2 Peter 3:10

Peter opens the chapter by calling his readers to remember the words of the holy prophets and the commandment of the apostles (2 Peter 3:2). Then he warns of scoffers who ask, “Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:4). Their whole case rests on how long they have waited and how steady the world looks. Such scoffers could come from outside the church or from inside it, and some may have been shaped by Greek philosophy, such as that of the Epicureans, which left little room for a personal God who steps into the world. Some Greek thinkers also held the physical world to be eternal, and Peter’s teaching that the heavens and the earth will pass away stood squarely against them.

Peter has already pointed to the Flood, when God judged the world by water (2 Peter 3:5–6), and he has said that the present heavens and earth are “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7). The long wait was still troubling believers, and these verses speak straight to it, as the rest of 2 Peter 3 goes on to call them to holy lives.

Peter calls his readers “beloved”, agapētós, a word meaning beloved or dear, one who is loved. He writes as a pastor to people he cares for, and the warning that follows comes from that love. “Be not ignorant” joins the negative mḗ to the verb lanthánō, which means to lie hid or to escape notice. Peter wants this one truth kept in plain view, because when it slips from sight, doubt and carelessness follow.

The truth is that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” “With the Lord”, para Kyriō, means in his sight, from where he stands. Peter is drawing on the prayer of Moses: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4). The word for day, hēméra, is used for an ordinary day, and in Scripture it can also stand for a longer time or an age.

Peter sets the two measures in mirror order, a day, a thousand years, a thousand years, a day, so that the saying runs both ways. A thousand years pass before the Lord as briefly as one day, and a single day can hold as much of his work as a thousand years. Short and long are alike in his hand, and he is Lord over both.

That is why the long wait leaves the promise as sure as ever. A span that feels long to us is brief in God’s sight. His thoughts and ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9), and he stays the same through every age, for “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). The coming of the Son of man that Jesus foretold (Matthew 24:30) will happen at the time God has set, and human impatience has no say in it.

Peter names the mistake behind the scoffers’ complaint: “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness.” The promise, epangelia, is the promise “of his coming” that the scoffers mocked. The verb bradýnō comes from bradys, slow, and means to be slow or to delay. Some men count God’s waiting as slackness, as though he had forgotten his word or could not keep it. The fault lies in their reckoning, which measures God by human clocks and human motives.

What looks like slowness is longsuffering. The word makrothyméō joins makros, long, and thymos, temper or passion, so it means to be long-tempered. It describes patience that holds back punishment even under long provocation and disobedience. In God it is forbearance and mercy, and he waits for people to answer his grace before the final judgment comes. His patience is active and has a purpose. It is “to us-ward”, toward us, and every day he gives is a day of grace.

The purpose is in the last words: “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” God takes no pleasure in anyone’s destruction. He said through Ezekiel, “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23). Paul writes that God “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), and that “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance” (Romans 2:4).

Repentance, metánoia, is formed from meta, after or change, and noeo, to perceive or think, and at its root it means a change of mind. In Scripture that change reaches the whole person. It is a turning away from sin and self-reliance and a turning toward God in faith and obedience, and it shows itself in how a person lives. Sorrow over sin belongs to it, and repentance carries that sorrow on into a renewed life with God.

So the present age is a window of opportunity for salvation. In a world whose gods were told of as quick to anger and vengeful, a God whose patience is one of his glories stood out sharply, and his patience gave believers strength to endure their trials and the long wait.

Verse 10 opens with “But”, the Greek dé, a connective that here marks a contrast. Whatever the scoffers say, and however long the Lord waits, the day will come. “The day of the Lord” is a phrase the prophets used for the time when God steps into history to judge the wicked and save his people. Isaiah wrote, “the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty” (Isaiah 2:12), and his prophecy against Babylon begins, “Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand” (Isaiah 13:6–13). Joel foretold that “the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come” (Joel 2:31). That day brings God’s reckoning, the vindication of his people, and the full establishment of his righteous rule.

The verb for “will come”, hḗkō, means to arrive, to be present. The certainty lies in Peter’s plain statement that the day will arrive. It comes “as a thief in the night”, unannounced, at the hour when it is least expected, and when it comes the time to prepare is over. Jesus used the same picture: “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matthew 24:42–44). Paul told the Thessalonians that “the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night” and called them to watch and be sober (1 Thessalonians 5:2–6).

The day of the Lord is bound up with the return of Jesus Christ, and he is the Lord of that day. God has ordained him “to be the Judge of quick and dead” (Acts 10:42), so the fire of verse 10 is the righteous end of God’s plan, carried out by Christ. He is the eternal Word who was in the beginning with God (John 1:1–3), and he entered human history “when the fulness of the time was come” (Galatians 4:4). His first coming was at the time God ordained, and his second will be at the time the Father has put in his own power (Acts 1:7). He is “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13), and his promise stands: “Surely I come quickly” (Revelation 22:20).

God’s patience has the same shape as Christ’s ministry on earth. He came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), and his call was “repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15), the very call God’s longsuffering gives time to answer. At the cross the Lamb of God took away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and there God’s will that none should perish provided the means of repentance and forgiveness. The time before Christ returns is a season of grace bought by his sacrifice, in which the Spirit goes on drawing people to repentance, so that the love of God for the world (John 3:16) reaches all who believe.

Peter draws the lesson himself in the verses that follow (2 Peter 3:11–14): “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness”. The God who counts a thousand years as a day is the same God who hears you. When an answer to prayer is long in coming, or when justice is slow to arrive, you can wait with patient endurance, because he keeps his own time and he keeps his word.

His patience also gives our waiting a purpose. If every day before Christ returns is time for someone to repent, then the gospel is worth sharing with urgency and with compassion, offering others the same mercy God has shown us. And since the earth and its works will be burned up, our hope and security belong with God and his kingdom, which is the one kingdom that will stand. What lasts is knowing him, love and service in his name, and the spread of the gospel. We can live ready for Christ with joyful hope, looking for the new heavens and the new earth.

For anyone who has not yet turned to God, his patience is both an invitation and a solemn warning. Today is a day he has given, and the day of the Lord will come.