How God Measures Time – 2 Peter 3:8-13

How does God measure time? How do we measure it? Time is a crazy thing. We talk about it running slow at times and at others running fast. Is it really? No, but our perception of it changes depending on what is taking place at the moment and how attentive we are to it. If I am watching the clock as I wait to get out of class it seems to take forever. If I am playing an exciting ball game it seems to pass swiftly.

Peter wants us to understand something of this fact in regard to how God measures time.

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:8-13, ESV)

The false teachers have been teaching that Christ is not coming in his kingdom to bring judgment and reward. Their argument that all things have continued as before from the beginning is flawed in that the flood was a promise of future judgment and was very much not the same thing continuing from creation. But their argument that the length of time that has passed seems proof is countered by Peter with the obvious understanding that the eternal God perceives length of time much differently than we do.

The passage is not arguing that God is timeless or that He exists out of and over the time we experience, a philosophical concern worth considering but not at play here, but rather that what seems long to us might not be long to God and what seems short time to us might seem long from God’s point of view. We have experienced something like this. Looking back on our childhood it may seem like it was just yesterday, whereas any single day may seem so full that it lasts forever.

The issue with God and the coming kingdom, however, is one of patient waiting for all of His elect coming to faith or repentance. He is waiting for that day when all who should believe do so and then, without our knowing who that last person is, He comes like a thief, totally unexpected as to timing, to conduct His judgment. The end of the judgment will be a dissolving of the present form of earth with fire to make way for a new heavens and a new earth, the final form of the kingdom, in which righteousness rules.

We see from Revelation and other places that before this final conflagration there will be the judgment of the sheep and the goats of Matthew 25, the millennial kingdom during which Satan is held bound, his release after 1,000 years to lead a rebellion, the Great White Throne judgment of Revelation 20 and the casting of Satan and all unbelievers into the Lake of Fire. Then Revelation 21 depicts this judgment Peter speaks of, a making of a new heaven and earth, after which the heavenly Jerusalem comes to the new earth and God’s kingdom rules forever.

The point of all this for Peter and for us is that if God is bringing such judgment and His judgment always begins with His people, we need to be living “lives of holiness and godliness” in anticipation. We should be making our calling and election sure (chapter 1) by increasing in faith and godliness, giving evidence thereby that we are indeed saved and worthy of escaping the fiery judgment. This means not listening to those false teachers who would give us excuses for living impure lives. This means “hastening” that coming day by living holy lives and making disciples of all nations.

Are you doing your part?