Chapter 1
1 I, Simon Peter, am a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. Jesus is our God and Savior. Through His righteousness, this precious faith lives in the hearts of us all.
2 Keep learning more and more about who God is and who our Lord Jesus Christ is. Then grace and peace will fill your hearts even more.
3 By His mighty power, God has given us everything we need for life. By the same power, we can now faithfully follow Him and live the way God desires. He has called us to Himself so that we can see His glory and know more and more how good and perfect He is.
4 Through His glory and His wonderful character, God has also given us great and precious promises. These are the same promises through which you have received God’s nature and have overcome your sinful desires that rule in this world and destroy people’s lives.
5 Live by all that God has given you. Make every effort to let your faith shape your character, and let wisdom strengthen your moral qualities.
6 Wisdom leads to self-control, and self-control leads to patience. Patience strengthens your devotion to God.
7 You must show your devotion to God by loving believers, and this brotherly love will help you love everyone around you.
8 So, you must have faith, moral excellence, wisdom, self-control, patience, devotion to God, love for believers, and love for everyone around you. If you have these qualities and develop them, you will grow spiritually and know our Lord Jesus Christ better and better.
9 But the one who lacks these qualities is spiritually blind and sees nothing. He has forgotten that the Lord has forgiven and cleansed him from his past sins.
10 Brothers, God has chosen you and called you to Himself. So, make every effort to develop all these qualities within yourselves. In this way, you will live according to God’s calling and election. If you do this, you will never stumble or go away from God.
11 Then you will be able to enter the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with confidence.
12 You already know everything I write about, and you firmly believe in the truth you have been taught. But I will never stop reminding you of these things.
13 As long as I live, I will always come back to this, because I consider it right.
14 I know that I will die soon, because our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed it to me.
15 So, I am now making every effort to ensure that even after my death you will always remember what I teach.
16 Jesus Christ is our Lord. We did not make up any stories when we told you about His power and how He would return to earth. Instead, we saw with our own eyes how our Lord acted with greatness and power.
17 When James, John, and I went up the mountain with Jesus, He was transfigured before us. God the Father showed us that Jesus is worthy of all honor and glory. Then Christ’s face shone like the sun, and His clothes became radiantly bright. We heard a majestic voice filled with glory: “This is My beloved Son, who brings Me great joy” (Matthew 17:1-8).
18 While we were on the mountain, God revealed His holiness to us. We also heard the voice that came from heaven.
19 We have a prophetic Word that can be fully trusted. You do well to turn to this Word as a lamp that shines in the darkness. Study this Word carefully until Christ, as the Morning Star, shines in your hearts and until the day fully dawns.
20 First of all, you must know that no prophecy of Scripture can be interpreted from a human point of view.
21 Prophecy never came from what a prophet himself wanted to say, and it did not come from his own will. Instead, God’s holy people prophesied because they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 2
1 There were not only God’s prophets among the people of Israel, but also false prophets. In the same way, false teachers will appear among you. They will skillfully spread destructive and heretical teachings, pretending that they are true. They will deny the Lord who bought them with His blood and redeemed them from sin. By doing this, they will bring sudden destruction upon themselves.
2 False teachers will have many followers who will live the same immoral lifestyle as they do. So, because of these people the true way that Christ shows us will be slandered and misrepresented.
3 False teachers will use others for their own gain. They will be so eager for money that they will make up all kinds of lies to take everything that others have. But God has already condemned them long ago, so they will not be able to escape destruction.
4 God did not spare even those angels who sinned. Instead, He threw them into hell, where He bound them with chains of darkness to await judgment.
5 God did not spare the people who lived during Noah’s time either. He sent a flood and destroyed those who did not believe in Him and did evil deeds. But Noah preached about living righteously. So, God saved only his family of eight from the flood: Noah, his wife, his three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—and their wives.
6 Later, God judged the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, where people lived immorally. He destroyed those cities with fire and turned them into ashes. In this way, God showed everyone what would happen in the future to those who do not believe in Him and do evil.
7 But God saved righteous Lot, who lived in Sodom. Lot was deeply distressed and tormented in his heart by the people’s unrestrained immorality.
8 Lot lived among those people, but he remained a righteous man. His soul was tormented by the evil he saw every day and heard about constantly.
9 Surely the Lord knows how to save those who faithfully follow Him in times of trials. He also knows how to ensure that those who do evil will not go unpunished on the day of judgment.
10 This is especially true for those who follow their own immoral desires and live according to their sinful nature. Such people reject all authority. They act rudely and arrogantly. They are not afraid to mock and speak with contempt about what is majestic and glorious.
11 Angels are far more powerful and mighty than these people. But even they do not bring accusations against such people
in the presence of the Lord, but leave the judgment to God.
