Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

2 Peter 1:11

2 Peter 1:11. For so shall be richly furnished for you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Another reason, and one rising far superior to the former, for the careful cultivation of these graces. ‘A good life can never be a failure. It may be a life of many storms; but it is not possible that it should end in shipwreck' (Lillie). That was the import of the former statement. ‘Nay more,' it is now added, ‘such a life shall have a glorious ending.' The future of which the believer is heir is here designated a ‘kingdom.' In First Peter it is an ‘inheritance.' Nowhere else in the N. T. is the ‘kingdom' described by this adjective, which the A. V. translates ‘everlasting.' As the word means much more than simply the never-ending (although it includes that), the R. V. more judiciously renders it ‘eternal.' The A. V. further gives ‘ an entrance,' where Peter speaks of ‘ the entrance,' the well-understood entrance which formed the object of every Christian's hope. Observe also the balance which is maintained (the verb being the same) between what we are to furnish in our faith (2 Peter 1:5), and what is to be furnished to us. It is not the mere fact that the entrance is in reserve for us that is asserted here, but the kind of entrance which is secured by a life of growing graciousness. Neither is it exactly the doctrine of degrees of future blessedness that is touched on here. It is supposed by many that the truth struck here is that which appears in such passages as Matthew 10:15; Luke 6:38; Luke 12:47; John 14:2; 2 Corinthians 9:6; Galatians 6:8, viz. that ‘according to our different degrees of improvement of God's grace here, will be our different degrees of participation in His everlasting glory hereafter' (Wordsworth; see also Bishop Bull's Sermon, 7 vol. i. p. 168, as there referred to). But what is immediately dealt with here is not the eternal blessedness itself, but the entrance or admission into it. Of this it is said that it shall be given ‘richly,' a term which is to be taken in its ordinary sense, and not to be paraphrased into ‘certainly' (Schott), or ‘in more than one way,' or ‘promptly,' etc. The entrance is to be of a kind the reverse of the ‘saved, yet so as by fire' (1 Corinthians 3:15). It will be liberally granted, joyously accomplished, richly attended ‘so that at any time,' as Bengel well expounds it, ‘not as if escaping from shipwreck, or from fire, but in a sort of triumph, you may enter in with an unstumbling step, and take delight in things past, present, and to come.' Milton's 14th Sonnet has been compared with this. See specially the lines in which he speaks thus of the ‘works and alms and all thy good endeavour' of the deceased friend:

‘Love led them on; and Faith, who knew them best,

Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams

And azure wing that up they flew so drest.

And spake the truth of thee on glorious themes.

Before the Judge; who thenceforth bid thee rest.

And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.'

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

2 Peter 1:11

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