R.C. Sproul

He says, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as the Lord Jesus Christ showed me.

Isn't it interesting that he referred to his body not as a house,

but as a tent.

And he's writing to Jewish people who understood the transiency of their history, that they were a semi-nomadic people always looking for a place where they could have roots, where they could have permanence, where they could have stability.

And yet in the entire history of Israel, what they call the Pax Israelia, the peace of Israel had lasted in toto less than a hundred years.

They were a nation always in upheaval, always in transit, never being able to send down roots.

And so it was fitting that this Jewish man writing to other Jews would look at his body not as a permanent dwelling place, but as a tent.

And Peter said, it is time for me.

to move, to pull up the stakes.

He didn't see himself as passing out of existence, but he saw that what was about to happen would be just simply moving from one place to another, packing up his tent and going home.

Knowing that shortly I must put off my tent and

just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.

Now, there are different ways in which that part of the verse has been translated and interpreted historically.

One is that Peter is referring to Jesus' example, how He showed His disciples not only how to live, but also how to die.

But a greater number of exegetes argue that what the force of this text is saying is that not that Jesus showed him how to die so much, but that Jesus had revealed to him that the time of his death was nigh.

In verse 15, he says, moreover,

I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.

Now, he keeps talking about reminding them of the things of God and of the truths of the gospel.

And again, some commentators think that this allusion here in verse 15 when he says, I want to do something that will be a perpetual reminder that maybe he had in mind this very epistle that he wrote.

You know, sometimes we act as if the Bible came down from heaven on a parachute and that it wasn't written by real people in real places in real history.