II Peter 3:9-15a – Blameless and Spotless

⁹[The] Lord is not being slow of promise as some are reckoning slowness, but [He] is being patient into you, not purposing that any perish but [purposing] all to have room into repentance;

¹⁰but [the] Day of [the] Lord will come as a thief, in which the heavens shall vanish with a roar and [the] elements will be dissolved burning intensely and [the] earth and the works in it shall be burned up.

¹¹Thus all these things being dissolved, what sort [of persons] ought you be in holy livings and godlinesses;

¹²looking for and eagerly desiring the coming of the Day of the God, through which [the] heavens will be dissolved burning and [the] elements are melting burning intensely?

¹³But, according to the promise of Him, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

¹⁴Wherefore, beloved, looking for these things, be diligent to be found by Him to be spotless ones and blameless ones in peace,

 ¹⁵and reckon the patience of the Lord of us [to be] salvation …

Interestingly, forms for the word translated “be diligent” (as in v14) occur 5 times in this book (1:5,10,15;3:12,14). Obviously, He expects us to be diligent. While it’s true that “without Him we can do nothing” (John 15:5), on the other hand it is abundantly clear that it is our part to “be diligent.” “I can’t, but I must, and, by His grace, I will.” 

And what is it we’re to be diligent about in this particular passage? “…to be found by Him to be spotless ones and blameless ones in peace …”

First of all, it is important to note that the reference “spotless and blameless” is a sacrificial word.  Jesus is “the Lamb without blemish and without spot” (exact same Greek words as our passage) in I Peter 1:19.  Lambs brought to sacrifice were required of course to be “without blemish and without spot.” In their case the matter was physical, of course. No crippled or maimed animals were suitable for sacrifice. In our case, it is clearly spiritual. We are to see our lives as living sacrifices, to be like our Lamb Christ, and thus be diligent to “be found by Him to be spotless ones and blameless ones in peace …”

But what does that mean? Spotless and blameless. If we leave the words hanging in space, we are free to assign them whatever sort of morality appeals to us. But what does the Lord mean? We should always strive to let Him define His own terms. Consider the following passages that address the same issues and use the same Greek words:

Phil 1:9-11

⁹And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, ¹⁰ so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, ¹¹ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ…

Phil 2:14,15

¹⁴ Do everything without grumbling or arguing, ¹⁵ so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.”

James 1:27

²⁷ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

I Thes 3:12,13

¹² May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. ¹³ May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.

Once again, I think it is enormously significant what He says … and what He doesn’t say. Christianity today is suffocated under all the things people would tell you make you so you are or are not “spotless and blameless.” But, have we lost sight of what God really thinks, in filling our minds with all those seemingly appropriate “rules” and “standards” and “applications”?  “We by our traditions have made the Word of God of no effect.” Look again at just this tiny smattering of passages. The big issues to God are whether we love, and clearly that love is not just good intentions – it expresses itself in real, observable efforts to actually do good for those who need it, in watching our mouths and the words we utter. 

I need to be diligent to keep my heart loving. To not love is to be spotted by this hateful, cruel world. To keep on loving, like Jesus, is to keep oneself unspotted by this world.

It is so easy to reduce “unspotted” to matters of how we dress, the music we listen to, how many times a week we attend church services, or what does or does not go down our throats. But in so doing we miss the real point, and fail the real mission: to love.

It is incredibly liberating to cast off all the extraneous “touch not, taste not” and all the other Pharisaical “rules” and realize my mission is to love.

But then it becomes a challenge to make that love a constant reality – to be diligent about it(!). Then again, what if everybody did?

Lord, help us to be real, to be truly “blameless ones and spotless ones in peace” as we keep ever in mind that “the Day of the Lord will come.”