2 Peter 3:14-18

The epistle closes, as it had opened, with an exhortation to godliness. The Gospel is not a cloke for licentiousness but a call to righteousness. This, the author adds, was the burden of Paul's teaching in all his letters, though his words had been misunderstood by the ignorant and distorted by the wicked into a justification of moral laxity. (That this was the case, even in Paul's lifetime, can be seen, e.g. in Romans 3:8; Romans 6:1, also in 1 Cor. passim; cf. James 2:8 *.) He bids his readers beware lest they are led astray by these perversions of the apostolic teaching, and exhorts them to grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord.

2 Peter 3:15. unto you: unless we suppose that 2 P. was addressed to some particular church, it is not necessary to see here a reference to any one particular epistle of Paul's addressed to that church; the appeal is to the general teaching of Paul. Nor is it necessary to limit these things (2 Peter 3:16) to the words which immediately precede the doctrine that the delay of the Parousia is due to the long-suffering of God, or even that disbelief in the Parousia is connected with moral laxity. The author is only concerned to say that Paul's condemnation of libertinism is not less emphatic than his own.

2 Peter 3:16. the other scriptures: lit. writings, but almost certainly the word is used in the technical sense, Scriptures. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that in speaking of the Pauline Epistles and the other Scriptures, the author implies the existence of a NT Canon (at any rate none of the attempts to explain the passage differently is satisfactory) and if this conclusion is accepted, the Petrine authorship of the epistle must be abandoned.