2 Peter 3 - Righteousness leads us to the next Creation
Wow. I have been doing this word study on righteousness for nearly a year and a half, feeling at least in part like it is too much a distraction from Geocreationism to be posted on this blog… yet, perhaps out of laziness (I didn’t want to create another blog), I posted my entire venture through the verses on righteousness on this blog. Now, I come to the last chapter in the bible that contains the word Righteousness, and I am simply floored. What floored me? Here is the last verse on righteousness, 2 Peter 3:13:
13But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
It has been so easy to think of righteousness as an earthly state, but in one verse Peter has shown us the true home of righteousness: Heaven. Now, we have known this all along of course, but that this would be last verse just serves as an awesome bookend to the first verses on righteousness:
Genesis 15:6
Abram believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness.Deuteronomy 6:25
And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.â€
In the middle of the OT, we come to the heart of the Gospel:
Ezekiel 18:18-19
18 If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, he will die for it. 19 And if a wicked man turns away from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he will live by doing so.
Verse 19 tells us that anyone that come into righteousness… but only after telling in verse 18 that anyone can choose to leave it. This is at the heart of Peter’s 2nd letter, especially chapter 2 when he wrote:
2 Peter 2:20-22
 20If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”
And then we finally come to the last verse on righteousness:
2 Peter 3:13
13But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
Now, my first few years on this blog were dedicated to discussing Creation and the geologic evidence for the truth of scripture. It has led me through the church’s misinterpretations of the scripture (that the earth is young), coupled with the church’s simultaneous grasping of Genesis 1’s theology, that the language Moses used bore a conspicuous resemblance to the only God’s true actions in creating the earth. What the Church had missed was that God had chosen to create physical processes through which to work, and symbolic language for the miraculousness of those actions that nicely paralleled what He actually did. It makes Genesis 1 oddly symbolic and literal at the same time. Only God could so unite such seemingly contradictory facts.
Now, we come back to why 2 Peter 3 floors me. Look back at verses 3 to 7:
 3First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
In leading up to his climax, Peter invokes creation, using verses that are typically used to argue that Genesis 1 is clearly talking of a young earth. Why? Because it is so completely contrary to Evolution, and how Evolutionists represent the world’s development. In fact, I was once challenged with these verses and had no answer at the time. It was in part what inspired my trek to understand the scripture and whether or not I really could reconcile it with the science. Having done so to such a significant degree, then appearing diverted for nearly 18 months from documenting my findings, I now find myself coming full circle, to the very verses that led to this blog, and they are at the very end of my word study… this could only be of God. It’s little things like this that keep me believing (and obeying). Too bad these amazing things aren’t proof outside the context of my own life and walk. But I digress.
The questions to be answered then include these:
- Have the last few years all been leading up to answering this one question I could not answer a few years ago? (In part, yes)
- Is God’s purpose to show me that the earth is young, or is it to equip me for answering this question, given that the earth is old? (I believe it’s the latter)
- Why the intricate connection between Creation and Righteousness? (I suspect the answer will be found in Creation Day 6… which I conspicuously never finished writing about!)
Well, I have to say, God has me (nearly) speechless. I will be exploring these question next. What an adventure!