Scripture Daily

Context No. 632 of 4322 · 2 Peter

Context · Reflection

2 Peter 1:12-21: in context

12Therefore I will not be negligent to remind you of these things, though you know them and are established in the present truth. 13I think it right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, 14knowing that the putting off of my tent comes swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. 15Yes, I will make every effort that you may always be able to remember these things even after my departure. 16For we didn’t follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17For he received from God the Father honor and glory when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” 18We heard this voice come out of heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. 19We have the more sure word of prophecy; and you do well that you heed it as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts, 20knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. 21For no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit.

Peter, knowing his death is near, writes to fix the truth in his readers' minds while he still can. He insists that the faith he handed them was not invented: we did not follow cleverly devised myths, he says, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty, and he recalls the moment on the mountain when he heard the voice from heaven declare Jesus the beloved Son. The faith rests on witnessed events, not stories someone made up. And then he turns to Scripture, the prophetic word, and gives it one of the most beautiful descriptions in the Bible. You will do well, he says, to pay attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Sit with that image, because it assumes something about where I am living. It assumes a dark place. Peter does not describe the present world as full daylight, all clear and obvious; he calls it a dark place, a world of shadows and uncertainty where the way ahead is hard to see, and he says the full day has not yet dawned. In that darkness, God has given one reliable light: his word, a lamp. Not a floodlight that illuminates everything at once, but a lamp, enough to see the next steps, to keep from stumbling, to walk by until the real dawn comes. And the instruction is simple and easy to neglect: pay attention to it.

That examines whether I am actually using the light I have been given. I am walking through a genuinely dark place, an age of confusion and half-truth and uncertainty, and it is tempting to try to find my way by every other light, my own reasoning, the loudest voices, the mood of the moment, and to leave the one dependable lamp unlit and unread on the shelf. Peter says: pay attention to the word, like a lamp in the dark, until the day dawns. Am I walking through the darkness of this age by the light of God's word, actually paying attention to the lamp I have been given, or stumbling along trying to see by every other light instead?

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