“Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” — 2 Pet. iii. 11.
That this second epistle was written unto the same persons to whom the former was directed, the apostle himself informs us, 2 Pet. iii. 1. Who they were to whom the first was directed, he declares fully, 1 Epist. i. 1, 2, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia,” etc.
“Strangers” are taken two ways: First, In a large, general, and spiritual sense. So all believers are said to be strangers and pilgrims in this world, because they are not of the world, but they look for another country, another city, another house, whose framer and builder is God. Secondly, In a proper, natural sense, for those who abide or dwell in a land that is not their own, wherein they have not right of inheritance with the natives and citizens of it. In this sense the patriarchs were strangers in the land of Canaan before it came to be the possession of their posterity; and the children of Israel were strangers four hundred years in the land of Egypt.
Now, though the persons to whom the apostle wrote were strangers in the first sense, — pilgrims, whose conversation and country was in heaven, — yet they were no more so than all other believers in the world; so that there was no just cause of saluting them peculiarly under that style and title, were there not some other special reason of that appellation. They were, therefore, also strangers in the latter sense; — persons who had no inheritance in the place of their abode, that were not the free and privileged natives of the country where they dwelt and inhabited; that is, they were Jews scattered abroad in those parts of the world.
The people of Israel in those days were under various distributions and appellations. First, They were the natives of Jerusalem, and the parts adjacent; and these were in the gospel peculiarly called Jews. You have it often mentioned, that in our Saviour’s discourse with them, the Jews answered so and so; that is, the natives of Jerusalem, and places adjoining. Secondly, Those who inhabited the sea-coasts of the country, whom the others much despised, and called them, from the place of their habitation, as if they had been men of another nation, “Galileans.” Thirdly, Those who lived in several dispersions, up and down the world, among other nations. Of these there were two chief sorts:— 1. Those who lived in some parts of Europe, in Asia the less, also at Alexandria, and other Greek colonies. These are in the Scripture sometimes called Greeks, Acts xvii.; and elsewhere commonly termed Hellenists; because they used the Greek language, and the Greek Bible then in use. 2. Those who lived in the greater Asia, in and about Babylon; as also in the countries here enumerated by the apostle:— the Jews converted to the faith, that lived scatteredly up and down in those parts of Asia.
Peter being in a special manner designed by the Holy Ghost the apostle of the Circumcision, and being now at Babylon in the discharge of his apostolical office and duty, 1 Epist. v. 13; and being now nigh unto death, which he also knew, 2 Epist. i. 14; and not perhaps having time to pass through and personally visit these scattered believers, — he wrote unto them these two epistles, partly about the main and important truths of the gospel, and partly about their own particular and immediate concernment as to the temptations and afflictions wherewith they were exercised.
It is evident, front sundry places in the New Testament, what extreme oppositions the believing Jews met withal, all the world over, from their own countrymen, with and among whom they lived. They in the meantime, no doubt, warned them of the wrath of Christ against them for their cursed unbelief and persecutions; particularly letting them know, that Christ would come in vengeance ere long, according as he had threatened, to the ruin of his enemies. And because the persecuting Jews, all the world over, upbraided the believers with the temple and the holy city, Jerusalem, their worship and service instituted of God, which they had defiled; they were given to know that even all these things also should be destroyed, for their rejection of the Son of God. After some continuance of time, the threatening denounced being not yet accomplished, — as is the manner of profane persons and hardened sinners, Eccles. viii. 11, — they began to mock and scoff, as if they were all but the vain pretences, or loose, causeless fears of the Christians. That this was the state with them, or shortly would be, the apostle declares in this chapter, verses 3, 4. Because things continued in the old state, without alteration, and judgment was not speedily executed, they scoffed at all the threats about the coming of the Lord that had been denounced against them.
Hereupon the apostle undertakes these three things:—