NOTES for Pe2 3:14-15
Probably, to every Christian (and to every believer in God) at least once in life has risen the question: Why God waits? Why He does not intervene in the events taking place on earth, to restore order, to end the evil that occurs here, to punish the sinners, to reward the righteous? Or why He did not make at least the world such that every good and every evil are rewarded immediately and publicly, in a way that each sees the consequences of the good done by the righteous, as well as the evil done by the sinner? Indeed, the world would then have been better, and the one doing evil would have think several times if it worth to do that! And few are those who think about another thing: upon this order of things, could many have had hope not to say for salvation – but even only for physical surviving?
Because there is no man without sin on earth, except the One, Who brought to the world this Kingdom, which alone can be considered as the only alternative in the existing order of things! Could the Kingdom brought to them reveal itself so immediately in all its fullness? In principle, of course could, there couldn’t find in any case in the fallen world forces, capable to disturb it. Here is, the only inhabitant of the Kingdom in such case would have been Jesus Himself.
Others wouldn’t have been found, because sin is incompatible with the Kingdom, and there wasn’t at those days and there is not today in the world people without sin, except Him. The only means to save those who seek for the Kingdom and cannot enter because of their sinfulness, is to stretch the process of the transformation of the world and man. And not because this process, being spread in a century or millennium of earthly time, turns out to be easier or painless, but because it can not be completed, without waiting for the free self-determination of each of the living.
Such self-determination can turn out of course also negative, the free man has the right to reject the Kingdom and salvation, here before us the reverse of freedom, so to say, its wrong side. But everyone must decide, and this freely. And sometimes a lot of time is needed for such self-determination, particularly if we consider that most of people because of their fallen nature try as much as possible to avoid the decision-making, avoid to give an unambiguous and definitive answer. And God waits. Wait in order to save everyone who could be saved.