Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Peter · About this commentary
Not Idle or Unfruitful
2 Peter 1:8-9
8 For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to not be idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. · WEB
The chain has two possible outcomes, and the man who lacks it is described not as wicked but as short-sighted and forgetful.
If these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord. The test of real knowledge is productivity — a knowledge that leaves a life unchanged is failing at what knowledge is for.
Verse 9 describes the alternative, and the diagnosis is gentler and more disturbing than a charge of sin. He who lacks these things is blind, seeing only what is near. The Greek pictures a man screwing up his eyes: he can see, but only close at hand. Nothing distant registers — which for this letter means the coming, the judgment, and the new earth of chapter 3.
The second clause names the cause: having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins. The failure is memory rather than ability. A man who has stopped recalling what he was forgiven has removed the very motive the chain of verses 5 to 7 grows from, and short sight follows from that forgetting rather than causing it.
settled What this mark means