“the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?” (2 Pet 3:12, NKJV)
We are currently discussing 2 Pet 3:10, specifically examining the word “elements” (stoicheion).
Gal 4:9b sketches the context for the use of this word in a very clear manner: “how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?” The word elements is thus used to signify elementary religious principles.
On his website http://www.wordofhisgrace.org/elements.htm Peter Ditzel explains the meaning of the word: “For example, Galatians 4:3 would read, ‘Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the ABCs of the world.’ Hebrews 5:12 would be, ‘For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first ABCs of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.’ This translation rightly brings out the fact that stoicheion are for the immature, they are the milk of babes instead of the meat of adults; they are the ABCs of little children instead of the literature of adults.”
In http://biblefocus.net/notes/events/pollution.html they come to the conclusion that the word stoicheion is a “Greek analogy for ‘human thinking’ … translated as ‘elements’”. In Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible he suggests quite pertinently that “A mere Jewish phrase, yesodey olam hazzeh, ‘the principles of this world’, that is, the rudiments or principles of the Jewish religion.” In the light of 2 Pet 3:10 I cannot state it better than David B Curtis in http://bereanbiblechurch.org: “In 2 Peter 3 Peter is talking about Jesus’ second coming at the end of the Jewish age. When the Lord comes, the heaven and earth of the Old Covenant age will pass away. When we read the word ‘elements’ here, we think of the scientific idea of the elements of matter, all the atoms of the universe burning up. But this is not what the word ‘elements’ means. What is being dissolved here is the Old Covenant system, not the universe. It is ‘the principles of Jewish law’ that are being burned up. This is why it is important to understand this Greek word, it sheds much light on our understanding of 2 Peter 3.”
The word stoicheion can however also point to the elementary elements/principles of life, but also to invisible spiritual forces, powers and authorities that control cultures and the social order of the world. The New Testament use of the word makes it clear that all believers can be freed from the control that the world system exercises, and all that it keeps in check, which includes demons, principalities, and the so-called “elemental spirits”.
The scaffolding of the Old Covenant had to finally make way for the TRUE building in 70 AD. The spiritual does of course not occur first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual comes (2 Cor 15:46). The fire of God had to come to destroy the bastion of the Jewish cult religion in the natural realm, ESPECIALLY ALSO IN OUR HUMAN THINKING, so that a new earth and heaven could come. 2 Pet 3:13 states that in case the old dispensation perishes through fire, “we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells”. What could this mean?
- Selah: Try to understand the rest of 2 Pet 3:12 in the light of this teaching.
- Read: Zach 4-6
- Examine how this has been fulfilled: Zach 4:2 (Tip: Rev 1:12 & 20; 2:1)
