Four Exhortations to the “Beloved” (4)—Beware!

You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
2 Peter 3:17–18

Four Exhortations to the “Beloved” (4)—Beware!
Peter continues on with the practical exhortations in light of the topic of the Lord’s second coming and the ultimate dissolution of the present world. “You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand.” Wonderful thought that as Christians we know what is coming beforehand. The purpose of prophecy is not to give us a crystal ball into the future in order to satisfy curiosity or to “prove the Word of God,” as is sometimes done in apologetics ministries. Prophecy is given, as Peter himself says in this very epistle, to be “a light that shines in a dark place” (2 Pet. 1:19). It is to be a light for our path in a wicked world, cheering our hearts with the hope of the “Morning Star,” and empowering us to adjust our walk, if need be.

God does not keep His beloved in the dark as to His purposes; He reveals them to us: “Surely the Lord God does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7; cf. Gen. 18:27; Jn. 15:15). We see it beforehand.

Seeing this “beforehand” we need to beware. There are dangers on every hand: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Peter warned the beloved ones about falling from their own steadfastness. Peter knew something about falling when not watchful. How we need dependence on the Lord’s grace, and mistrust of ourselves! He warns about the corrupting influence of the wicked: “[Be] not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability” (esv). In a day of increasing ungodliness and iniquity, we need to find stability through growing in grace.

Brian Reynolds