Having denounced the false teachers for their immorality and greed Peter now demolishes their false teaching. These men had a deeply personal interest in denying the return of Jesus and the final judgment. The false teachers lived such recklessly sinful lives that they preferred a world which had no hope of final redemption through the righteous justice of God. We see the same thing in our own day as those raised in believing homes abandon various Christian doctrines (sometimes abandoning the faith altogether) because they prefer lives that are in conflict with those truths.

Peter assures his readers that God is not slow. He is not dragging his feet to fulfill the promise of the Son’s return. He appeals to Psalm 90 to make his case. That Psalm is all about God and his relationship with time: “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4). God is eternal and therefore exits over and outside time. The Lord’s patience has a gracious purpose. Unwilling to lose a single one of his people, he delays the final judgment until the elect from every nation will be gathered in to “the new heavens and the new earth where righteousness dwells” (vs. 13).