thus fulfils Christ's charge, "Feed My sheep" ([Joh 21:16], ).
decease--"departure." The very word ("exodus") used in the Transfiguration, Moses and Elias conversing about Christ's decease (found nowhere else in the New Testament, but [He 11:22], "the departing of Israel" out of Egypt, to which the saints' deliverance from the present bondage of corruption answers). "Tabernacle" is another term found here as well as there ([Lu 9:31], ): an undesigned coincidence confirming Peter's authorship of this Epistle.
that ye may be able--by the help of this written Epistle; and perhaps also of Mark's Gospel, which Peter superintended.
always--Greek, "on each occasion": as often as occasion may require.
to have ... in remembrance--Greek, "to exercise remembrance of." Not merely "to remember," as sometimes we do, things we care not about; but "have them in (earnest) remembrance," as momentous and precious truths.
16. For--reason why he is so earnest that the remembrance of these things should be continued after his death.
followed--out in detail.
cunningly devised--Greek, "devised by (man's) wisdom"; as distinguished from what the Holy Ghost teaches (compare [1Co 3:13]). But compare also [2Pe 2:3], "feigned words."
fables--as the heathen mythologies, and the subsequent Gnostic "fables and genealogies," of which the germs already existed in the junction of Judaism with Oriental philosophy in Asia Minor. A precautionary protest of the Spirit against the rationalistic theory of the Gospel history being myth.
when we made known unto you--not that Peter himself had personally taught the churches in Pontus, Galatia, &c., but he was one of the apostles whose testimony was borne to them, and to the Church in general, to whom this Epistle is addressed ([2Pe 1:1], including, but not restricted, as First Peter, to the churches in Pontus, &c.).
power--the opposite of "fables"; compare the contrast of "word" and "power," [1Co 4:20]. A specimen of His power was given at the Transfiguration also of His "coming" again, and its attendant glory. The Greek for "coming" is always used of His second advent. A refutation of the scoffers ([2Pe 3:4]): I, James and John, saw with our own eyes a mysterious sample of His coming glory.
were--Greek, "were made."
eye-witnesses--As initiated spectators of mysteries (so the Greek), we were admitted into His innermost secrets, namely, at the Transfiguration.
his--emphatical (compare Greek): "THAT great One's majesty."
17. received ... honour--in the voice that spake to Him.
glory--in the light which shone around Him.