With the Lord one day is like a thousand years...

2 Peter 3 from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, ² that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles.

³ Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, ⁴ and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” ⁵ For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, ⁶ through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. ⁷ But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

⁸ But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

¹¹ Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, ¹² looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! ¹³ But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

¹⁴ Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, ¹⁵ and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, ¹⁶ as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. ¹⁷ You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, ¹⁸ but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.      These two verses from today’s text contain very important truths, we as believers need to recognize. First we always need to acknowledge the latter, that it is God’s will, His desire that no one would perish. This of course does not speak of the physical death of our human bodies, but rather the spiritual death of our eternal souls. God’s will, His desire that no one should perish, is provided for in that He, God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16) Because of God’s love, because of His great mercy and grace, Jesus paid the price for our sins. Romans 6:23 says:   For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those who deny Christ would say that if God truly were loving, compassionate, merciful and gracious, then He would not banish anyone to eternal judgment. He would simply relax His standards to allow everyone to have eternal life. First, God does not banish anyone to judgment or Hell. Each person chooses how to respond to God. Second if the is no judgment then there is no justice. Surely every one of us would agree that there are some things which are wrong, some things which deserve punishment. We would not all agree on those things, but we would all agree that there are limits somewhere to acceptable behavior and that unacceptable behavior merits some form of punishment. Rather than a complex set of arbitrary rules and punishment, the righteous and just God judges everyone the same. He judges each person not according to what they have done, but rather according to what Jesus Christ has done. In John 14:6 Jesus says: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”    It is the only fair, just, loving, compassionate, merciful and gracious way God could deal with our sin.   

Now we return to the first of the two verses:  Do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.    Our inability to comprehend eternity is one of our greatest hindrances to understanding and comprehending God. We are locked into what we know as time; years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds or on the other hand years, decades, centuries and millennia that we cannot comprehend eternity. For most of us, our entire perspective is based on a few decades of existence. We can learn some things about what was before us by studying history and we can guess at what may be in the future. But our finite minds are incapable of comprehending eternity, time without beginning or end. We are left then with two choices. We either speculate and postulate about how things began and how they may end, or we believe what we don’t understand through faith. In reality either method requires faith. It’s a matter of whether our faith is in human wisdom, theories and speculation or we put our faith in an eternal, omnipotent, omniscient God, who is not limited by our finite minds and understanding.

Today’s text says:   But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.      There will be a judgment against sin, there has to be. It is the only fair thing for God to do. To try to know when is not something we can determine. "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” (Matthew 24:36)    We need to recognize that with all of man’s accumulated and accelerating knowledge, what we know is miniscule to what is. The more we learn about the vastness of the universe, the more we recognize there is more to learn. The more we learn about the intricate unseen building blocks of creation, the more we learn that it is more intricate and complex than we thought. One day all that we know, all that we comprehend will come to an end. But that is not the end of all that there is. What will be, what will continue beyond what we know is already in the mind and the will of God. We need to let go of our desire to understand everything from our own perspective. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

My prayer for each of us is that we would accept the limitations of our understanding and that as Peter says we would:   Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.   Amen.