Our human tendency is to forget how good we have it. We fail to hold onto the actual value of things, of people – and even of our salvation and relationship with God. Today Peter is going to remind us of the treasure that we have before us in the pages of Scripture.
In the earliest days of the church, the primary controversy with false teaching involved an overly Jewish emphasis. The “Judaizers,” tried to put Old Testament requirements upon non-Jewish believers.
The later threat that Peter addresses here poses an almost opposite problem. It stems from compromise with the surrounding pagan, Greco-Roman environment.
Paul doesn’t seem to tire of certain subjects. We probably shouldn’t tire of them either. How Christians should behave is one of them. The plain facts of the gospel are another. He covers both of these again in this last chapter to Titus who is serving on the island of Crete.
“Organized religion ‘will be driven toward extinction’ in 9 countries, experts predict.” So read the headline of CNN’s Belief Blog earlier this year. People today are feeling less and less comfortable with “Organized Religion.” The Apostle Paul, if he were here, would not be one of them. In fact, for him, the churches on the island of Crete were not yet organized enough. The reason he left his assistant Titus there was to set things in order.
Central Reflections 