Audience

Unlike Peter’s first letter, we do not know the audience of this second letter; there is a good chance, however, that the audience is the same.

We might therefore assume that Peter wrote to those residents of Asia Minor who had been present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:9) and were now living in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia (modern Turkey) (1 Peter 1:1).

Whomever Peter was writing to, he wanted to make sure they were aware they had a relationship and a position in Christ equal to the disciples who had walked with Christ (1:1). Further, His prayer for them was to grow and deepen in their relationship with Christ.

Author

While this letter was not written in the same manner and style as 1 Peter, there is little doubt that it belongs to Peter, as certainly he used a scribe to edit both. It is fairly certain that Peter wrote his first letter somewhere between 54 and 68 A.D., so this letter would have been written later, possibly between 63 and 68 A.D. (3:1). As I mentioned in the 1 Peter introduction, Peter likely was executed with Paul in the Nero persecution. We should remember that after Peter “left Jerusalem for another place” (Acts 12:17), we do not know where he went except to note he showed up for the Jerusalem council (Acts 15), likely did some ministry in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:12; 9:5), and probably ended up in Rome at the end of his life.

Purpose

We do know from internal evidence that Peter was addressing false teachers (2:1). We have no idea who they were, but Peter clearly recorded the effect they were having on the believers. They were deceiving people to indulge their lusts and disrespect authority (2:10), leading them to an insatiable appetite for sin and greed (2:14, 18). These false teachers would promise freedom but then enslave people to a form of sensuality worse than the lusts they engaged in before coming to Christ (2:19).

The purpose of 2 Peter is evident: to warn believers of the peril of being deceived by these false teachers, to alert them to the certainty of the coming judgment, and finally to divert them from giving themselves back over to living for what made them feel good.