Scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” | 2 Peter 3.3-4
Last week I had a conversation with a woman in our church about the personal struggles of this life; those things that we continue to fight against. The parts of our life that we didn’t ask for BUT are part of us, even as they keep us from being the people God created us to be. The difficulty with these struggles is that they are both something that God, in His sovereign will, has allowed, yet something that keeps us from what He calls us to be (if you have ever dealt with addiction, social struggles, or anxiety, you know what this fight is like). What are we to do with the difference between who we are and who we are supposed to be?
One of the answers we are often given is: FIX IT. That the solution to these things is to overcome them. Personal strength (and even faith) are used as the weapons against our weaknesses to subdue them and to leave them in the dust (I can do all things through Christ...). The problem is, as anyone who has ever fought this knows, this often doesn’t work. This leads to a doubt of not only your own strength, but why a God who wants you to be different isn’t helping you to get there.
A second answer that just keeps gaining volume is: LOVE YOURSELF. That what we need (and even what God wants) is to find acceptance and even holiness in our weaknesses. The idea is that God would never set us up in a system that we could not master, and the limitations point to His desire for us to find the ultimate in what is here. In this, the focus shifts from the Divine to the now.
What we see in this warning from 2 Peter is that both of these perspectives fit what Peter calls: scoffers. The scoffers are those who follow their own sinful desires (minimize sin) and try to immanentize the eschaton (which is a fancy way of saying: try to make future perfection achievable now). Scoffers want you to doubt the promises of God; scoffers are those who preach something other than the gospel of Jesus Christ, which says: you are accepted because of who HE is, and your life now exists for HIS glory.
The way to live this out is to see our struggles as a part of our fallen nature and to shift our focus from ourselves to Jesus. The major ingredient in living the Christian life is: LEARNING TO HOPE. The return of Jesus and the restoration of all things are the fuel for this life. Our struggles are not something that keeps us from God or that are somehow sacred in themselves; they are merely a reminder of how badly we need God to ever find the existential peace we all long for. We recognize limitations and flaws as part of us, we push against them to the best of our ability, and we let the hope of future unburdening be the strength that keeps us.
Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. | 2 Peter 3.11-13