Devotional 6 October 2025

October 06, 2025 • Steve Torres

2 Peter 3:9.jpg

“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)

Peter isn’t calling us to do spiritual calculus when he says that one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. He is telling us that God’s timeline isn’t bound by ours. The Lord’s delay is not evidence of neglect, but of mercy. As in Psalm 90:4, God’s perspective on time reminds us that He acts in perfect wisdom, not haste. His apparent “delay” is the space in which grace still works: the open door through which repentance may still enter (Ezek. 33:11; Rom. 2:4).

The scoffers in Peter’s day mocked God’s patience, claiming that His promises had failed (2 Pet. 3:4). But Peter turns their accusation into assurance: what they call slowness is salvation. The same Word that once created the heavens will also judge them (v. 10). The day of the Lord will come suddenly, exposing every hidden work and burning away all that cannot last (1 Thess. 5:2; Mal. 3:2–3).

So Peter presses the question: If everything around us will one day dissolve, what kind of lives should we live? (v. 11). The answer is holiness, godliness, and hopeful endurance. We wait not in idle speculation but in active obedience, “hastening the coming of the day of God” (v. 12). Our hope is not in predicting His return, but in living faithfully until He does.

Every day that Christ tarries is a mercy and a test, a mercy to the lost and a test of the believer’s hope (Rom. 8:24–25). The delay proves our faith: that we trust the promise of “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (v. 13).