12 These people live only by their instincts, like unreasoning animals who are born to be caught and destroyed. They speak insulting words about what is sacred and beyond their understanding. So they will perish from their own moral corruption.
13 They will receive what their actions deserve, because they do evil. They enjoy openly indulging in immorality not only at night but even during the day. They are wicked and commit shameful acts. They sit at the same table with believers and act as if they belong to God’s people, although they live in deception.
14 Their eyes reveal their lustful desires and their constant craving for sin. They mislead those whose faith is weak. They have become so used to living for gain that it has completely taken over their hearts. So they have brought a curse upon themselves.
15 They have abandoned the true way that Christ shows us and have begun to do evil. They followed the example of the prophet Balaam, son of Beor, whom the Moabite king Balak wanted to hire to curse Israel. Balaam ignored God’s will because he was eager to receive the reward he had been promised.
16 But God rebuked Balaam for going against His will. God did this through a donkey that suddenly spoke with a human voice and stopped the prophet’s madness.
17 These people are false teachers. They look spiritual, but inside they are empty, like dry wells. Their teaching misleads others. So, they are like storm-driven clouds that are carried across the sky by the wind, yet bring no rain. For such people, the darkest gloom is reserved, where they will remain for all eternity.
18 These false teachers make loud claims to impress others, but their words are empty and deceptive. The ones who listen to them are those who have only recently turned to the truth and left behind a life of lies and deception. These false teachers push such people to follow their sinful desires and live immoral lives.
19 They promise freedom to others, but they themselves remain slaves to sin and moral corruption. A person is a slave to whatever controls him.
20 Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. There are those who truly turn to Him and are delivered from the corrupt ways of this world. But if later they get entangled in those sins again and become slaves to sin, they end up in a worse condition than before.
21 If a person chooses the way that Christ shows us, but then he deliberately rejects God’s command to live a holy life and returns to his former sinful life, it is worse for him than if he had never known the way of righteousness.
22 Such people act as the proverb says, “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another proverb says, “A washed pig goes back to roll in the mud.”
Chapter 3
1 My dear friends, this is the second letter I’m writing to you to remind you how important it is to maintain purity of thought and to think clearly.
2 Remember what the holy prophets said long ago. Remember also what our Lord and Savior taught you through your apostles.
3 First of all, know this: in the last days there will be people who will mock the truth and follow their own sinful desires.
4 They will say, “Where is Jesus? Didn’t He promise to return to earth? So many generations have passed since then, but nothing has changed in the world. Everything remains the same as it was from the very beginning, when God created this world.”
5 Anyone who thinks this way doesn’t understand how great the power of God’s Word is. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth with His Word. He formed the earth from water and surrounded it with water.
6 Then God said that a flood would come upon the earth. He fulfilled His Word, and the world of that time perished when God destroyed it with water.
7 The same Word of God is still at work today. That’s why heaven and earth still exist. But the day will come when God will judge those who do not believe in Him and do evil. Then heaven and earth will be burned up, and all who reject God will perish.
8 My dear friends, do not forget one thing: God measures time differently than people. For Him, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.
9 Some people think that the Lord is slow to fulfill His promise to return to earth. But He has not forgotten it. Instead, God shows great patience because He does not want anyone to perish. He gives people time so that everyone can turn to Him and repent of their sins.
10 No one knows exactly when Jesus will return to earth. But that day will come unexpectedly for everyone, as if a thief broke into a house at night. Then the heavens will disappear with a great roar. Everything that exists in the universe will burst into flames and be destroyed. And the earth and everything man has made on it will be burned up.
11 All earthly things will be destroyed. But the one who belongs to God will live forever. How holy then should you act and how faithfully follow Jesus!
12 You eagerly await the day when God will rid the world of evil. On that day, the heavens will burst into flames and be destroyed. And everything in the universe will melt in a fiery blaze.
13 But God promised to make all things new. So we look forward to the new heavens and the new earth, where God’s righteousness will reign.
14 My dear friends, while you are waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled, do your best to live holy lives, to be blameless before God, and to remain at peace with Him.
15 Remember that the Lord is very patient. So He gives people time so that they can turn to Him and receive salvation. Our dear brother Paul, to whom God gave His wisdom, also wrote about this.
16 He speaks about this in all his letters, though some of his thoughts are difficult to understand. Those who are far from the truth and not rooted in the faith distort the meaning of his words. In fact, they do the same with other passages of Scripture, and in this way they bring destruction upon themselves.
17 So, my dear friends, I have already warned you to be careful and not to be influenced by those who have fallen into deception and live in evil. Otherwise, you will stray from the right path and destroy the foundation of your faith.
18 Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. So grow in God’s grace and come to know more and more who our Lord is. He is worthy of our praise today and throughout eternity. Amen.