The second epistle is in many respects in contrast with the first. In the first, the House of God is in order, with every needful appointment for the preservation of godliness and of that which becomes this House. In the second epistle, we may almost say that we miss this House altogether. There is a foundation which remains firm, but it has become "a great house," with its vessels not only to honor but to dishonor also. We hear no more of elders, or even deacons-everyone has, as it were, to think and act for himself, and it may be in the face of everything against him. We have to purge ourselves from the vessels to dishonor, and "follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart."
There is no hope preached of recovery from this condition. We have to face it, not in the/ spirit of cowardice, but with a firm reliance upon Him who remains ever the same for us, and sustained according to counsels which have been toward us before ever the Church or even the world was.
The apostle himself is brighter, if possible, than ever; with the light of eternity in his eyes, and the sense of his good fight being finished, he leaves those that are behind him to face the condition of things without apostolic power at all. The departure of Paul is in this way most significant, and he does not depart with the sympathy and fellowship of all the people of God, as we should have expected would surely be the case. Instead of this, those in Asia have departed from him; of those around him in Rome only two or three have yielded him unmingled satisfaction. The circumstances are as dreary as can possibly be imagined, but heaven is bright, and the road brightens with the glory upon it to the perfect day which is at hand.
The epistle appeals in a peculiar manner to ourselves. We have seen the decline and all the confusion attending upon it increase only more and more up to the present time, the mercy of God coming in indeed to revive, but only with regard to a remnant, more and more separated from the rest. Even the very movements which have been from God are prone constantly to dwindle and terminate in the flesh; and if there is to be anything, God has to work again, as it were, from the beginning, and to separate, it may be, a fresh remnant from the remnant which has just failed. Strange indeed it is, and yet according to the character of things, that this decay, with all the terrible consequences of it, should not be perfectly obvious to all Christians-that we should have need still to debate about it, and that the dream that the Church is a little leaven in the world which is to convert the world to God should still be clung to by so many who yet advocate it in the present day.
The first division (chap, i) begins with what is the abiding comfort and security of the soul-that God abides, and that "according to the promise of life," which was given in Christ Jesus before the world began.
The second division (chap. 2 :1-13) insists upon the conflict of faith, which was now ending for the apostle, the need of strength to meet the conditions, and of patience, whether in the warfare as a soldier of Jesus Christ or as a husbandman waiting for the fruit of the seed sown. The dead and risen One is the example here. Through death to life, through the cross to the glory, is the divine principle.
We have in the third division (chap. 2 :14-26) the manifestation of the evil now in an organized form; the whole condition of things is affected by it. The house of God is unduly enlarging. Its enlargement in this way is no cause for joy or triumph, but the very opposite. It is practically the parable of the mustard seed, which, from the smallest of seeds, becomes a tree; which is, after all, poor enough as a worldly show, and its spiritual character strangely affected by the evil introduced -the birds of the air are lodging in the branches of it.
In the fourth division (chap. 3) we go on to the last days, but find that there is nothing but increasing lawlessness, and the persecution of the godly remaining as the constant experience; the opposition of the enemy being, oftentimes, by imitation of that which is of God-the wiles of the enemy being what we have to do with in the large part of the conflict with him. Here we are reminded of how God has furnished the men of God with God-breathed oracles, which are His Word, ready for all emergencies, the one stay of the soul by the power of the Spirit manifested through them in the midst of the wreck of such authority as God had endowed the Church with at the beginning.
In the last division (chap. 4) the apostle bids farewell to the scene of his labors, and leaves to others the conflict for him now finished. It is plain how the whole epistle is an appendix to the first, a gracious remembrance of our necessity on the part of Him who still abides with us, of all that might otherwise stagger and discourage us. The word is still, and always, what it was at the beginning :" Be strong," and, evermore, " Be strong."
From "Numerical Bible"