What I find fascinating is verse 9.
"But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins."
This sounds like a criticism of other Christians of that time. I suspect that Peter did not actually write this, but that it was written by someone who was in conflict over doctrine with another congregation in another geographical area of the Roman Empire. This happened often in the early Christian Church.
The first volume of the Cambridge Medieval World History (actually about European History) has a lot more about this, including narratives about the attempts by Christians in the first century AD to reach an common understanding about the doctrines of Christianity.

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