2 Peter 1:21

These verses come near the end of Peter’s life, which he knows is close (2 Peter 1:14). Earlier in 2 Peter 1 he has reminded the church that God’s divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3), and he has urged them to grow, so that they will be fruitful “in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:8). Now he turns to the source of that knowledge and shows why it can be trusted. He sets two witnesses side by side, what the apostles saw and heard of Christ and the word of the prophets, and the church needed both, because false teachers were at work who denied the Lord, lived immorally and scoffed at the promise of his return (2 Peter 2:1–3).

Peter begins with what the apostles’ preaching stands apart from: “cunningly devised fables”. The word for fables, mŷthos, means a made-up story or legend, fiction told to entertain or to deceive. “Cunningly devised” translates sophízō, a verb for something cleverly put together, even with a wish to manipulate, and the phrase describes stories built by human skill. The Gentile world around the churches had many such stories: myths about the gods, the tales of the mystery religions and the speculations of the philosophers. Peter puts the gospel in another class altogether. The apostles preached what they had seen.

What they made known was “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. His power, dýnamis, is his divine authority and the might he showed in his miracles, beginning with the first sign at Cana (John 2:11). His coming is his parousía, a word that means a being near, a presence or an arrival. In the New Testament it often names the Lord’s return (1 Thessalonians 4:16), the day when every eye shall see him (Revelation 1:7). So the apostles preached a Christ who has power now and who will surely come again.

Against invented stories Peter sets this: “but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” An eyewitness, epóptēs, is a looker-on, someone who has seen a thing with his own eyes. What they saw was his megaleiótēs, his majesty, greatness and splendour. In Peter’s day, as in ours, the word of a person who had seen a thing for himself carried weight in law and in daily life, and the apostles’ preaching rests on that footing. John opens his first letter on the same ground, with what the apostles had seen and heard of the Word of life (1 John 1:1–3), and his Gospel speaks of the Word made flesh, whose glory they beheld (John 1:14).

The majesty Peter means is what he saw at the Transfiguration, which the Gospels tell in Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8 and Luke 9:28–36. There Peter, James and John saw Jesus transfigured before them and shining with divine glory. It was a glimpse of the glory he had with the Father before the world began (John 17:5), and a foretaste of the glory he will show when he comes again “with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30). That is why Peter speaks of the mountain when he speaks of the Lord’s coming. The three men had already seen, for a little while, the majesty in which he will return.

“For he received from God the Father honour and glory.” On the mountain the Son received honour and glory from his Father. His appearance was changed and his majesty shone out, and this was his own glory as the Son, shown openly and confirmed by the Father himself. The word for glory, dóxa, means visible splendour, honour and renown, and it is often used of God’s presence made visible. To Jewish hearers it would recall the Shekinah glory of God’s presence, and to Greek ones the splendour of the divine.

The voice came “from the excellent glory”. Megaloprepḗs means magnificent, majestic, befitting greatness, and “the excellent glory” is Peter’s reverent way of naming the presence of God the Father in his overwhelming splendour. The voice came out of that presence, and it spoke aloud.

The Father said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” These are the words heard at Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:17), and all three Gospels record the voice on the mountain (Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35). “My beloved Son” declares the bond of the Son with the Father, which belongs to him alone, and confirms that Jesus is the Messiah. “Well pleased” is eudokéō, to approve, to take delight in, to be satisfied with. The Father approves his Son’s person, his mission and his obedience, the obedience that would take him to the cross.

The mountain looked ahead to greater glory. The Son who was honoured there was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4), and he now lives at the Father’s right hand, where he ever makes intercession for his people (Hebrews 7:25). The Father’s delight in his Son reaches those who belong to him. Through Christ we are made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) and heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), and in him all the promises of God are yea and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20).

“We have also a more sure word of prophecy.” The word bébaios means stable, firm, steadfast, sure, and Peter uses it in the comparative form, bebaioteron, “more sure” or “firmer”. The word of prophecy is chiefly the Old Testament Scriptures, which foretold the coming of Christ and the unfolding of God’s plan to save.

This is a striking thing for Peter to say. He has just told of the greatest moment of his life, when he saw Christ’s glory and heard the Father’s voice, and he calls the prophetic word firmer still. He stands by every word he has said about the mountain, which was real and was heard aloud. Yet three men saw it, on one day. The prophetic word was spoken over centuries, written down for all God’s people and fulfilled in Christ, so every believer can open it and test any teaching by it. Peter is about to warn against teachers with claims of their own, and he grounds the church on a word that stands outside any one person’s experience.

