If you knew today that you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do with the time that remained?
For most of us, I imagine it would look like some variation of getting our proverbial house in order, making sure that the things that need to be done are done, and especially making sure that the people who depend upon us will be able to continue when we are gone.
There is something stressful even about considering the question, because immediately our minds begin moving toward all the things that might be left unfinished.
That is, in a very real sense, where Peter is when we come to 2 Peter 1:16–21.
Peter has already told the church that he knows he is getting ready to die, that the putting off of his earthly tabernacle is approaching, and that his exodus from this world will soon take place.
So what is Peter concerned about as he prepares to leave? He is concerned that the church will continue to remember what it has been taught, because he knows that false teachers are coming; he knows that they will challenge what the apostles have proclaimed, and he knows that one of the things they will especially attack is the reliability of the promise that Jesus Christ is coming again.
So where does Peter point the church when he knows that Peter will no longer be there to remind them?
He points them to the Word.
Peter begins with the Word the apostles saw, because the testimony that he gives concerning Christ did not come to him secondhand. He says that he and the other apostles did not follow “cunningly devised fables,” because they were themselves “eyewitnesses of his majesty.”
The contrast running through this whole section is between what originates with man and what originates with God: verse 16 says that Peter’s message is not some cleverly devised myth, while verse 21 says that prophecy did not come by the will of man. In other words, Peter is bookending the entire argument by saying that the testimony he is giving did not originate in human imagination because its ultimate source is God.
This helps us understand why being an eyewitness of Christ mattered so much for the apostles. We often say that one of the qualifications of an apostle was that he had seen Christ, which is true enough, but the more important question is why that qualification mattered.
Herman Ridderbos explains that the apostolic witness served as a Spirit-forged link between the promises of God in the Old Testament, the accomplishment of redemption in Christ, and the church that would receive that testimony.¹ Peter had seen Christ because Christ had commissioned him to testify concerning what he had seen, and the Word that comes to the church through Peter therefore comes through someone who was shown the glory of Christ and then sent to bear witness to it.
What Peter had seen was specifically connected to “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” which is interesting because, if we were building an argument for the Second Coming, most of us would probably begin with the resurrection. Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, goes somewhere else. He goes to the Transfiguration, because the Transfiguration was a preview of the coming glory of Christ.
The Transfiguration was not the Second Coming, but Peter had already seen the glory that will be revealed at the Second Coming. He had seen the first rays of the coming Day before the Day itself arrived, and therefore, when false teachers ask, “Where is the promise of his coming?” Peter can answer that he has already seen a preview of the glory that is coming.² He knows that the promise is sure because the glory of the coming King has already broken into history.
Peter was also given more than something to see, because he heard the Father explain what he saw: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
That declaration identifies Jesus with the royal Son of Psalm 2, the promised Messiah and King whose enemies will finally be placed beneath his feet. Daniel Ragusa makes the point that if Jesus is in fact the Son of Psalm 2, then his identity guarantees and requires his return.³ Peter’s confidence concerning the coming of Christ is therefore rooted in who Christ is, because if the Father has declared Jesus to be the Son, then history cannot finally end until the kingdom of the Son is openly manifested in its fullness.
That brings Peter to verse 19, where he moves from what the apostles saw to what the church has been given: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy.”
The language can sound as though Peter is saying that Scripture has now become better or more reliable than it was before, but that is not the point he is making. John Calvin explains that the authority of the Word of God remained what it had always been, while the advent of Christ gave further confirmation to what God had already spoken.⁴ The prophets had spoken of the coming glory, Christ had come as the fulfillment and goal of those promises, and Peter had now seen that glory beginning to break into history. What God had said, God had begun to do.
Peter then says that this Word is “a light that shineth in a dark place,” and this is where the passage becomes especially important for the church living in the present age.
We have not yet reached the culmination of God’s redemptive work, because we are still living in a world where sickness, suffering, anxiety, death, and all kinds of circumstances seem at times to rule. We are living in that world while at the same time being told that Christ reigns over all things and that Christ is coming again, and Peter says that in this present darkness God has given us a light.
So what do we do with the light?
Peter says that we take heed to it, that we pay attention to it, and that we attend to what God has given because we are still walking through a dark place.
Lucas and Green point out that the prophetic Word serves the church in two ways: it gives light in the present darkness, and it guides the church until the coming Day.⁵ We may not be able to see far ahead, and we may not be able to understand everything that is happening around us, but we have been given enough light to see where our feet are and enough light to know where the road is going.
Lamps belong to the nighttime, which is why Peter tells the church to take heed to the Word “until the day dawn.”
When the power goes out at night, you turn on the flashlight or light the candle because you need light while the darkness remains, and when morning comes, you no longer need the flashlight because the sun has risen. Peter says that Scripture functions for us in this present age in much the same way, because the darkness remains for a time, the false teachers continue for a time, and suffering continues for a time, but the morning is coming.
This is what gives the whole passage its eschatological movement: Peter has gone from the Transfiguration, where he saw the first rays of Christ’s coming glory, to the present light of Scripture, which the church holds while she waits, and then forward to the Day when Christ himself appears.
We have not seen the Transfiguration, but we have been given the Word, and we do not throw away the lamp because we know that morning is coming. Our faith grabs hold of the light we have been given, and through that light it grabs hold of the Christ who has been promised until the Day breaks forth.
The final question Peter answers is why the church can trust this Word so completely, and his answer is that its reliability rests upon its origin.
Prophecy did not come by the will of man, because holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Ghost. Warfield explains this by emphasizing that while men truly spoke, the Spirit carried them so that what they spoke truly came from God.⁶ The reliability of the Word therefore does not rest upon the reliability of its readers, nor upon the strength of our feelings, nor upon the spiritual experience we bring with us when we hear it, because the Word of God is not contingent upon us since it did not originate with us.
That is why John Anderson’s language is so helpful when he says that “the assurance of faith arises from the single view of what is contained in the Word of God,” and summarizes the ground of faith with the words, “Thus he hath spoken.”⁷
When you begin to ask whether Christ is really for you, whether you have sinned too much to return to him, whether your faith is too small, whether you should feel more assurance than you presently feel, or whether Christ really is coming again, faith has somewhere outside of itself to rest.
Thus he hath spoken.
That is what we have been given in this present age, and when faith sees nothing, feels nothing, and finds nothing within itself upon which it can safely rest, it returns to the sure Word that shines in the darkness.
God has promised Christ to us, Christ has come for us, Christ has been raised for us, Christ has ascended for us, Christ sits at the right hand of God interceding for us, and Christ will return for us because the God who has spoken cannot lie.
You do not have to see what Peter saw because you have been given the Word of God, and through the Word preached, the promise repeated, and the Supper received, faith continues to grab hold of Christ again and again while the darkness remains.
One day faith will become sight, the lamp will have served its purpose, and the Christ whom we now apprehend through the promise will stand before us in glory when the Day finally dawns.
Herman Ridderbos, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, 58.
Dick Lucas and Christopher Green, The Message of 2 Peter and Jude, 77–79.
Daniel Ragusa, Exploring 2 Peter: The Promise and the Path, 12.
John Calvin, Hebrews; 1 and 2 Peter, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, 340.
Lucas and Green, The Message of 2 Peter and Jude, 82–83.
B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 136.
John Anderson, The Scripture Doctrine of Appropriation, 48.