2 Peter 3:8–9: Edit history

Context

Chapter 3 of 2 Peter responds to scoffers who ask, "Where is the promise of his coming?" (3:4). They claim that since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Peter reminds his readers that God created the world by His word and judged it by the Flood (3:5–7). In verse 8 he draws on Psalm 90:4 to say that God's time differs from human time. Verse 9 explains the delay as an expression of God's longsuffering, and verse 10 warns that the day of the Lord will nevertheless come as a thief in the night.

Interpretation

• A theological answer to the delay of the Second Coming: Because God is not bound by time, what appears slow from a human perspective is not a true delay; the interval is a time of grace in which God waits for repentance. Most traditions read the passage this way.
• "Not willing that any should perish": Together with 1 Timothy 2:4, verse 9 is cited as a text expressing God's universal saving will. The Arminian tradition reads it as referring to all people, while some Calvinists read it, in light of the context, as referring to those being addressed, that is, the elect believers.

Debates and Issues

In its original sense, verse 8 is a figure of speech about the relativity of time, yet it has been used as the basis for various calculations. Some early church writings interpreted the six days of creation as six thousand years of history, to be followed by a thousand-year Sabbath rest, and such calculations sometimes led to later predictions of the date of the Second Coming. In the creation and evolution debate, the verse is cited in support of the day-age theory, which holds that the days of Genesis may have been long ages, while young-earth creationists counter that the verse has no bearing on the length of the days in Genesis. Major denominations regard using this verse to calculate the timing of the end as taking it out of context.

Related Passages

• Psalm 90:4
• 1 Timothy 2:4
• Matthew 24:36
• Romans 2:4