2 Peter
Chapter 1
1 Dear Brothers and Sisters of mine in the faith, that is you who’ve been blessed by God so that you completely believe in Christ Jesus, just like we do. And because of believing, you’re blessed abundantly just like we are. That is we’ve been saved through what Christ Jesus did to make us right in His sight. He’s our God and Savior! [1]
Greetings from Simon Peter, an apostle and servant of Christ Jesus.
2 Because each of you already knows God and our Lord Jesus, I pray that God will always be very kind to you and watch over you so that your lives are calm under His protection!
The way we become certain of our own callings
3 By His own power God has given us everything that we need to live lives according to His will. All those spiritual blessings were given to us because we truly know God who has called us according to His glory and kindness. 4 And through His glorious power and kindness He has promised many things to us that are very great and valuable. For through God’s promises we receive God’s Spirit Himelf and become one with Him. In that way we’re no longer bound by all kinds of sins that are caused by our evil desires. Those sins are controlling this world like a deadly disease that spreads.
5 Because of all of God’s gifts and promises to us, let’s not just merely believe in the things that have been promised to us but let’s all sincerely try to live out what we believe. The way to do that is to first, live well. Second, add to your knowledge about the way to live wisely. 6 Third, learn how to control yourself. Fourth, learn how to endure in troubles. Fifth, try to live according to God’s will more and more. 7 Sixth, learn how to love the brothers and sisters in the faith. And seventh, we should show our love to everyone through our actions. 8 For if all of those characteristics are in each of us and if we grow in those things more and more, then we will be proven to be people who truly know our Lord Christ Jesus. That means we will no longer be useless followers of Christ who don’t glorify Him in our own lives. 9 But if a brother or sister in the faith doesn’t have those characteristics, it’s as if his spiritual eyes are cloudy and he has almost become blind. A person like that forgets that his old sins were actually cleansed when he believed in Christ.
10 For that reason, Brothers and Sisters, try even harder to do the seven things that I wrote about above. For in that way you will make certain that you’ve truly been called and chosen by God. For if you keep doing those things, you won’t fail to reach your heavenly goal, for sure. 11 In that way when you enter the eternal kingdom you’ll be welcomed with great joy by our Lord and King of Salvation, Christ Jesus.
Our faith is based on God’s Word
12 For that reason I will keep reminding you of the things I mentioned, even though you already know and hold firmly to the true teaching that we’ve received from God. 13 As long as I’m still living in this body which is like a temporary tent, I feel responsible to keep reminding you of these things. 14 For I know that in a short time I'll die, because it was revealed to me by our Lord Christ Jesus. 15 For that reason I w'll keep on working hard so that you can always remember these things, even after I die.
16 For when we told you about the power of our Lord Christ Jesus and His return to this world, we weren’t like the false teachers who strengthen their teaching with their own made up legends in order to deceive people. For we’ve seen the greatness of Jesus ourselves. 17-18 For we were the ones present on that holy mountain when He received honor and glory from God the Most Glorious Father. That is when the voice of God was heard from heaven which said, “This is My Son whom I really love. He’s the one who pleases My heart.”
19 That made us more certain about all of the prophecies that the prophets told about His return. [2] For that reason, we should pay careful attention to those prophecies. For until the Lord Jesus returns, what was said by the prophets is like a light that shines illuminating this dark world. His coming will be like a new dawn rising in a new world. And at that time Jesus will illuminate our hearts like the morning star. 20 This is what’s important for us to remember, all of the prophecies written in the Holy Bible didn’t come from the prophets' own thoughts. 21 For they never told prophecies according to their own will, but they told their prophesies according to what they received from God’s Spirit.
Chapter 2
False teachers
1 Just like false prophets arose among God’s people in times past, the same is happening now. False teachers will rise up among you for sure. They’ll teach teachings that really lead astray, and they’ll even deny the Lord Jesus who died to set them free. In that way they’ll quickly bring destruction on themselves. 2 Many brothers and sisters in the faith will go astray and follow their way of life which is led by lusts. Then when other people who don’t yet believe in Christ see that, they’ll insult our teaching because they’ll assume that the false teaching is our teaching, of course. 3 Those false teachers are very greedy. So through tricky teaching, they’ll try to deceive you in order to get money. Since beforehand, God has prepared a punishment for them, and He isn’t sleeping. He sees everything they’re doing and will certainly destroy them.
4 As the first proof of that, God didn’t give forgiveness to the angels who sinned, but they were imprisoned in a dark cavern in hell to be judged on the Day of Judgment. 5 And the second proof is that God punished the people in Noah’s time when He sent a huge flood. But God protected Noah and seven other people. Noah is the person who told about living right, but those who were destroyed were the people who refused to repent and serve God. 6 The third proof is that God punished the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning everything in them to ashes. May what happened be a warning to us so that we don’t follow their life style which didn’t respect God. 7-8 Notice that God saved Lot because he was a righteous person, of course. But he suffered every day because he saw and heard about the depraved lustful actions that the residents of those two cities did. So as long as that righteous man lived among them, his heart was broken because their actions were so evil.
9 So from these three examples it’s clear that the Lord God will definitely save the people from trouble who serve Him. And it’s certain that evil people will be imprisoned until the time comes for them to be punished on the Judgment Day, 10 especially those who follow various lusts so that they’re stained, and they also look down on the leaders of the church.
False teachers like that are also arrogant and brag about themselves to the extent that they're not afraid to insult both the leaders of the church and the chief angels in heaven! 11 However the angels, even though they’re more powerful than all human beings, don’t insult those false teachers before the Lord. 12 But the false teachers insult whatever they don’t know. They aren’t intelligent, just like animals that act only on instinct. And they’re also like animals that are trapped and destroyed. Those false teachers will be destroyed in the same way. 13 That’s the reward they’ll receive for their evil actions.
