This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder,
1. Lest they should be wearied with the Second Epistle as though the first was sufficient, he says that it was not written in vain, because they stood in need of being often stirred up. To make this more evident, he shews that they could not be beyond danger, except they were well fortified, because they would have to contend with desperate men, who would...
That the apostle might the better reach his end in writing this epistle, which is to make them steady and constant in a fiducial and practical remembrance of the doctrine of the gospel, he, 1. Expresses his special affection and tenderness for them, by calling them beloved, hereby evidencing that he added to godliness brotherly-kindness, as he had (Pe2 1:17) exhorted them to do.
Commenting on 2 Peter 3:1-2
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you,.... This is a transition to another part of the epistle; for the apostle having largely described false teachers, the secret enemies of the Christian religion under a profession of it, passes on to take notice of the more open adversaries and profane scoffers of it; and from their ridicule of the doctrine of Christ's second coming...