2 Peter 3:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The dissolute will not receive salvation. If all these things, and the rest whose unambiguous statements can be found throughout the Scriptures, prove false, then perhaps this interpretation of wood, hay, and straw may prove true (1 Cor 3:12).

It would mean that those will be saved through fire (1 Cor 3:13-15) who, while preserving faith alone in Christ, denied good works.

But if this teaching is true and plain, then without doubt another interpretation of that apostolic judgment must be sought. It must be examined in light of Peter’s words that in what Paul wrote there are some things hard to understand.

People must not twist these things to their own destruction. Against the clearest testimonies of Scripture, they must not make the most dissolute people confident of their future salvation, while such people most stubbornly give themselves to shamelessness and do not change through correction and repentance.

Nor can it be otherwise. The soulish person must acquire some notion when reading or studying the divine Scripture, yet he is incapable of understanding Scripture as he ought. Therefore, of necessity, he gives himself whatever notion seems good to him.

This remark of the Apostle Peter allows us to see how attentively the apostles followed the labors of the great apostle to the nations. It also shows how early, already in the first Church, all the writings of Christ’s disciples were gathered and preserved.

The deliberate distortion of Holy Scripture, written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and of the works of ecclesiastical writers, is also blasphemy against the Spirit of God. The apostles already lament this (2 Pet. 3:15-16 and elsewhere).

They can read, and they are not deprived of the reason necessary both to explain Scripture correctly and to distort it to their own destruction.

It remains to understand their lack of instruction in this sense: they have not assimilated the chief truths of Christ’s teaching. Their instability is similar. It consists in their failure to stand in these truths as firmly as they should.

Thus the character, and at the same time the guilt, of those who distort Scripture consists in this: they undertake to interpret Scripture without first receiving instruction and confirmation.

How is this instruction received, and by whom is confirmation produced? Is it by reading Scripture that has not yet been explained and can still be distorted? Clearly not.

From Lk 1:3-4 we know that before writing, the apostles instructed orally, by word. Only afterward did they add writing, so that those already taught and confirmed, like Theophilus, might know the foundation of the teaching they had received.

Therefore oral instruction or confirmation must come first, carried out by teachers and pastors given by Christ. Only afterward should there come the reading, understanding, and interpretation of Scripture in accordance with that instruction.

If you take another path and proceed directly to reading and interpretation without guidance from instruction previously received, then you will go astray even with Scripture and come to destruction.

“He speaks of this”: that is, of Christ’s Second Coming, the end of the world, the events connected with them, and the instructions and exhortations concerning firmness in faith, constancy in good works, and so forth.

“In which there are some things hard to understand”: the phrase “in which” may refer either to the epistles, in which there are things hard to understand, or to the subjects of the teaching.

It refers more to the latter than to the former, especially to all subjects of doctrine concerning the last times and events.

“Some things hard to understand”: not because of the essence of the teaching itself, which, as truth itself, is simple and generally accessible to all. It is because of the special depth of the mysteries of faith.

As mysteries, they do not yield to the comprehension of the mind. Such are, for example, the mystery of the end of the world, Christ’s Second Coming, of which the apostle speaks, and the like.

Instead of submitting to faith and accepting these things in simplicity of mind and heart, the ignorant and unstable twist this difficult material. They distort it by reinterpretation and thereby change its true meaning, corrupting the teaching of truth.

It seems that the apostle has more in view those who have been led into error and are being led astray than those who lead astray, the false teachers and mockers.

To characterize the latter, the apostle would seem to have used stronger expressions, as in 2 Pet. 2:14 and similar passages.

Yet he may also have had in view the false teachers themselves, judging by the strong expression “to their own destruction.” The apostle uses this several times in this same epistle to characterize the false teachers themselves (2 Pet. 2:1, 3).

They act in this way, that is, they twist or distort the apostolic epistles and passages from them to their own destruction.

An incorrect or distorted interpretation, being contrary to the sound teaching of faith, can and must be accompanied for them by deprivation of participation in Christ’s Kingdom, or by separation from the Church (Gal 1:8), and by deprivation of eternal blessedness.

“As they do the other Scriptures”: this probably means partly the apostolic writings, both the Gospel writings and those properly called apostolic, and partly the Old Testament writings. Above all it means the prophetic writings, to which the apostle also points in this epistle (2 Pet. 3:2; 1:20).

“Beware, lest you be carried away by the error of the lawless. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.”

2 Pet. 3:16. These words should by no means be understood as though Peter were diminishing Paul because his speech lacked clarity.

As the context shows, Peter’s words are directed not against Paul’s speech, but against false teachers. They considered Holy Scripture accessible to everyone’s understanding, assumed the role of teachers, and interpreted it according to their heretical thoughts.

We also find a reference to heretics who corrupt the Apostle Paul’s epistles in Paul’s own epistles (Rom 3:8; 2 Thess 2:2).

Therefore, by difficulty of understanding we must by no means understand a defect in Paul’s speech. Rather, we must understand the height and depth of his teaching, inaccessible to people untaught and unconfirmed in the faith.

He also warns against the incorrect understanding of them to which some resorted in order to justify their false teachings. As has been said, the Apostle Paul himself also complained of this (see 2 Thess 2:2).

Thus Peter was moved to mention the Apostle Paul by a sincere desire to serve the common work of salvation. He was not moved by any personal motives arising from Paul’s mention of Peter (see Gal 2:11), as some non-Orthodox interpreters claim, understanding Paul’s teaching one-sidedly.