Peter Said Some of Paul Is Hard, and Then Said What Goes Wrong With It

Two men he respects read the same paragraph in opposite directions and both of them are certain.

That is the situation and it has been the situation for years. One of them takes it one way and can defend it and is not a fool. The other one takes it the other way, with as much care, and is not a fool either.

And what that has done to him is not what anybody would expect. It has not made him curious. It has made him quietly ashamed, because he has concluded that the reason he cannot settle it is that he is not equipped, and that men who are equipped do not have this problem.

So the passage has become a small closed room in his Bible that he does not go into.

There is a sentence near the end of 2 Peter where an apostle says out loud that another apostle wrote things that are hard, and then names exactly what goes wrong.

He says it plainly

Here it is, in the King James Version:

As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16)

In which are some things hard to be understood.

An apostle says that about another apostle's letters, in Scripture, without apology.

That single clause does more for a man in this position than any amount of encouragement, because it means the difficulty is real. He has not been failing to see something obvious. Some of it is hard, and the Bible says so about itself, in the New Testament, in a letter that was kept.

Some things. Not all of it. Which is worth holding too, because a man can swing from ashamed to defeated and conclude the whole book is beyond him. Peter says some, and the rest of his letter assumes his readers can follow him.

You are not failing at something everybody else finds easy and you were never short of equipment. 2 Peter 3:16 says some things hard to be understood about an apostle's own letters, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a qualification you lack who carries a man through what is hard.

The word for what goes wrong

And then he names the failure, and the word is precise.

Which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest.

Wrest is a wrenching word. It is what you do to a thing to force it out of its position, and it is a physical verb chosen for a reason.

So the failure named is not misunderstanding. Peter does not say people fail to understand these passages. He says they wrench them, which is an action performed on a text by somebody who wants it somewhere it does not naturally sit.

And the two words describing who does it are worth separating. Unlearned is one, and it is the one everybody expects. Unstable is the other, and it is not about knowledge at all. It is about a person who has no fixed ground, and who therefore needs the text to supply what their own footing does not.

That is the actual mechanism behind most of it. A passage gets wrenched by somebody who needs it to say a thing, and the need is usually about the person rather than about the passage.

You are able to tell wrenching from reading and you were never in danger by finding something hard. 2 Peter 3:16 names wresting rather than misunderstanding as the failure, and it is His Spirit who makes the difference between the two visible to an ordinary reader.

What is not on the table

And the verse that gives a man permission to leave something unsettled, which is the actual need here.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29)

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God.

There is a category of things a man is not going to get, and Deuteronomy states it without embarrassment and without treating it as a failure of the reader.

And those things which are revealed belong unto us, which is the other half and is generous: everything written down is on the reader's side of the line.

So the honest position on a genuinely hard passage is not that a man is too dim for it. It is that he holds what is clear, does what is clear, and leaves the rest open, and that this is a stable position and not a defeat.

And Proverbs describes why two careful men can differ:

He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him. (Proverbs 18:17)

The first account of anything sounds complete. That is not dishonesty. It is what a single account always does.

You are allowed to leave something open and you were never required to settle everything. Deuteronomy 29:29 divides the secret from the revealed and assigns the revealed to us, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an unresolved question something a man can hold without shame.

The instruction, and where it points

And Paul, on the alternative to wrenching.

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

Rightly dividing.

Which implies there is a wrong way to cut it, and the metaphor is a workman's: a man cutting a straight line rather than a crooked one.

And notice a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, which is the exact condition of the man in this article. He is ashamed, and he is ashamed of the wrong thing: of the difficulty rather than of anything he has done.

And James, on what to do when a man cannot see his way:

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. (James 1:5)

And upbraideth not. That means He does not scold you for asking, which is what a man who learned not to ask needs stated explicitly.

And Peter closes his own letter, two verses after the hard one, with the instruction:

But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 3:18)

Grow. Which is a process word, and it comes right after the admission that some of it is hard.

You have wisdom offered without a scolding and you were never going to be upbraided for asking. James 1:5 says God gives liberally and upbraids not, and it is His Spirit who makes an honest question about a hard passage a place where God gives rather than corrects.