2 Peter 3:11

Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness,

The great ethical purpose of Christianity is clear in this. Christ came to save people from their sins, not in their sins; and the recognition of the ultimate fate of all created things, to say nothing of the immediate fate of all mortals, should have but one issue, that of godliness and holy living.

Caffin pointed out that the prophetic tense is in use here: "Seeing that all these things are being dissolved. The participle is present, and implies the certainty of the event foretold."[47]

All to be dissolved ... In our version, the same word occurs in Isaiah 34:4; but, as one reads Peter's words here, the conviction deepens that the Saviour himself had given instructions to his apostles which have their outcroppings in passages like this, despite the fact of their not having been recorded elsewhere in the New Testament.

People who will not believe in the second coming of Christ and the accompanying judgment of all the world inevitably have a tendency to live careless and sinful lives. There is a positive and definite connection between what one believes and what one does. It was to this principle that this verse is addressed. When people reject the knowledge of God and the revelation in his word, life for such persons automatically loses all real value. On the other hand, when people view life as a probation lived under the guidance and observance of the Father of all Creation, life becomes, for them, endowed with infinitely greater dimensions. The goal, purpose, or intention of living immediately invests with true meaning and significance every experience of life. This is "the abundant life" in Christ. Barclay has given a wonderful summary of the end results of godless lives, gleaned from the heathen tombs, thus:

I was nothing; I am nothing; so thou who art still alive, eat, drink, and be merry.

Once I had no existence; now I have none. I am not aware of it. It does not concern me.

Charidas, what is below? Deep darkness. But what of the path upward? All a lie ... Then we are lost.

Without the truth embodied in the second coming doctrine, life is going nowhere; there is nothing left to live for.[48]

[47] B. C. Caffin, op. cit., p. 68.

[48] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 345.