God’s wish, therefore, is that all should come to repentance. What God seeks from men while His judgment tarries is repentance. Here Peter is thinking about God’s gracious reluctance to see sinners killed. The Greek word rendered perish here ( apolesthai) might equally well have been translated be killed. As Peter puts it, He is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish. God is in no way anxious to begin the judgments following Christ’s return. This is synonymous with the arrival of “the day of the Lord” (see v 10). Peter is not discussing the final judgment of men, but instead the arrival of our Lord’s coming, which the scoffers are challenging (see 3:4). The word us (found in the majority of manuscripts) here is not a reference to Peter and his believing readers but to humanity in general, since Peter is talking here about a worldwide calamity. Not only is the Lord not slow about His promise, but (instead) He is longsuffering toward us. How can a God for whom a great span of time (a thousand years) is no longer than a single day be accused of slowness? There is also a second fact that is important to Peter’s refutation of the false teachers. It follows from what Peter has just said that, in the divine actuality, The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, that is, as some count slackness. Therefore, any seeming delay of the Second Advent is only such from a human point of view. Peter’s point, of course, is that what seems long and short to men is not long or short to the Lord. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. By Zane Hodges, originally published in the July/August 2009 edition of Grace in Focus
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