Study Desk

God also punished the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He burned them until there was nothing left but ashes. He used those cities as an example of what will happen to people who are against God.

So you see that the Lord God knows how to save those who are devoted to him. He will save them when troubles come. And the Lord will hold evil people to punish them on the day of judgment.

But these people don't want to remember what happened long ago. The skies were there, and God made the earth from water and with water. All this happened by God's word.

And that same word of God is keeping the skies and the earth that we have now. They are being kept to be destroyed by fire. They are kept for the day of judgment and the destruction of all people who are against God.

The Lord is not being slow in doing what he promised—the way some people understand slowness. But God is being patient with you. He doesn't want anyone to be lost. He wants everyone to change their ways and stop sinning.

Everything will be destroyed in this way. So what kind of people should you be? Your lives should be holy and devoted to God.

You should be looking forward to the day of God, wanting more than anything else for it to come soon. When it comes, the sky will be destroyed with fire, and everything in the sky will melt with heat.

But God made a promise to us. And we are waiting for what he promised—a new sky and a new earth. That will be the place where goodness lives.

Dear friends, we are waiting for this to happen. So try as hard as you can to be without sin and without fault. Try to be at peace with God.

Remember that we are saved because our Lord is patient. Our dear brother Paul told you that same thing when he wrote to you with the wisdom that God gave him.

Yes, the one who is life was shown to us. We saw him, and so we can tell others about him. We now tell you about him. He is the eternal life that was with God the Father and was shown to us.

We are telling you about what we have seen and heard because we want you to have fellowship with us. The fellowship we share together is with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

We heard the true teaching from God. Now we tell it to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness.

So if we say that we share in life with God, but we continue living in darkness, we are liars, who don't follow the truth.

We should live in the light, where God is. If we live in the light, we have fellowship with each other, and the blood sacrifice of Jesus, God's Son, washes away every sin and makes us clean.

But if we confess our sins, God will forgive us. We can trust God to do this. He always does what is right. He will make us clean from all the wrong things we have done.

If we say that we have not sinned, we are saying that God is a liar and that we don't accept his true teaching.

My dear children, I write this letter to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone sins, we have Jesus Christ to help us. He always did what was right, so he is able to defend us before God the Father.

If we obey what God has told us to do, then we are sure that we know him.

If we say we know God but do not obey his commands, we are lying. The truth is not in us.