Beware! They’re happy to associate with us so that they can influence us with their misleading teaching. And they want to come among us and take part in our feast. But if they take part, they really defile our fellowship. The thing that makes them happiest is that while eating and drinking greedily in our feasts, they infiltrate our fellowship and cunningly influence us. 14 Their thoughts are full of desires to commit adultery, and they are never tired of doing evil. They like to seduce and trap our brothers and sisters who’ve just recently believed. And their hearts are full of greed, so they cleverly deceive people in order to get money. God is ready to punish them!
15 They’ve gone astray and left the true road. They’ve followed the road previously taken by Balaam, the son of Beor. I mean that like him, they’re also very happy with the money they receive as a result of their evil actions. 16 But Balaam was immediately rebuked for his sin when God made his donkey talk in human language. For that reason Balaam was harshly forbidden by God so that he wouldn’t work like a crazy shaman who was greedy for money. 17 Those false teachers are very useless. They are like dry rivers to people who are spiritually thirsty. Or for farmers that hope for rain, they’re like clouds blown away by a strong wind so that it doesn’t rain. They won’t escape God’s punishment which has been prepared for them in a very dark place! 18-19 They give their teachings so that they sound very knowledgeable, but they don’t actually make sense. They teach like this, “Now God has set us free, so He won’t punish us if we follow various lustful desires that come from our bodies.” With teachings like that they trap our brothers and sisters who have just left their sinful way of life. For the false teachers say, “Let’s live freely,” but the result of that teaching isn’t freedom but slavery. For they themselves are slaves of sin. Whoever is controlled by sin has become a slave to sin.
20 What a shame! For if a person has begun to escape from the various evils of the world because he has just come to know our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, and then he’s snared again and overpowered by sin, his situation is worse than when he was living before he believed in Jesus. 21 For it’s better that we don’t yet know the teaching about how we are made right by God and are enabled to live in a holy way, than for us to know that teaching but reject it. 22 For that person will be like a dog or a pig in these two proverbs, “A dog that vomits will eat his vomit again.” [1] And “A pig who has been bathed and is clean will go back to bathing in the mud puddle.”
Chapter 3
Jesus will certainly return
1 Brothers and Sisters whom I love, this is the second letter that I’ve written to you. Through these two letters I’m trying to help you to think honestly and remind you 2 about the news that was given by the prophets who were sent by God. And I also want to remind you about what was commanded by our Lord and Savior, which was delivered to you by all of us who were sent by Him. [1]
3 And this is what’s so important for you, in the last days people will appear who’ll enjoy making fun of and laugh at true teaching. They’re people who like to follow their various desires. 4 They’ll say, “Christ has promised to return. Where is He? Our forefathers have died, but everything continues on the same as usual since creation.” 5 By saying that they intentionally forget the evidence that by God’s word alone the sky and earth were created and the land was gathered together in the middle of water. And the water became a tool used by the Lord. 6 Then by using water again, God destroyed the first earth with a huge flood. 7 But God is ready to use His words again like that in a dreadful way! That is He’ll invoke punishment on the present sky and earth by using fire, which on the Day of Judgment will destroy everyone who opposes Him.
8 So Brothers and Sisters whom I love, don’t forget this. The way the Lord counts time and the way humans do aren’t the same. A thousand years for the Lord is the same as one day for humans, and vice versa, one day for the Lord is the same as a thousand years for humans. 9 Don’t be influenced by people who say, “The Lord obviously keeps delaying to fulfill His promise! And why hasn’t Jesus come back before now?” The right answer for everyone who talks like that is that the Lord is patient with you because He doesn’t want you to be destroyed too. The Lord is still giving an opportunity to everyone to repent.
10 But the day that the Lord Jesus returns will be like a thief who comes when unexpected. He’ll come suddenly. The great sky and earth will disappear, the things in the sky will be burned and the earth and everything else are also prepared for the Judgment Day when none of people’s deeds will be hidden. 11 So if everything will be destroyed and revealed like that, we certainly must try to live more and more holy according to God’s will! 12 While we’re waiting for the time which was determined by God, we should work hard so that even more people will be ready to meet the Lord. Even though the sky will be destroyed by fire and everything in the heavens will melt because of the heat, 13 we don’t need to be afraid. For according to the promise of God we’re waiting for the new heaven and new earth which will become the place for all of us to live who’ve been made right by God.
14 So Brothers and Sisters whom I love, because we’re waiting for those things, let’s try as hard as possible to live without sin, without stain and be ready to meet the Lord. [2] 15 And we should consider each day as proof of the Lord’s patience, in which He gives more opportunities to many people to enjoy the various blessings of salvation. Our beloved brother Paul also wrote like this to you, according to the wisdom given to him by the Lord. 16 In all of his letters he talked about these things. And there are also some things in his letters that are difficult to understand. The difficult parts are wrongly interpreted by people who haven’t yet studied them in depth and who like to change what they believe in. Then they teach the things they misunderstand to others, like they do with other parts of the Holy Bible. As a result, they’re the ones who bring destruction on themselves.
17 So beloved Brothers and Sisters, because you already know that you should be careful! Don’t get trapped too in the mistakes of people who don’t live according to the Lord’s Word so that you no longer completely believe the true teaching which you previously held onto firmly. 18 But you should each be more mature and aware of God’s kindness to you and know our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus more and more. I pray that He alone will be glorified, both now and forever. Amen.