(3) Insistence Upon Holiness.—The second characteristic of Second Peter and Jude is the insistence upon holiness. Religion is by no means always connected with goodness. In the Greco-Roman world, the two were often entirely separate. Many pagan cults contained no ethical element whatever. The danger was therefore very great that Christianity might be treated in the same way. The early Christians needed to be admonished ever and again that their God was a God of righteousness, that no unclean thing could stand in his presence.
Insistence upon holiness is in itself no peculiarity of Second Peter and Jude. It runs all through the New Testament. But in these epistles it is directed more definitely perhaps than anywhere else against the opposite error. The opponents of Peter and Jude did not merely drift into immorality; they defended it on theoretical grounds. They were making a deliberate effort to reduce Christianity to the level of a non-ethical religion. Such theoretical defense of immorality appears, indeed, in a number of places in the apostolic Church. A certain party in Corinth, for example, made a wrong use of Christian freedom. But what is more or less incidental in First Corinthians forms the main subject of Second Peter and Jude. Christianity is here insisting upon its thoroughly ethical character.
At first sight the message might seem obsolete to-day. We always associate religion with morality; we can hardly understand how the two ever could have been separated. It is to be feared, however, that the danger is not altogether past. In our thoughts we preserve the ethical character of Christianity. But how is it with our lives? How is it with our religious observances? Are we not constantly in danger of making religion a mere cult, a mere emotional excitement, a mere means of gaining earthly or heavenly advantages, a mere effort to bribe God by our worship? The danger is always with us. We need always to remind ourselves that Christian faith must work itself out in holy living.
Peter in his second epistle has provided us with one important means to that end. It is the thought of Christ's coming. There can be no laxness in moral effort if we remember the judgment seat of Christ.
In the Library.—Purves, "Christianity in the Apostolic Age," pp. 267-270, 282-285. Davis, "Dictionary of the Bible": Warfield (supplemented), article on "Jude." M'Clymont, "The New Testament and Its Writers," pp. 137-143. Ellicott, "A New Testament Commentary for English Readers," vol. iii, pp. 437-463, 505-519: Plummer, "The Second Epistle of St. Peter" and "The Epistle of St. Jude." Zahn, "Introduction to the New Testament," vol. ii, pp. 194-293. The last-named work is intended primarily for those who have some knowledge of Greek, but can also be used by others.