Now, though the persons to whom the apostle wrote were stran- gers in the first sense, — pilgrims, whose conversation and country was in heaven, — yet they were no more so than all other believers in the world ; so that there was no just cause of saluting them peculiarly under that style and title, were there not some other special reason of that appellation. They were, therefore, also strangers in the latter sense ; — persons who had no inheritance in the place of their abode, that were not the free and privileged natives of the country where they dwelt and inhabited; that is, they were Jews scattered abroad in those parts of the world.
The people of Israel in those days were under various distributions and appellations. First, They were the natives of Jerusalem, and the parts adjacent; and these were in the gospel peculiarly called Jews. You have it often mentioned, that in our Saviour's discourse with them, the Jews answered so and so ; that is, the natives of Jeru- salem, and places adjoining. Secondly, Those who inhabited the sea- coasts of the country, whom the others much despised, and called them, from the place of their habitation, as if they had been men of another nation, " Galileans/' Thirdly, Those who lived in several dispersions, up and down the world, among other nations. Of these there were two chief sorts: — 1. Those who lived in some parts of
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Europe, in Asia the less, also at Alexandria, and other Greek colonies. These are in the Scripture sometimes called Greeks, Acts xvii. ; and elsewhere commonly termed Hellenists ; because they used the Greek language, and the Greek Bible then in use. 2. Those who lived in the greater Asia, in and about Babylon ; as also in the countries here enumerated by the apostle: — the Jews converted to the faith, that lived scatteredly up and down in those parts of Asia.
Peter being in a special manner designed by the Holy Ghost the apostle of the Circumcision, and being now at Babylon in the dis- charge of his apostolical office and duty, 1 Epist. v. 13; and being now nigh unto death, which he also knew, 2 Epist. i. 14; and not perhaps having time to pass through and personally visit these scat- tered believers, — he wrote unto them these two epistles, partly about the main and important truths of the gospel, and partly about their own particular and immediate concernment as to the temptations and afflictions wherewith they were exercised.
It is evident, from sundry places in the New Testament, what ex- treme oppositions the believing Jews met withal, all the world over, from their own countrymen, with and among whom they lived. They in the meantime, no doubt, warned them of the wrath of Christ against them for their cursed unbelief and persecutions; particularly letting them know, that Christ would come in vengeance ere long, according as he had threatened, to the ruin of his enemies. And because the persecuting Jews, all the world over, upbraided the be- lievers with the temple and the holy city, Jerusalem, their worship and service instituted of God, which they had defiled; they were given to know, that even all these things also should be destroyed, for their rejection of the Son of God. After some continuance of time, the threatening denounced being not yet accomplished, — as is the manner of profane persons and hardened sinners, Eccles. viii. 11, — they began to mock and scoff, as if they were all but the vain pre- tences, or loose, causeless fears of the Christians. That this was the state with them, or shortly would be, the apostle declares in this chapter, verses 3, 4. Because things continued in the old state, without alteration, and judgment was not speedily executed, they scoffed at all the threats about the coming of the Lord that had been denounced against them.
Hereupon the apostle undertakes these three things:- — ■
First. He convinces the scoffers of folly by an instance of the like presumption in persons not unlike them, and the dealings of God in a case of the same nature.
Secondly. He instructs believers in the truth of what the}- had before been told concerning the coming of Christ, and the destruction of ungodly men.
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Thirdly. He informs them in the clue use and improvement that ought practically to be made of the certainty of this threatening of the corning of Christ.
For the first, he minds them, as I said, of the old world, verses 5, 6. Before the destruction of that world, God sent " Noah, a preacher of "righteousness," who, both in word and deed, effectually admonished men of the judgment of God that was ready to come upon them; but they scoffed at his preaching and practice, in building the ark, and persisted in their security. " Now/' saith he, " this they willingly are ignorant of;" — it is through the obstinacy and stubbornness of their will, they do not consider it; for otherwise they had the Scripture, and knew the story. There is no ignorance like that where men's obsti- nacy and hardness in sin keeps them from a due improvement of what they ought to have improved to its proper purpose. They are to this day willingly ignorant of the flood, who live securely in sin under the denunciation of the judgments of God against sin.