Sermon Tone Analysis

The book of 2 Peter is a pristine example of a shepherd shepherding the flock of God.

In the book of I Peter, Peter shepherded the flock by encouraging the believers of local churches throughout Asia minor to continue living out faithful, morally beautiful lives, lives that followed the example of their Savior- Jesus Christ, even while enduring fiery, grievous, unjust trials and persecutions.

I Peter was shepherding through encouragement.

2 Peter is shepherding through warning the flock of the error of lawless, wicked, false teachers.

2 Peter is about shepherding the flock by reminding them of the truth, and challenging them to grow in grace and in the knowledge of their Savior- Jesus Christ.

The entire epistle is best summarized in .

Peter wanted these local church congregations to be on their guard!

so that they would not be carried away with the error of wicked, unprincipled, lawless men- thereby falling from their own steadfastness- their steadfastness was based upon their belief and dependence on the truth of the Word of God.

Don’t buy into error, because allowing yourself to be deceived by error would be like being carried away and like falling from your position of steadfastness in your belief of the truth.

2 Pet 318

Instead/But Peter wanted these local church congregations to grow both the grace of Jesus Christ and in the knowledge of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Don’t be carried away by error, instead grow in truth of the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Early on in the ministry of the Apostle Peter, Jesus commanded him:

v. 15- tend my lambs.

v. 16- Feed/Shepherd my sheep

v.17- tend my sheep

I think Peter took these commands by His Lord very very seriously.

His job was to tend for and shepherd over the flock of God, and no where do you see that in more vivid display than in 2 Peter.

Four times in the short letter Peter calls the believers in these local church congregations, “Beloved!”

He genuinely loved and cared for these dear saints, and Peter, like a good shepherd, out of love for the flock that God had called him to minister to, shepherded over them by warning them or error and by encouraging them to grow in the truth.

This is the big picture of the 2 Peter.

There are a few other matters of introduction that we need to consider that will help us build a picture of what this letter is all about so that we can understand it as fully and completely as possible.

I. Authorship & Authenticity

I want to spend a little bit more time dealing with the authorship of 2 Peter than I normally do.

For me, the fact that Scripture states that Peter is the author is a good enough argument.

I usually don’t give legitimacy to unsaved “scholars” who try to discredit and destroy the Scriptures.

However, as MacArthur states in his commentary, “The authorship of 2 Peter has been disputed more sharply and to a greater extent than the authorship of any other New Testament book.”

This also calls into question then the legitimacy of 2 Peter as an inspired writing of Scripture.

My intention is to show that 2 Peter was penned by the apostle Peter and this it is a legitimate part of the NT Canon and therefore part of the authoritative Word of God.

I want to spend a little bit more time dealing with the authorship of 2 Peter than I normally do.

For me, the fact that Scripture states that Peter is the author is a good enough argument.

I usually don’t give legitimacy to unsaved “scholars” who try to discredit and destroy the Scriptures.

However, as MacArthur states in his commentary, “The authorship of 2 Peter has been disputed more sharply and to a greater extent than the authorship of any other New Testament book.”

This also calls into question then the legitimacy of 2 Peter as an inspired writing of Scripture.

My intention is to show that 2 Peter was penned by the apostle Peter and this it is a legitimate part of the NT Canon and therefore part of the authoritative Word of God.

the authorship of 2 Peter has been disputed more sharply and to a greater extent than the authorship of any other New Testament book.

When it comes to authorship there are generally two views:

1).

The traditional view- The book was written by the Apostle Peter

2).

The liberal view- The book is pseudonymous, or the work of a forger who pretended to be Peter

A. Internal Evidence

1.

The book opens with the claim that it was written by Peter himself.

I Pet

Further lending support that Peter himself wrote the book, is that Peter uses the Hebraic form of his name, “Simon Peter.”

This occurs elsewhere only in .

If 2 Peter is actually the work of a forger, then one would expect the common form of Peter’s name, or a repetition of the introduction from I Peter.

The fact that he chose an original form is a mark of genuineness—unless one adopts the view that the writer was consciously and cleverly trying to deceive his readers, but even this seems improbable since this form of Peter’s name is never used in the Apostolic Fathers or psuedepigraphic Petrine literature.

2.

Not only did Peter claim to be the author, but in he said that he would die soon.

So Peter is older, he is writing at the end of his life, and he knows he is about to die.

This is quite an awkward statement if made from an imposter.

