The Kingdom of Peace

2 Peter 3:8–15 NIV

8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. 11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. 14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.

In-Between

This may seem like an unusual text choice for the week of Advent devoted to peace. This is not a warm, glowing Christmas text, a Gospel image of shepherds watching over sheep, or even Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Instead we get an image of the day of the Lord arriving like a thief. We get images that often bring about fear, not joy—and certainly not peace.

We can sometimes get so caught up in the glow of the season and the warm fuzzies that we forget that, while we are celebrating Christ coming to earth as a baby in Bethlehem, we are also looking ahead to Christ’s eventual return. We are living in this in-between time, looking back at the kingdom that came with the arrival of Christ, and forward to the kingdom that is still yet to come.

The early Christian recipients of this letter are in the in-between time too, but it is more surprising for them because they expected Christ’s return to come more quickly. In fact, they aren’t sure why it hasn’t happened yet, and in their con- fusion they begin to question what is causing the delay. Is it their fault? And if not, then how are they to live? What are they supposed to do while they wait? Peter gives them an answer to these questions: live in peace.

This is a text of promise and hope.

a. The people are beginning to be concerned about whether Christ is going to return at all. The slowness of God is not because God has forgotten God’s promise, or because the promise of Christ’s return isn’t trustworthy; rather, it is because God is patient with humanity as God waits for all of humanity to turn toward God in repentance.

i. The note that time to God is different is an important one. It reminds us that, though our toils seem endless, God sees the bigger picture.

b. The images of fire often make us think of judgment, but in this context it has more to do with being refined. Refiners of fire are mentioned in other scriptures as well, to indicate a purifying process: just as precious metals must be refined (with fire) in order to be purified, so must creation be subjected to a perfecting and purifying process. Just as chaff (what is bad) is burned up while the wheat (what is good) remains, so too shall the world be.

i. This is a hopeful word that the painful and sinful places of the world will be removed, while what is good remains.

ii. Verse 10 sometimes gets mistakenly interpreted as the destruction of the world (since the NIV even uses the word “destroyed,” which may not be the best translation). The point of this verse is actually about a great disclosure. There will be a judgment, and the hidden will be revealed: this is about purification and redemption, not destruction.

The heart of this text is the already/not-yet kingdom of God.

a. Christ brought the kingdom of God to earth through the incarnation. On the day that Christ was born, the day of the Lord was realized in many ways: the blind saw, freedom was declared for the captive, the lame walked, lepers were healed, justice, peace, hope, and love were preached.

b. The kingdom of God is not yet fully actualized until Christ’s return; though the incarnation was the beginning of the coming of the kingdom, it is not the end: there is still sin and disorder in our world, we still see many in need of healing from disease, we still see high rates of slavery and wrongful imprisonment globally, we still see acts of injustice, war, and hatred.

c. As Advent people, we live in this great in-between time, celebrating the birth of Christ while awaiting his final return. We do not know the time of Christ’s return, so we must live as people who are always ready.

d. We see a great example of the already/not-yet kingdom in the story of Stephen in Acts chapters 6 and 7.

i. When Stephen is being stoned, he declares that he sees heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God the Father. This moment clearly illustrates the inbreaking of the kingdom of God actualizing in front of them even while they wait—yet the people refuse to look at this vision of the kingdom of God, and Stephen is still stoned.

ii. In response to the people’s refusal, Stephen prays a prayer of forgiveness for them. Many theologians and biblical scholars think this moment plants the seed that the Lord will later harvest into Paul’s conversion. Paul’s heart here begins to turn toward Christ.

Peter instructs the early church on how to live as people waiting for Christ’s return.

a. While Peter doesn’t go into great detail, he does mention living at peace, which is an important idea for us today.

i. We know that Jesus is the Prince of Peace.

ii. There is an overarching message throughout Scripture about God’s desire to bring peace (shalom), wholeness, and completeness to God’s people and, ultimately, the world.

iii. The message of Christmas declares peace on earth.

iv. Jesus also preached peace during his time on earth. In the Sermon on the Mount he calls the peace- makers blessed.

v. If the message of the first coming is peace, then so is the message of the second coming: we know that Christ’s return will make all things right and whole.

vi. The message for those living in the kingdom of God now—in the in-between—is also a message of peace.

b. This declaration Peter makes about peace is joined with the idea of being blameless or having purity, lining up with holiness.

i. If holiness has victory over sin and death, then it is possible to live a blameless life.

ii. Peter is saying something about the response of the people of God: the people of God are to work toward living blameless lives, which will lead to peace.

1. Righteousness (also known as justice, or doing the right things for the right reasons) is part of peace.

2. Loving God and loving others is at the heart of living in peace. c. This is not a message about passivity—as peace can sometimes be mistaken for—but rather a lesson about patience.

i. If God is patient with God’s people, then we are also called to be patient and to long with God for the redemption of humanity.

ii. There is an active element to peace: “make every effort” indicates that it is something to work toward, even if we may not always accomplish it perfectly.

As people who still await the return of Christ, we are to live as kingdom people now.

a. We look ahead in hope to Christ’s return, but we do not wait passively. We partner with the work of the Holy Spirit to live as citizens of the kingdom of God now.

b. This could look like Stephen: being persecuted for standing in ways that God calls us to, and/or speaking words of radical forgiveness.

c. It will look like patience toward others, with the patience of God in our desire that all of God’s beloved learn to know they are loved, and desiring none to perish.

d. It looks like holiness: learning to align our entire lives with the Holy Spirit, seeking goodness in our homes, neighborhoods, cities, and world.

e. It looks like peace: finding contentment and wholeness in our own lives, in our homes, and in our communities.

i. In our lives: our holistic selves brought before the Lord—physical health, mental health, spiritual health.

ii. In our homes: breaking cycles of violence and abuse, helping our children, nieces, nephews, and others to see and know their belovedness.

iii. In our communities: asking “what is best for my neighbor?” and finding ways that God is at work, and joining that work by creating systems that break cycles of poverty, caring for creation, feeding the hungry,

advocating for the “widow and orphan” (anyone who doesn’t have a voice), and loving the “unlovable.”

IT’S A PROMISE

Christ is going to return. It’s a promise. We don’t know when, but we know it will happen. But we are to live as citizens of the coming kingdom of God now. We aren’t called to passively wait for his return but to actively live as though the kingdom has already been fulfilled by living holy and peaceful lives in this world. December is a natural time of year to do that. People tend to want to find ways to share out of their wealth when the season is right—but the people of God are called to live this way every day. This calling is not about a season or time of year when things “feel” right—it is about a way of being. This is the way we are called to live—with an eye toward the kingdom yet to come in its fullness. We are to live as though that kingdom is fully here now, embracing others and loving well so that, when Christ returns, he might find us blameless and living at peace.