2 Peter 3:8

2 Peter 3:8. But let not this one thing escape you, beloved; the mode of expression which has been already used in reference to the mockers in 2 Peter 3:5. The writer passes now from the idea of the supposed constancy of the order of things to that of the apparent delay in the realization of the promise. He calls the attention of his readers first to a single fact, the difference between the Divine measure of duration and the human, which would be sufficient refutation of the scornful incredulity of such scoffers.

that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. As the writer seems to make use of the words of the 90th Psalm here, the designation ‘the Lord,' both in this verse and in the next, should be taken in its Old Testament sense, and, therefore, not as = Christ, but as = God or Jehovah, without reference to the personal distinctions which belong to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. While the Psalmist (Psalms 90:4), however, speaks simply of a thousand years as being in Jehovah's sight ‘as yesterday when it is past, Peter throws the statement into a form which presents also the converse truth that one day is as a thousand years, if a thousand years are as one day. His object is not to exhibit the brevity of human life over against the eternity of God, as is the case with the Psalmist, but to express how inapplicable to God are all those ideas of time, those estimates of long and short, of hasting and delay, by which man measures things. The O. T. view of the eternity of God, however, is not merely this comparatively abstract idea of everlasting duration, which seems to be on the surface of the Psalmist's words, but the deeper idea of changelessness of being which makes God the object of His people's fearless trust. ‘Whilst God as Jehovah is the eternal, God's eternity is defined as the unchangeableness of His being, persisting throughout every change of time, and thus it becomes the basis of human confidence. Therefore Moses, in the midst of the dying away of his people, addresses God as the Eternal One, Psalms 90:1; therefore, Deuteronomy 32:40, the idea that God is eternal forms the transition to the announcement that He will again save his rejected people; therefore Israel, when sighing in misery, is comforted, Isaiah 40:28: “knowest thou not, and hast thou not heard, that Jehovah is an eternal God?” (Oehler). Hence, while Peter meets the scorner by asserting God to be superior in all His modes of action to human reckonings of time, he also exhibits the ground of His people's continued faith in Himself and His promise through postponements of their hope.