Not Rivals, But Friends

Like many Tennesseans, my all-time favorite NFL quarterback is Peyton Manning. He was a star at the University of Tennessee when I was in elementary school, and went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Indianapolis Colts in my teenage and young-adult years. No quarterback was smarter or put up better numbers than Peyton, but he had a problem: he played in the same era as Tom Brady. Year after year, I watched Brady’s New England Patriots eliminate Peyton’s Colts from the playoffs. Naturally, the sports media built up the arch-rivalry of these two elite quarterbacks. That’s why we were all a little surprised when, early in their respective retirements, they posted a picture online playing golf together. “Surprise! We were friends the whole time,” the caption read.

Peter clears up a similar misunderstanding here in 3:15–16. Those troublesome teachers in Asia Minor have been pitting Peter against the apostle Paul. They seem to be misquoting Paul, probably pulling his famous statements about God’s grace and the believer’s freedom from the law out of context. They twist these statements to justify their own immoral lifestyles, as we learned about in chapter two. They then paint Peter as preaching a different message, one involving a hyper-focus on the Lord’s return and a rigid call to holy living. They say that Peter stands for an outdated legalism that the church should reject in favor of their version of an enlightened, anything-goes-Paul.

“Let me stop you right there,” Peter says today. “Paul and I aren’t rivals; we’re friends!” Peter calls Paul his “beloved brother,” because they both believe and teach the same message! Specifically, they both insist on the Lord Jesus’s personal return, and they both call the church to live holy, waiting lives in light of that reality. Paul specifically echoes Peter’s most recent statements about the Lord’s patience with us prompting us to repentance and preparation for judgement day (compare 2 Pet 3:15 with Rom 2:4).

Certainly, Peter and Paul express these truths in their own unique ways. We would expect stylistic differences between a Galilean fisherman like Peter and a university-trained rabbi like Paul. But God has given these two servants their own personal insights into the same truths. Both speak as Jesus’ hand-picked apostles, and both speak in accordance with the Old Testament Scriptures. It is significant that Peter here classifies Paul’s writings to the churches as part of “Scripture (3:16),” especially when we recall what Peter said about God’s inspiration of the Old Testament (1:20–21).

Peter also tells us something about Paul that should come as a great encouragement: his writings can be hard to understand (3:16)! Peter is not getting in a dig at Paul. He is simply acknowledging Paul addresses topics so complex, so profound, and requiring such nuance, that one could easily misunderstand them on a careless reading. This is why the false teachers had been able to twist Paul’s words into saying what they wanted, and so leading the church away from plain apostolic teaching.

So be careful, Peter is saying: don’t let anyone mislead you by sloppy or superficial treatments of Paul (or any other part of Scripture). As you wait for Jesus’ return, devote yourself to the Bible as your lamp shining in a dark world! Get so well-acquainted with it that you immediately know when someone is leading you off the path (like the Bereans in Acts 17:11). Are you maturing in your understanding of God’s Word?

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Article by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church