Answering Those Who Doubted the Promise

2 Peter answers a problem that only becomes urgent once enough time has passed for it to be a problem at all: scoffers within the community are asking, "where is the promise of his coming," pointing out that "ever since the fathers died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation." The letter's response reframes divine timing itself, arguing that "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years," and that the apparent delay is not divine failure but divine patience, giving more people the chance to repent before a coming day of judgment the letter describes vividly, the heavens dissolving in fire and the elements melting. Its second chapter, an extended warning against false teachers who exploit believers for profit, overlaps so closely in wording and structure with the short Epistle of Jude that the two are almost certainly directly related, most scholars concluding that 2 Peter draws on and expands Jude rather than the reverse.

The letter closes by referring to "our beloved brother Paul" and his letters, describing them as already containing things "hard to understand" that some distort, evidence, most scholars note, that a body of Pauline letters was already circulating and already being treated as authoritative scripture by the time this letter was written.