He tells the church that they “do well” to take heed to it, to pay it close and steady attention. This is the wise course, and in a time of false teaching it is how believers keep their footing and tell truth from error.

“Knowing this first.” Prōton means first in order or importance, and Peter puts this truth at the head of all he says about the prophetic word, because the trust he has just asked for rests on it.

The truth is that “no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” Prophēteía, prophecy, covers prediction and also the whole message God gave through his spokesmen, both foretelling what was to come and telling forth his truth. Graphḗ means a writing, and in the Bible it names holy Writ. In the plural it means the sacred writings as a whole, and in the singular it usually means a particular passage of Scripture, so “prophecy of the scripture” is any prophecy found written there. The Greek ou, “not”, joined with pâs, “every”, makes the statement cover each one of them.

The verb behind “is” is gínomai, to become or come into being, so Peter is speaking of how prophecy came about. Ídios means one’s own, and epílysis, found only here in the New Testament, means an unloosing, a solution or an explanation. Together they say that every prophecy in Scripture had its beginning in God, and the prophet’s own explanation of events was never its source.

“For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man.” Thélēma means will, choice, purpose or inclination, and “in old time” is the age of the prophets of Israel. The prophecy of that age began with God’s purpose, and he chose when and through whom it would come. Through Jeremiah God had condemned the false prophets of his day, who spoke a vision out of their own heart (Jeremiah 23:16), and the next chapter of Peter’s letter warns at length that false teachers like them would rise among believers (2 Peter 2). The pagan world had its oracles and seers as well, working in frenzy or by human craft, while the true prophets spoke under the Spirit’s sure guidance.

“But holy men of God spake.” These men were holy, set apart for God, and they were “of God”, belonging to him as his chosen instruments. They spoke, laléō, uttering real words in their own voices. “As they were moved by the Holy Ghost” tells us how. The verb is phérō, to bear or carry, and here it means to be carried along or borne along. The picture often drawn from it is a ship carried by the wind: the ship has its own build and its own sails, and the wind sets its course and drives it on. The Holy Ghost is the true author of what they spoke, so their words were God’s word.

Paul says the same of all Scripture, that it is given by inspiration of God (2 Timothy 3:16), breathed out by him, which is the sense of his word theopneustos. He speaks too of words taught by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:13). That is why the word of God is quick and powerful (Hebrews 4:12), and why Scripture speaks with one consistent voice across all its writers. Christ himself is the living Word, who was with God and was God (John 1:1), and the written word that the Spirit gave is God’s own word to us, true and trustworthy, given without error in its original writing, and the standard for all we believe and do.

Peter’s two witnesses meet in one person. The prophets, moved by the Spirit, spoke of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow (1 Peter 1:10–11). Jesus said that the Scriptures testify of him (John 5:39) and that he came to fulfil the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17). After his resurrection he expounded to his disciples in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27), and said that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms concerning him (Luke 24:44). Peter himself preached that God had fulfilled what he had shown by the mouth of his prophets, that Christ should suffer (Acts 3:18).

So the prophetic word is sure because God gave it, and it proved its truth in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), who is the end of the law (Romans 10:4) and in whom alone salvation is found. The opening of John’s Gospel (John 1:1–14) tells of the Word who made all things and became flesh, the one the prophets foretold and the apostles saw. And the Spirit who moved the prophets is the Spirit whom Christ sent to guide his apostles into all truth (John 16:13), so the witness of the apostles stands on the same ground as the witness of the prophets.

This passage gives the church a firm place to stand. God has given us the witness of men who saw the majesty of his Son and heard the Father’s voice, and he has given us the word of the prophets, which his Spirit carried into their speech and writing. Both tell of the same Christ, and both are as sure as the God who stands behind them. The coming of Christ that the apostles preached is as real as the glory they saw on the mountain, because that glory was the majesty in which he will return.

The passage also shows us a God who speaks. He spoke from the excellent glory over his Son, he spoke through holy men by his Spirit, and he speaks still through what they wrote. Until the day dawns the world remains a dark place, and his word is the lamp he has put into our hands. Peter says that we do well to take heed to it, and the promise that comes with the lamp is the morning itself, when Christ the day star rises in the hearts of his people and the long night ends.