3. Peter claimed to be an eyewitness of the transfiguration.

Peter emphasized that he was present on the holy mountain, that he was not inventing what happened, that he was an eyewitness of what occurred, and that he also heard the words transmitted from heaven.

It is difficult to see how a pseudepigraphal author could write such words with any credibility.

A footnote would seem to be required by any other author to say: “Well, actually, I did not see or hear what happened on the mountain.

I am speaking of what happened to Peter.”

Those who support pseudonymity are hard pressed to explain how such statements are not fundamentally deceptive.

Furthermore, if the letter is a forgery, one would expect an embellishment of the transfiguration account, yet this is lacking in the account in 2 Peter.

4. Peter places himself on equal footing with the Apostle Paul

Peter addresses Paul as a “beloved brother” and he recognizes that God had given to Paul wisdom in writing inspired Scripture.

There is just the right amount of respect in Peter’s tone, without any hint of inferiority to Paul himself.

By contrast later writers made it clear that they were not on the same level as the apostles.

5. Peter makes the claim that this is his second letter to the churches

the claim here does not fit with pseudepigraphy since the second letter does not depend in a clear fashion on 1 Peter.

A forger would be disposed to borrow more extensively from 1 Peter, whereas the independence of 2 Peter reveals that the same author addresses a new situation.

B. External Evidence

1. Church Fathers

It is true that the external evidence for authenticity of 2 Peter is not as strong as other NT writings, but neither does the external evidence disprove the authenticity of the book.

In a careful study Picirilli investigates allusions to 2 Peter in the Apostolic Fathers.

He concludes that there is a strong possibility that 2 Peter is alluded to (though Peter is not mentioned by name) in 1 Clement, 2 Clement, Barnabas, and Shepherd of Hermas.

He thinks such allusions may also exist in the Ignatian letters and Martyrdom of Polycarp.

The evidence Picirilli compiles suggests that the letter was used in the second century and perhaps even in the first.

The argument that some make is that Peter is never mentioned by name in the church fathers, yet the Apostolic Fathers cite Paul 31 times but never name him.

Origen noted that some doubted the authenticity of 2 Peter (Eusebius, Hist.

eccl.

6.25.11), but in his own writings he cited it six times, and we can conclude from this that the doubts of others were not compelling to him.

It is also likely that Irenaeus knew and used 2 Peter, though the matter is disputed.

2. Acceptance by the Early Church

“2 Peter was recognized as fully canonical by the Canons of Laodicea and by the time of the church councils of Hippo and Carthage of the fourth century.”

Kruger goes on to say that these bodies rejected 1 Clement and Epistle of Barnabas, showing that they discriminated carefully between authoritative documents and those that were merely edifying.

Other pseudo-Petrine literature circulated in the early church, creating confusion about what was authentically Petrine.

The church went through a process by which it sifted the authentic from the spurious.

When the decision was made, 2 Peter was accepted, but other alleged Petrine writings were rejected.

The early church was not inclined, therefore, to include a document just because it had Peter’s name on it.

Many other “Petrine” writings were excluded, but the church recognized the legitimacy of 2 Peter.

Hence, the acceptance of 2 Peter witnesses to the discrimination of the church, to their conviction that this writing, in contrast to many other alleged Petrine writings, was authentic.

Kruger rightly maintains that the conclusion of the early church should not be set aside easily

3. Historical Factors

1).

Linguistic Differences

Some argue that the use of Hellenistic language wouldn’t be appropriate for Peter, and thus it must have been written by someone else.

But Peter was Palestinian fisherman who would have regularly done business with men of Hellenistic cultures.

Also, Galilee, where Peter was a fisherman, was influenced by Hellenism and Greek culture, so it is not astonishing that Peter would be familiar with Greek philosophical terms.

And Peter likely used these Hellenistic terms to speak to the mostly Gentile churches he was addressing.

Also, some argue that the difference in language and style between 1 Peter and 2 Peter must mean that there were two different authors not one.

However, when you take into account first of all the different pastoral situations addressed in each it is not surprising to find differences in vocabulary and style.

We know that 2 Peter was written to address false teachers while 1 Peter was written to encourage a suffering church.

Also, there is a possibility that Peter used different secretaries when writing each book and that could account for some of the differences.

The other problem in using the difference in style between the two letters is the sample size we have to go by.

All we have are two short letters to compare.

Guthrie wisely remarks: “It is notoriously difficult to devise any certain criteria for the examination of style and this is particularly true where comparison is made between two short epistles.

The area of comparison is so restricted that the results may well be misleading.

Moreover, subjective impressions are likely to receive greater stress than is justified.”