King Solomon wrote that To everything there is a season … and God has made everything beautiful in its time (Ecc 3:1, 11). Every event of life is God at work and He makes each one beautiful (proper or appropriate) in its own time. He has an appropriate time for everything in your life, even those times and events which are difficult and seem unpleasant (Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28). God’s purpose and plan for every moment of time includes the return of Jesus, the judgment of sin, and the end of this world.
The final five verses of Second Peter contain four commands: be diligent, be thinking, be aware, and be growing. Spiritually growing Christians are thinking people (Ps 1:2; Is 1:18; Rom 12:1-2; Phil 4:8-9). Since God is patient, it’s sometimes hard to understand God’s will and ways, and false teachers are actively taking advantage of His patience, twisting His Word for their own benefit.

I. Patience (2 Pet 3:15). Peter commands us to account that God is longsuffering (makrothumia) or patient. The word account (hegeomai) means to think, to regard, to consider, to count. We’re commanded to think because it’s not our natural habit. Our habit is to wonder, question, and doubt when God delays.
But God’s seeming delay is His patience at work in the salvation of His children and judgment of the wicked (2 Pet 3:8-9). When the world seems to be falling apart, we are assured things are actually falling into place in the plan and purpose of God as He makes all things beautiful in its time (Ecc 3:11).
This word account has been used by Peter previously about his death and the need to remind believers of the truth (2 Pet 1:13), false teachers who openly sin (2 Pet 2:13), the scoffer’s view that God is powerless to judge sinners and His promises to return are untrue (2 Pet 3:9). We are to think or account that now is the day of salvation (Lk 4:19; 2 Cor 6:2), and remember that the day of judgment is truly coming (Jn 3:17-19)!

II. Hard to Understand (2 Pet 3:15). Peter calls Paul our beloved brother, revealing admiration and brotherhood in faith and mission. The Holy Spirit had given Paul wisdom (2 Tim 3:16) in the letters he’d written and Peter and Peter’s audience had read. These letters contained the same truths Peter taught.
There was no doctrinal disagreement among the apostolic council, though some of Paul’s ideas were hard to understand (dusnoetos), meaning complex or difficult to interpret. Paul’s logical mind didn’t discourage Peter nor the early believers. Note Peter didn’t write, Paul’s writings are hard to understand so skip them. Paul’s epistles are Scripture and the same Holy Spirit who spoke to the Old Testament prophets spoke through Paul (2 Pet 1:19-21; 2 Tim 3:16-17).

III. Twisted (2 Pet 3:16). Instead of avoiding Paul’s letters, Peter warns of mishandling the word of truth (2 Tim 2:14-16).
People can be intelligent and educated but Biblically illiterate. They can be untaught (amathes) and unstable (asteriktos). The untaught are ignorant, ill-informed, or lacking teaching. They’d not learned the apostles’ doctrine (Acts 2:42) nor taught by the Father (Jn 6:45). This contrasts with the unstable who are unbalanced or not firmly established in truth (2 Pet 2:14). Doctrinally untrained and unstable people must never teach or preach (1 Timothy 3:1-2; 2 Tim 2:2; Tit 1:1-9) lest they twist (strebloo) God’s Word to suit themselves or lead others astray from God and truth. Apollos is an example of an evangelist who needed to be taught (Acts 18:24-28).
Strebloo was used in the ancient world to describe the wrenching and twisting of a body on a torture rack. Rather than rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15), Scripture is purposely abused and tortured, perverting the gospel (Gal 1:17) to condone people’s evil theology and wicked living.
Tortured Scripture secures the destruction (apoleia) of those who twist it, and at the least, shipwrecks the faith of those who hear it (1 Tim 1:18-20) Torturing Scripture is not a harmless mistake, but damnable heresies and pernicious ways leading to spiritual destruction (2 Pet 2:1-2; 3:7).