But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Recently I wrote a blog titled “What Does God Say about Time?” (see here). My friend Bill Fiess pointed out that I forgot to mention 2 Pet 3:8.  

He’s right. I should have brought in that key verse. In fact, it is so important that it deserves a whole blog. 

I believe Peter is talking about kingdom time. That is, he is telling us what time will be like when we are “with the Lord.” Believers currently in heaven are experiencing kingdom time. We will experience kingdom time in the Millennium and on the new earth as well.  

But what is kingdom time? 

How can one day be like a thousand years, while a thousand years is like one day? It sounds like a riddle.  

Many commentators have given helpful comments. 

Nearly all note that 2 Pet 3:8 is alluding to Ps 90:4, a psalm by Moses: “For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.” 

Some suggest that Moses defined the length of each of the six days of creation. Others say he was referring to Adam’s dying on the day he ate of the forbidden fruit. Some say this refers to Messiah’s day, the Millennium. Finally, some suggest that the world would last six millennia, after which Jesus would return to establish His millennial reign in the seventh millennia. (Though that view is popular, we are now beyond year 6,000. We are at about year 6,250, assuming a young earth interpretation of Scripture.)  

Davids comments,  

…the point that he [Peter] appears to be making is that divine time is not human time. Human time is relatively immediate, a single lifetime, while divine “days” can stretch over eons…as the psalm indicates. In critiquing God for his slowness in fulfilling his promises, human beings are making an honor challenge against God that steps over the boundaries of their sphere of present time and invades his sphere of future time. In other words, they are trespassing in God’s arena, an arena in which human beings do not know what they are talking about (2 Peter and Jude, p. 277).  

I like his statement. Human beings don’t understand God’s concept of time. When Peter wrote, it had been several thousand years since the Flood and possibly a little over four thousand years since the Creation (if you believe in a young earth), but that is only a few days in God’s time.  

Schreiner comments,  

What Peter did say cogently responds to the teachers. Even though the Lord has not returned yet, one should not conclude from this that he will never arrive. The Lord does not reckon time as humans do. What seems agonizingly long to us is a whisker of time to him (1, 2 Peter, Jude, p. 380).  

I think Peter is saying that humans in God’s presence experience time the way He does.  

But a thousand years being as a day is only one half of Peter’s saying. What about the part about a day being as a thousand years? 

Lucas and Green comment,  

“God sees time with a perspective we lack … [and] with an intensity we lack.” He can see the broad sweep of history in a moment, yet he can stretch out a day with patient care” (2 Peter & Jude, p. 137).  

Notice the words, yet he can stretch out a day with patient care. Although a thousand years is fleeting to God, a single day is also quite full and eventful. Both are true. God enjoys the moment intensely. Yet He is quite patient.  

Hodges has an excellent discussion of 2 Pet 3:8: 

Since it is believed that nothing exceeds the speed of light, light is thought to pass through space so quickly as to “experience” zero time.  

“Light,” as we know, is a way of describing God (at least morally: 1 John 1:5) and “light” in the physical sense came into being in our universe as a result of His command (Gen 1:3). If physical light can pass “timelessly” through our universe, we can surely conceive of its Creator as capable of doing something analogous to that. Thus God Himself is not bound by the experience of time that we are. Since our whole experience of time is inside a spatially conditioned universe, we experience time as we are conditioned to do by our universe. But God is above and beyond His creation, as well as immanent within it, so that His experience of temporal length is distinctly different from our own. 

Peter’s point is that what seems “long” and “short” to men is not “long” or “short” to the Lord. Therefore, any seeming “delay” of the Second Advent is only such from a human point of view. This truth leads directly into the second fact the readers need to understand (1-2 Peter & Jude, p. 150).  

Hodges also wrote that “God does not experience the difference in the passage of a short period of time or a long one” (p. 150). I wonder if that is accurate. It could well be. But either way, his point is that God is unconcerned about the passage of time. That is surely true.  

Isn’t that the best experience of time? Enjoying every moment so that one day can be like a millennia but also viewing a thousand years as just “a whisker of time.”  

Some believers wonder why we won’t get bored after a few million years. Well, two million years is 2,000 kingdom days. In other words, two million years will seem like about 5.5 years today.  

But here is another difference: We won’t have the capacity to be bored. We will be in the image of God, as we were intended to be. Just as God Himself is never bored and never wishes that time would end, neither will we. Jesus’ kingdom will be eternal enchantments.  

Keep grace in focus and you will look forward to kingdom time.